Four women suddenly appeared before the Celestial. It said nothing more and raised its right hand.
Five enormous fingers, each several kilometers long, spread wide. Dark red energy leaped between their tips.
Its palm swung toward Wanda. It was not fast, but the force of it made even the Chaos Space tremble.
Wanda did not dodge. She traced a magic circle in the air with both hands, and a thick beam of red energy shot from its center into the Celestial's palm.
The beam struck the palm, unleashing a ring-shaped shockwave of intertwined red and black.
The Celestial's palm paused. Wanda had not stopped it, but she had disrupted it.
Her Chaos Magic created a tiny, unstable fluctuation in its energy field, throwing the descending palm off course.
The palm swept past Wanda and struck the boundary of the Chaos Space, leaving a huge, smoking handprint on the spatial wall.
The Celestial looked down at its palm, then back up at Wanda.
"Your magic is interesting, but you lack the power."
Its chest lit up. Beneath its silver-white shell, an energy core began to pulse.
Dark red light seeped through cracks in the shell and flowed across its body like lava.
A horizontal slit opened across the middle of its featureless head, revealing countless rows of sharp, white-glowing teeth.
An energy beam shot from its mouth—not at Wanda, but at the boundary of the Chaos Space.
Wanda's eyes widened.
Cracks appeared in the wall of the Chaos Space under the beam's impact.
They did not form gradually. They burst across it in an instant.
The cracks spread from the point of impact like a spiderweb, widening from hair-thin lines to finger-width gaps, then to openings as wide as fists.
Blood trickled from the corner of Wanda's mouth. Her body trembled.