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After charging through the invisible portal, Tony found himself in a vast, pitch-black space. He checked the signal strength on his Mark armor and quickly realized that the moment he entered this place, the suit had completely lost contact with the outside world.
"JARVIS, can you hear me?"
Tony tried to contact JARVIS, but there was no response at all. Clearly, either this place was shielded from all signals—or he was no longer among the living.
With no way to reach JARVIS, Tony scanned his surroundings, paying special attention to the space behind him. After all, that was the direction he had come from, so if there was a portal, it should have been there.
But there was nothing. No space gate. The Mark 42's sensors detected no unusual spatial fluctuations behind him. Tony reached out toward the direction he had entered from, but his hand met nothing but empty air.
After failing to find an exit, Tony surveyed the unfamiliar space again. That was when he noticed Clark, who had entered before him, standing on the only platform in the entire area.
"Tony? How did you get here?" Clark asked, immediately noticing Tony's arrival. He had only just stepped onto the platform himself after passing through the invisible spatial passage.
"I followed you in," Tony replied, glancing around. "Do you know how to get out?"
Although the space was enormous by normal standards—over two hundred meters in diameter and more than five hundred meters high—it felt oppressively small once you realized it was completely sealed. Without an exit, even a space this large became a prison.
Tony began to worry about how they were going to escape. He knew Clark could open portals, but having worked with him to establish teleportation points around the world, Tony also understood the limitations of that ability.
First, Clark could only teleport to places he had already been. Second, distance mattered. While Clark could even jump straight to the Moon, Tony seriously doubted they were still within the solar system.
"If I remember correctly," Clark said, instead of answering Tony directly, "I think I know where we are."
He turned his gaze toward the center of the space.
"Is there something wrong with that platform?" Tony followed his line of sight, though the question was mostly rhetorical. Anyone with normal perception would find the platform strange.
At the center stood a massive stone pillar—about two meters in diameter and dozens of meters tall. That alone might not have been unusual, except for one detail: the pillar was floating in midair.
Beneath it was a faint red glow. Tony adjusted his helmet's optics, narrowing the focus, and finally saw the source—a tiny, liquid-like crystal emitting crimson light, pressed beneath the weight of the pillar.
"What is that?" Tony frowned. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't seem particularly impressive.
Clark answered calmly.
"That's the Aether."
"The Aether?" Tony repeated softly. The word sounded unfamiliar. "I don't think I've ever heard of it."
"It's an Asgardian legend," Clark explained. "Five thousand years ago, when the Nine Realms aligned, a race known as the Dark Elves planned to use a substance called the Aether to destroy the light and create eternal night. But before they could act, they were defeated by Thor and his grandfather, Bor. Afterward, Bor sealed the Aether away and entrusted it to someone I don't know—and can't find."
"Why didn't they just destroy it?" Tony asked immediately. If this thing could create eternal darkness, why not eliminate it entirely?
After all, even if it had been sealed somewhere 'no one could find,' here they were. Clearly, the hiding place wasn't foolproof.
"Probably because they couldn't," Clark said. "The origin of the Aether isn't simple."
Despite later Avengers films suggesting many things could destroy an Infinity Stone, in truth, only power equal to an Infinity Stone could truly do so. Wanda's case owed more to narrative convenience than logic. Otherwise, how could the Mind Stone grant abilities it itself did not possess?
So five thousand years ago, even if Bor had wanted to destroy the Aether, he likely lacked the means. Sealing it away in an unreachable place was the best option.
"And what exactly is its origin?" Tony asked.
"You've heard of the six Infinity Stones, right?" Clark replied.
"I have—and if I remember correctly, that story started with you," Tony said. After the Battle of New York and the appearance of the Tesseract, the concept had become much easier to accept.
"Right. The Aether in front of us is actually one of the six Infinity Stones—the Reality Stone. Legend says it can rewrite any aspect of reality according to the wielder's will."
That was how the Dark Elves had planned to use it. During the convergence of the Nine Realms, they could have linked all realms together and plunged the universe into eternal night. With the Aether in hand, such a feat would have been effortless.
"So… it's basically the Dragon Balls?" Tony said after a moment. He immediately thought of the wish-granting dragon from the anime. But judging by Clark's explanation, the Aether's power far surpassed even that.