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Beneath a sky that looked as if it were painted with perpetual auroras.
Gamora, having stormed out of the palace after a bitter argument with Star-Lord, found herself wandering the alien landscape. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted two dandelion-like plants intertwined, almost seeming to exude the nauseatingly sweet scent of young love. Unable to contain her frustration, she drew her sword and lashed out.
SNICK!
The two affectionate, dandelion-esque plants were instantly cleaved in half.
If they could talk, they probably would have screamed at her in righteous indignation:
'You had a fight with your boyfriend! What did we ever do to you?'
Unfortunately for them...
They couldn't talk.
But the sky could.
Gamora felt a sudden, vibrating hum descending from above. She quickly scrambled up from the ground and looked toward the source of the sound.
A sleek combat fighter was tearing through the atmosphere, bearing down on her like a shooting star.
Inside the cockpit, Nebula, gripping the controls with white-knuckled intensity, spotted Gamora on the ground below. With a furious scream, she slammed her thumb on the firing triggers.
In an instant.
A dense, unrelenting hail of laser fire blanketed the area where Gamora stood.
Gamora's face fell. She turned and sprinted toward the horizon, diving for cover.
She ran.
Nebula pursued.
And hidden in the shadows, Hawk watched the show.
He watched with a sense of mild curiosity. He had clearly altered the timeline by bringing the Guardians here on the Enterprise, yet here was Nebula, having flown a stolen fighter all the way to Ego's planet, determined to kill her sister exactly as she had in the original plot.
As every Marvel fan knows:
In the original timeline, Star-Lord and the others had crash-landed on an alien world after a disastrous jump through a quantum asteroid field. It was there that Ego had found them, and after Peter, Gamora, and Drax left with Ego, Yondu had tracked down the remains of the Milano.
But here.
Star-Lord's Milano had lost its main drive, yes, but it had already been fully repaired aboard the Enterprise.
Logically, even though Rocket and Groot had left the Enterprise the night before, there was no reason for the plot to reset so perfectly.
Unless…
Yondu and his Ravagers had been tracking Star-Lord this entire time?
Hawk raised an eyebrow at the thought. He listened to the distant, chaotic sounds of the two sisters fighting—their brawl so intense it had literally driven Nebula's ship underground like a massive drill—and shrugged it off.
Whatever.
He had more important things to do.
Hawk shook his head, abandoning his attempt to untangle the self-correcting nature of the timeline. He took a step forward, following the path of the brawling sisters, and materialized deep within a subterranean cavern.
The next second, he found himself standing before a towering, macabre mountain made entirely of bone.
As far as the eye could see.
Countless skeletal remains.
Innumerable.
But judging by the sheer volume, there had to be millions of skulls in that pile alone.
And every single one of those skulls belonged to one of Ego's children. Children who had failed to inherit his Celestial light, who had been ruthlessly murdered and unceremoniously dumped here to rot.
Yondu had taken a contract from Ego to travel the galaxy and collect the offspring Ego had seeded on countless worlds.
But Ego hadn't just hired Yondu.
The universe is vast. It might be lacking in many things, but ruthless mercenaries willing to do anything for a paycheck are not one of them.
And Celestials? They are the absolute last beings in the universe who need to worry about money.
On the black market in Xandar, a single vial of Celestial blood was worth enough credits to buy a state-of-the-art starcruiser.
If Hawk didn't possess the Reality Stone, which allowed him to manifest literally any currency he needed...
Honestly.
Even he might have been tempted to harvest a little blood.
In short—
Ego was a monster.
The sheer scale of the atrocity before him sent a ripple of genuine shock through Hawk.
Hawk usually preferred to reduce his enemies to ash, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind. While devastating, it lacked the visceral, grotesque horror of a mountain of rotting bones.
He took a few moments to survey the cavern, then pulled his gaze away.
The next moment, he vanished again.
When Hawk reappeared, he had penetrated the very core of Ego's planet. He was standing directly in front of Ego's true form.
From the outside, it looked like a massive, rusted iron sphere suspended in a chaotic web of energy tendrils.
But looking at it from a biological perspective, Ego's core looked exactly like a colossal, malignant cancer cell.
At that moment, Ego was busy giving Star-Lord the grand tour, painting a glorious, psychotic picture of father and son uniting to assimilate the entire universe. He was completely oblivious to the intruder standing before his true self.
Or perhaps, Ego had simply been a god for too long. So long that he believed himself invincible. So long that he had entirely lost the edge, the necessary paranoia, of a true warrior.
No, wait.
Ego wasn't a warrior. He had never been one.
It didn't matter.
Hovering in the void before the massive core, Hawk unfurled his Seventh Sense. He slowly closed his eyes, attempting to pierce the veil of Ego's existence and grasp the elusive spark of his own Eighth Sense!
The essence of the Eighth Sense is Life.
A Saint who comprehends the Eighth Sense, who truly masters their own existence, no longer belongs to any external domain. Their life belongs solely to them.
They step outside the Three Realms, no longer bound by the Five Elements.
Granted, even if Hawk died right now, his soul would belong to his own Underworld.
But that was because he had cheated.
Other Gold Saints, even those who had awakened the Seventh Sense, didn't have their own personal Underworlds. When they died, their souls were still subject to the rules of the gods of death.
So…
The true nature of the Eighth Sense is an ultimate state of being, where the soul asserts absolute sovereignty over its own existence, transcending the laws of life and death established by the divine.
And how does one transcend the rules made by the gods?
Simple.
You become a God yourself.
The Seventh Sense had allowed Hawk to take the first step toward divinity. But only by awakening the Eighth Sense could he truly, completely become a God.
Therefore—
By observing the flaws in others, one may perfect their own craft!
Hawk's Seventh Sense completely enveloped Ego's core. Hovering cross-legged in the empty space, eyes closed, he sought to tap into that indescribable, instinctual rhythm of life radiating from the Celestial, using it as a catalyst to unlock his own Eighth Sense.
Time ticked by.
While Hawk meditated before Ego's core, the two sisters, Gamora and Nebula—having finished their brutal brawl and reached a tentative, exhausted truce—stumbled into the cavern and found themselves standing before the mountain of bone.
Gamora stared at the skulls, her expression freezing in absolute horror.
Nebula, whose body was more cold, blue machinery than flesh, stared at the macabre monument with dead, hollow eyes. It was as if she were talking to Gamora, but also muttering to herself.
"We need to get off this godforsaken planet right now."
"Peter!"
Gamora snapped out of her shock. She spun around and sprinted toward the tunnel exit.
Soon—
After finding Mantis and violently demanding the truth, Gamora's worst fears were confirmed.
The bones belonged to Ego's children.
Children who hadn't inherited his power, who had been slaughtered and discarded like trash.
Hearing the truth, Gamora had only one thought.
"We have to find Peter, and we have to get off this rock immediately!"
"Ego has probably already brainwashed him."
"We should just leave."
Nebula stood nearby, her expression flat and unreadable.
Gamora immediately rejected the idea. "Peter is our friend."
Nebula's face twisted in disgust.
"You people do nothing but scream and yell at each other all day. You're not friends."
"You're right."
Drax the Destroyer, who had just caught up to them, chimed in. "We are not friends. We are family. And we do not leave family behind."
Nebula's mechanical eye rolled so hard it almost short-circuited.
But she didn't get a vote.
So…
Gamora, Drax, and Mantis quickly agreed: find Peter. If he didn't want to leave with them, they would drag him onto the ship kicking and screaming.
However!
Just as they were about to head out to search for Star-Lord, Gamora hesitated. She told the others to go on ahead. She turned and sprinted toward the guest wing on the far left side of the palace, pounding frantically on the door to Hawk and Gwen's suite.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"...Gamora?"
Gwen opened the door, looking surprised to see the green-skinned assassin standing there.
Gamora's face was tight with urgency. "Mrs. Phoenix, this planet is a death trap. We need to leave. Now."
Gwen blinked, then a soft smile touched her lips. "So, you finally figured it out?"
Now it was Gamora's turn to be stunned.
Gwen chuckled. "I was starting to wonder how long it would take you guys to realize the truth."
Gamora's mind reeled as she processed Gwen's words.
"Wait... you already knew?"
"Yep." Gwen nodded. "Ego only brought Peter here to use him as a battery. He has thousands of other children, but Peter is the only one who inherited his Celestial light."
Gamora's jaw dropped.
"You knew it was a trap, and you still came?"
"My husband said Ego's core might be useful to his training. So, we came. Besides, who said I'm still there?"
Gwen said with a playful smile.
And then...
Before Gamora's disbelieving eyes, the Gwen standing in the doorway began to shimmer and fade. The image shifted, and Gamora suddenly found herself looking at a holographic projection of Gwen, sitting comfortably in the Captain's chair on the bridge of the Enterprise.
But Gamora didn't just see Gwen.
She saw...
"Rocket?"
"Hey. I told you that Ego guy looked like a creep."
"I am Groot!"
Appearing in the projection alongside Gwen were Rocket Raccoon, Baby Groot, Yondu, and Kraglin, his only surviving loyal Ravager.
The moment Hawk had left to find Ego's core, he had teleported Gwen back to the safety of the Enterprise.
Once again...
Ego might be a Celestial, but he was a Celestial who lived under a rock.
Just a few minutes ago, Gwen had watched Yondu's ship drop out of the quantum jump network. Worried they might interfere with Hawk's meditation, she had ordered the Enterprise to intercept and tractor them in.
Rocket and Groot, having reunited with Yondu, had already learned the horrifying truth about Ego.
"Where's Peter?"
"We don't know. We were just about to go looking for him."
"Don't bother. I've already locked onto your life signs."
Gwen interrupted, then called out to the ship's AI.
"Enterprise."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do you have a lock on all of them?"
"Coordinates confirmed. Ready to energize."
"Beam them up."
"Aye, ma'am!"
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