Why had Thanos played dead? Why had he waited until Exitar left before getting up?
So he could explore the ruins without interference, of course.
From what the three Celestials had said, something here mattered greatly to them. He did not know what it was they were protecting.
Over the next few hours, he slowly circled the ruined planet at supersonic speed. It was utterly lifeless and barren, all gray with patches of black, without a hint of color. If there were any treasure, it should have been easy to spot.
He also found traces that seemed to have been left by a prehistoric civilization.
There were stretches of ground resembling roads and tracks, stones that looked like statues, and wreckage of spaceships.
Who knew how many tens of thousands, or even hundreds of millions, of years had passed? Little remained of any of it, and what was left looked close to vanishing.
Despite finding plenty of evidence of a prehistoric civilization, he found nothing unusual.
Still, he did not give up. If it were that easy to find, the three Celestials would not have spent so long searching.
He studied his surroundings more closely, hoping to pick up a clue.
But he did not even know what the Celestials were looking for, so nothing stood out.
If it wasn't on the surface, could it be underground?
That seemed quite possible. If an intelligent civilization had realized its star was about to die, it would naturally have thought of using the planet's core energy to sustain itself.
At that thought, he looked up at the sky.
The star here shone so dimly that it looked drained of energy, struggling through its final moments.
The civilization that had once lived here must have felt desperate as its star's core ran out