The meeting room of Stark Tower was sealed shut. Every member of the current Avengers sat around the long glass table—Captain America, Black Widow, Doctor Strange, Thor, Bruce Banner, and Tony Stark himself. Vanessa sat near Juggernaut at the end of the table, glancing between the silent adults, her unease growing by the second.
The air was thick, heavy with unspoken questions. Silvanna sat opposite Tony, her crimson eyes distant, as though she were staring through the walls and into the past.
Black Widow broke the silence first. "Silvanna," she said carefully, arms crossed, "we've scanned every global record, every system we can access—even off-world archives—and there's nothing about you or your sister. No birth certificates, no school files, no digital footprint, no trace. It's like neither of you ever existed."
The faint hum of machinery filled the pause that followed.
Silvanna didn't answer. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
"Why?" Natasha pressed. "Why is there nothing?"
For a moment, Silvanna didn't move. Her expression didn't change, but her silence carried weight—like something long buried clawing its way back up.
Then she spoke softly, her voice low but steady.
"…Why do you want to know, Natasha?"
The question stopped the room cold.
Tony glanced between them, his tone half-diplomatic. "We're not interrogating you, Silvanna. But after what you told me about Rebecca—and now about these names—if there's something we need to understand, we have to know what we're dealing with."
Silvanna leaned back in her chair, her eyes flicking toward Vanessa for a moment, then down at her hands.
She exhaled slowly. "…There's a reason there are no records. A reason I never told anyone the truth."
Vanessa's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
Silvanna hesitated. For a heartbeat, she looked ready to leave the room entirely. Then her composure cracked—just slightly—and she turned to face the Avengers directly.
"Rebecca and I," she said quietly, "were not born."
The words struck like a shockwave.
Even Thor, who had seen gods rise and fall, sat forward. Captain America's expression hardened into focus. Natasha's eyes narrowed.
But Vanessa froze. Her voice wavered when she spoke. "What… what do you mean you weren't born? You told me—you said you and Mom were born in the human world."
Silvanna's gaze softened, regret glimmering beneath the surface. "I did," she admitted. "Because it was easier to believe that. Easier for you to believe that. I didn't want to remember what my sister and I really are."
Tony's holographic interface flickered beside him, picking up faint readings of Silvanna's biometrics. There was no recordable baseline—no DNA match to any human, mutant, or alien classification.
Vanessa stood. "Then tell me everything," she demanded, voice trembling between anger and fear. "If I'm part of this family—if I'm part of her—then I deserve to know."
Silvanna looked at her niece for a long moment. Then she nodded slowly, her expression softening into something almost maternal.
"Someone created us," she said. "Long ago. Before the world you know had its first heroes. Before mutants, before meta-humans, before anything wore the name 'super.' We were made, not born."
Captain America leaned forward, calm but intense. "Who created you?"
Silvanna shook her head. "I don't know. I've never met them. Rebecca might know more… but I've only seen fragments. Memories that don't belong to me. A light. A voice. Then silence."
The room stayed quiet. Even the hum of the tower's core seemed to fade into the distance.
"Rebecca and I weren't the first," Silvanna continued. "Before us, there were others. Three, to be exact."
"Three?" Natasha asked.
Silvanna's tone darkened. "Their names were Ruka, Hikaru Hikari, and Doran."
Tony looked up from his screen. "Wait—three? But you just said four names."
Silvanna's eyes met his, their crimson glow deepening. "Hikaru Hikari were one being—two bodies sharing one soul. Twins who could never exist apart. What one felt, the other knew. When one died, the other vanished with them."
Doctor Strange's expression shifted—fascination mingling with unease. "Two bodies, one soul," he murmured. "That's… not creation. That's design."
Silvanna nodded. "Exactly. We were all designed. And if you want to understand power…" She glanced toward Thor and then to Banner. "Rebecca was the strongest among us after them. But even she would bow beneath Ruka, Hikaru Hikari, and Doran. Their strength wasn't measured in muscles or energy—it was existence itself. They could unmake stars just by willing it."
The room went still.
Thor leaned forward, his voice low. "You mean to tell us there are beings greater than gods?"
Silvanna's lips curved faintly—not in mockery, but in sorrow. "Gods are bound by worship, by realms, by mortality in one form or another. These beings… had none of that. They didn't live. They didn't die. They simply were."
Bruce rubbed his temples. "You said they're stronger than Rebecca?"
"Thousands of times stronger," Silvanna replied. "Ruka could bend matter as if it were air. Hikaru Hikari could rewrite the concept of time—split moments apart and trap people within seconds. And Doran…" She hesitated, almost reluctant to say it. "Doran could erase souls. Not kill—erase. As though they never existed in the first place."
Even for the Avengers, veterans of cosmic war, that notion struck a primal chord of dread.
Tony broke the silence with a wry attempt at composure. "Okay, that's… a lot to process. You're telling us that three—well, four—super-beings existed before humanity, before mutants, before gods, and somehow, you and Rebecca came after them."
"Yes," Silvanna said simply.
"Then what happened to them?" Natasha asked. "Ruka. Hikaru Hikari. Doran. If they're that powerful, where are they now?"
Silvanna's gaze turned distant again, as if she were looking at something far beyond the walls of the tower. "Gone," she whispered. "Or asleep. Maybe sealed away. Maybe destroyed. Rebecca and I never knew for sure. But their power… never faded. Sometimes, I still feel it—like echoes, far away. Watching."
Her voice grew quieter. "That's why I didn't want to tell you. Why I didn't want to tell anyone. Because if the wrong person starts searching for them—if whoever created us learns we're still alive—they might awaken what came before us."
The silence that followed was complete.
Captain America finally stood, his voice steady but thoughtful. "Then we prepare. If they're real—if they're out there—we'll deal with them. The same way we've faced everything else."
Silvanna looked up at him, a faint, weary smile ghosting across her lips. "You still believe everything can be fought."
"Belief's all we've got," he said simply.
Tony leaned back, folding his arms. "Then we find Rebecca before anyone else does. If she's been dealing with things like that in other realms, she might already be closer to these beings than we are."
Juggernaut rumbled quietly, his voice breaking through the tension. "And if she's not the same when we find her?"
Silvanna looked toward him, her expression unreadable. "…Then we remind her who she is."
Vanessa watched them all, her heart racing. She didn't fully understand the scale of what her aunt had just revealed—how old, how deep, how terrifying it was—but one thing burned clearly in her chest: her family wasn't normal. Her mother wasn't human. And neither was she.
She looked at Silvanna, her voice soft but sure. "Then we find her. No matter what she's become. Because she's still my mother."
Silvanna's gaze met hers, and for the first time since the meeting began, her composure broke into something almost human—grief, pride, and love all tangled together.
"…Then that's what we'll do," she said quietly. "Together."