Thanos opened his eyes in the Milky Way.
Or rather, his consciousness awakened.
He had no body now—no living body, anyway—and naturally, no eyes.
His body was a colossal black hole.
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
That was the secret to the Dimension Lords' immortality.
Once they became Dimension Lords, they merged with the black holes in their dimensions. As long as their dimensions endured, they could not die.
Everything in the Milky Way continued as usual. His departure from the Reality Universe had caused no chaos.
As a Dimension Lord, he had used the black hole's energy to create space and time, shielding the surrounding region from assimilation by the Chaos Universe.
Space and time were the foundations of any dimension. Only upon those foundations could other properties emerge.
Fixed Stars, Planets, Satellites, metal, wood, water, fire, earth—and eventually, all manner of life.
But he had merged with a mature galaxy, so he could skip those steps. All he had to do was maintain its space and time.
Now he faced a choice: go to the S90909 Universe and keep absorbing galaxies, or head to another universe.
He wondered how the Dimension Lords, gods, and Immortals were faring.
Would they seize the remaining universes while the Celestials were gone?
After some thought, he decided to gather information at the Trading Barrier before choosing.
Everyone believed he had been sealed behind the Hell Gate, so he split off an Avatar that looked like an ordinary person and opened the Space Barrier.
At the Trading Barrier, things were far quieter after the deaths of so many Dimension Lords and Universal Level powerhouses.
The Avatars of Dormammu, Nightmare, Eye-Monger, Surtur, Lucifer, and other lords huddled together, their auras weakened and their faces grim.
"Sigh. Who would've