At the edge of the spatial rift, golden light flickered erratically.
It looked like a hideous wound torn open by force.
Chu Hang was the first to step through.
His foot came down on empty space, steady as a rock.
Clark, Thor, Tony, Strange, and Wanda followed in turn, their faces grim.
Only Adam, cradled in Wanda's arms, behaved strangely.
The newborn did not cry or fuss.
His eyes were wide, and his little head kept turning, as though he sensed something no one else could.
Chu Hang noticed that the Void Origin within Adam was surging at three times its usual frequency.
The child had been in this excited state ever since they left Earth.
Chu Hang made a mental note of it and said nothing.
The sight before them was horrifying.
This had once been a thriving star system.
In the Observer's memories, it had held dozens of habitable planets and over a hundred intelligent civilizations, with interstellar routes crisscrossing the region.
Now, nothing remained.
It was as if the whole region had been wiped clean.
The planets still followed their orbits, but their surfaces were bare.
No oceans, no atmosphere, no signs of life.
As though an eraser had swept over them, leaving only dull gray spheres of silence.
Clark's fists clenched.
He could hear them.
The echoes left on those planets—the final screams of billions of lives, frozen in the folds of spacetime by some terrifying power.
Tony's faceplate snapped open. His face was ashen.
"This..."
He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Some sights made even profanity feel inadequate.
The Divine Eye on Strange's forehead flashed wildly. Seconds later, he spoke in a strained voice:
"It wasn't mere destruction."
"It was erasure. Complete erasure at the Conceptual Layer."
"Given enough time, even the