The moment Russell finished speaking, it was as if an invisible hand pressed down on the spacetime of the entire Nine Realms. Every current, every pulse, every quantum fluctuation froze into a single, eternal frame.
It was no crude pause or freeze. This was control at a deeper, more fundamental level.
Russell leaned slightly forward on a branch of the World Tree and slowly raised his right hand. A radiance no known means of observation in the universe could detect flowed between his fingers.
It looked like light, yet it was not light. The quantum states themselves were responding to him.
At the touch of his consciousness, the wave function of every Subatomic particle grew docile, like a pet being stroked by its master, and laid all its possibilities before him.
From the vast scale of galaxies to the infinitesimal Planck scale, the physical reality of the entire Nine Realms was reordered in that instant.
The chains of causality came undone. The arrow of time was set aside. The topology of space was rewoven.
And Russell did it all as casually as someone turning a page in a book.
Mephisto stood within the Magic Array in the Ancient One's Sanctum. His eyes, burning with sulfurous flame, went still.
He had witnessed countless universes perish and countless Celestials fall, but never had he seen anyone interfere so completely with the foundations of reality, so effortlessly it seemed as natural as breathing.
"This guy..." The Lord of Hell's voice rasped from deep in his throat.
"He's no ordinary Cosmic God. Cosmic Gods merely enforce the rules. What he just did makes him look more like the rules'... master."
Dormammu's enormous head, formed of dark matter, slowly turned within the Dark Dimension.
His gaze pierced layer upon layer of Dimensional Barriers and settled