Hail Hydra

The air still carried the faint, acrid smell of ionization from the Quantum Tunnel's collapse. Fine ripples of particles slowly faded around the four of them.

Tony Stark brushed a trace of dust from his armor. His eyes held the tension of a man who had barely survived, and though his voice was steady, he could not hide its gravity.

"The coordinates were definitely right."

He looked up at the churning rift above New York. A dense Chitauri Fleet waited beyond it, the menacing outlines of its warships blotting out part of the sky.

"According to the Timeline, the Battle of New York should have begun right now."

"The Battle of New York has begun, but it isn't the one we lived through. That proves we managed to stabilize the Quantum Tunnel and didn't fall completely into the Time Rift. But something has definitely changed."

Steve Rogers studied the data racing across the holographic display on his left arm, a shadow settling over his weathered features.

After countless battles, he knew better than anyone how terrifying the power of time was. It was a cosmic authority above the laws of physics. The slightest error could collapse and remake an entire Timeline.

Time was the most dangerous variable in the Multiverse.

Ordinary energy fluctuations and physical collisions caused only local effects.

But once a temporal ripple spread, it could shake the foundations of a Single Universe, rewriting history across the Multiverse and collapsing reality.

Only a true god of a Single Universe could barely control the flow of time within that universe.

Only a being of multiversal power could affect the workings of endless Timelines.

For mortals and ordinary Metahumans, touching time was no different from reaching barehanded into the heart of a star. It was madness, and it was deadly.