The entire world teetered on the brink of collapse under the force of the universe's return to zero.
Deep beneath the earth, tangled strands of time burst apart one after another, and cracks in the surface spread toward the planet's core.
Broken skyscrapers crumbled into fine dust and vanished into the void. Every living color drained from heaven and earth.
Only a gray, deathly stillness remained as countless fragments of past, present, and future overlapped wildly.
To achieve his goal, Lord Sentry burned through his entire Temporal Origin, intending to drag the planet and every outsider on it into oblivion with him.
Just as everyone marshaled their last strength to withstand the cosmic-level shock of destruction, a vast gate through space and time slowly opened in the sky.
Beyond it, countless orderly timelines flowed in silence.
This was the interior of the Time Variance Authority, a supreme domain beyond the parallel universes that governed the cause and effect of countless worlds.
Loren stepped out. The gentle, easygoing air he usually wore was gone.
A simple black robe stirred in the wind, while faint silver-white currents of time circled him.
His once-warm eyes now held the authority of one who governed the order of countless worlds. Merely standing in midair, he brought the wildly collapsing universe to a halt.
Lord Sentry sensed the arrival of a supreme being from beyond. The Temporal Core in his chest flashed violently, and the programs that had been running at full speed fell into widespread disorder.
Since gaining self-awareness, he had analyzed all the data in this universe: Mutants, humans, powers, and Spacetime Fragments.
But the aura of the man before him lay entirely outside this timeline. Even with every bit of his processing power pushed past its limits, he could not decipher it.
"Supreme