There was no light in death.
Only silence.
It was not the silence of peace, nor the clarity of absolution. It was a void—endless, weightless, and cold.
He had felt his body fail. The pain. The breathless ache in his lungs as his son… his son… looked at him with eyes untainted by fear. He had known that it was the end. He had accepted it.
But death did not take him.
It rejected him.
There was a tearing—soul from stars, spirit from legacy. The galaxy let go. And something else took hold.
Then—
—impact.
Metal screamed beneath him. Shattered pavement scattered like shrapnel from his arrival crater, steam rising from the fissures. The air was thick with smoke and radiation, but beneath it all… something pulsed. An energy that vibrated through his armor. Unfamiliar.
Not the Force.
But something close.
Something raw.
He rose slowly, steam hissing from the vents in his armor. His cape swept across broken stone, the red glow of fires reflecting off his mask. He looked down at his hands—no pain, no deformity, no machine-bound joints. Flesh. Whole.
The Force—or dimensional energy, as it vibrated here—was everywhere.
Alive.
Wild.
And it responded to him like an old beast recognizing its master.
Overhead, an alien transport screamed into view, flanked by flying creatures that hissed through the air like winged serpents. Chitauri soldiers—grotesque and insectile—poured into the street.
They turned their weapons toward him.
He did not flinch.
The first blast stopped midair—hovering, trembling—and then returned to its source, ripping through the firing soldier's chest.
That was the first death.
Then the massacre began.
The Storm Unleashed
Vader ignited his saber with a snap-hiss. Crimson light bathed the block.
He moved like a blade of vengeance—unstoppable, merciless. Every step he took left behind ruin.
He carved through Chitauri ranks like a tidal wave of destruction. Blasters bent. Armor crumpled under the weight of his grip. Bodies were flung through the air like debris caught in a cyclone.
But it wasn't just raw combat.
The Force boiled around him. When he lashed out with his mind, entire groups of enemies were slammed into walls or ceilings. Vehicles were torn from the sky and crushed midair, spiraling into wreckage.
With every passing moment, the energy of the battlefield shifted.
He was the center now.
And the invaders—perhaps sensing the power he radiated—were drawn to him.
More and more Chitauri began redirecting, pulled from other sectors, closing in on the dark anomaly that stalked the streets.
Elsewhere – The Avengers' Fight
On the other side of the city, the Avengers were locked in brutal combat.
Steve raised his shield to deflect another blast, his arm trembling from the force. Hulk roared as he tore through a building to stop a leviathan. Tony zipped overhead, firing repulsors, already exhausted.
"There's no end to them!" Clint shouted as he reloaded on a rooftop. "We're getting pinned!"
Natasha ducked under cover near Steve. "Something's wrong. Their pattern's changed."
Steve paused. "What do you mean?"
"They're pulling away. Chitauri are rerouting—eastward."
Thor slammed his hammer down, sending a blast of lightning into a nearby cluster. "They flee the battle?"
"No," Steve muttered, staring at a nearby screen mounted on a burning police car. "They're not retreating. They're… reorganizing. Concentrating somewhere."
The Ground Quakes
As the battle raged, a tremor rippled through the asphalt. Not seismic—but… energetic.
It made Tony's HUD glitch. Made Bruce pause mid-swing. Even Thor, god of thunder, felt a static pressure behind his eyes.
A strange, heavy presence pressed on them—an oppressive weight in the air that hadn't been there before.
Then they saw it.
Through smoke and flame, emerging from the eastern streets, strode a black silhouette. Towering. Cloaked. The blade in his hand glowing with unnatural light. A trail of fire and broken bodies in his wake.
He didn't march like a soldier. He advanced like a force of nature.
Calm. Precise. Unstoppable.
The Chitauri charged at him.
And were destroyed.
One was crushed midair by invisible hands.
Another fired a cannon—only for the blast to ricochet off a wave of energy and explode in its own face.
A skimmer swept low, trying to strafe his path—Vader lifted his hand and ripped it from the sky, slamming it into a crumbling wall.
Tony landed hard beside Steve, stunned. "Uh… anyone want to tell me who our new Sith overlord is?"
Steve's eyes narrowed. "I don't know what he is."
"But he's fighting the Chitauri."
"Or just anything that moves," Natasha said warily.
Thor stepped forward slowly, Mjolnir buzzing in his palm. "There is… power in him. Not magic. Not science. Something older. Ancient."
They watched as the Chitauri—dozens at once—swarmed the figure.
And were erased.
Loki – Stark Tower
Loki turned from the window as another shudder rumbled through the building.
He clutched the scepter tightly, his gaze drawn eastward.
He could feel it—not through the Allfather's teachings, nor his own illusions—but in the fabric of the world. The threads of energy around him were bending, twisting.
Something had arrived. Not a god. Not a mortal.
Something wrong.
He stared, teeth gritted. "What have you brought through the portal?" he whispered to no one. "What are you?"
SHIELD Helicarrier – Command Bridge
"We've got anomalies in quadrant sixteen," an agent reported. "Energy spikes off the charts."
Fury looked over the satellite footage. He saw it now—street after street being cleared not by Avengers, but by something else. Something dark.
Then came the call from the World Security Council.
"The nuclear strike is authorized."
Fury turned sharply. "I don't think you understand what's down there."
"We don't care. End the invasion."
The missile launched.
Iron Man – Upper Atmosphere
Tony soared, engines howling in protest. The missile was ahead—fast, direct, locked onto Manhattan's heart.
Jarvis pinged a warning.
"Sir, we won't make it in time."
"I know."
He pushed harder, the arc reactor flaring.
But then… the sky shook.
His HUD blinked erratically. "What the hell—?"
Tony's view was yanked downward.
Back to the city.
Lower Manhattan – Street Level
Vader stood amidst ruin. Smoke coiled around him. Fires danced in the distance.
And then, he felt it.
The missile.
Its speed. Its death.
A sun born in steel and spite.
He raised both arms.
The Force—this wild, untamed dimensional energy—howled in response.
The very air around him collapsed inward. Concrete cracked. Glass exploded outward from every window for a block.
Lightning arced between buildings without clouds. Metal rippled. The sky screamed.
And the missile stopped.
In midair.
Mid-flight.
Thousands of feet above.
Frozen by a force that bent not just gravity—but will.
Then slowly, steadily, Vader turned his hands, guiding the bomb as if sculpting fate itself.
It spun.
Its path reversed.
Not just redirected—but pulled downward and sideways, toward the still-open portal hovering above Stark Tower.
With a final push, Vader cast it upward like a spear.
It vanished into the blue rift above.
A breath later—
BOOM.
The portal flared white.
The missile detonated in another realm, tearing through alien sky.
Stark Tower – Loki
Loki screamed.
Not in pain.
But in overload.
The energies he had been attuned to—manipulating, shaping through the Tesseract—snapped like brittle cords. The strain of Vader's power sent a backlash through the arcane web he had tethered to the portal.
He fell to his knees, the scepter sparking in his grip, eyes wide in disbelief.
"What are you…" he whispered, throat raw.
The City Below
Vader lowered his hands slowly.
The buildings were still shaking.
Sirens wailed. Fires burned.
But the missile was gone.
And the city… was still standing.
He turned away, his lightsaber igniting again with a slow, deliberate hum.
The battle wasn't over.
But for the first time since it began…
The tide had turned.