Chapter 573
The dead silence of deep space beyond the Solar System was suddenly swallowed by a boundless black torrent of destruction.
The pressure had long surpassed anything within the bounds of ordinary galactic combat power. Unlike the Silver Surfer's power, it was neither focused and sharp nor something that could be controlled or defended against.
It was pure, boundless, ancient annihilation.
It was the primordial Destruction Origin left over from the Big Bang, a cosmic calamity made manifest across multiple dimensions, a sign that Galactus himself was arriving.
The paths of every celestial body in the Solar System fell into disarray. The Moon's orbit shifted slightly, countless rocks in the Asteroid Belt were crushed into cosmic dust by the invisible pressure, and even the distant atmospheres of Mars and Jupiter erupted in thousand-mile tempests.
The heavens lost their color. The sea of stars fell silent.
On the ground, humanity's panic gave way to utter despair.
If the Silver Surfer's arrival had been a world-ending disaster, then the immense dark figure spanning the stars and slowly drawing near was an inescapable cosmic fate.
A colossal silhouette, billions of meters tall, slowly took shape in the depths of space.
Galactus's body was no solid celestial mass. It was woven from layer upon layer of dark-purple barriers of cosmic void, with black-hole rifts that devoured all things winding around him. An endless aura of destruction swept out in every direction.
Where his head should have been lay a dark, unfathomable domain of annihilation. His eyes were the remains of two supergiant stars burning with deathly white flames. A single glance could shatter an ordinary god's soul and destroy their resolve.
He merely stood at the edge of the Solar System, and the energy system of the entire dimension collapsed.
Earth's magnetic field