An utterly terrifying thought even crossed his mind. After inheriting the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme, he had received the Book of the Vishanti, the forbidden Darkhold, and countless other magical treasures.
Could the Time Variance Authority have piles of them too, cheap junk left lying around everywhere?
Everyone was still reeling from the TVA's earth-shattering secret, their heads buzzing.
The Infinity Stones? The universe's greatest treasures? The ultimate power to bend the laws of a Single Universe?
To a multiversal power, they were just junk gathering dust in drawers, used to prop up table legs and weigh down papers.
Doctor Strange's chest heaved. His composure had shattered once already, and though he forced himself to regain it, he could not mend the crack in his understanding of the world.
Captain Marvel stared down at the faint glow of the Space Stone around her palm, disbelief written across her face.
The power she had relied on for half her life, the power that let her roam the stars, was cheap clutter in someone else's eyes.
Tony's silence was even more frightening.
The final battle replayed through his mind again and again: everyone fighting to the death for the Stones, Natasha falling from the cliff, Thanos spending his life slaughtering planets in his obsession with gathering the Six Stones.
How laughable it all seemed now. How absurd.
As everyone's understanding of reality crumbled and their minds reeled, Russell finally moved.
He did not fly into a rage or make some grand speech. He simply raised a hand.
Hum!!
A faint spatial tremor, almost too soft to hear, burst across the sky.
Behind Russell, several enormous, colorless, transparent cultivation chambers appeared out of thin air.
They were filled with clear, warm Synthetic Primordial Nutrient Fluid, impossibly pristine. Yet the fluid was empty, without