The stars burned in silence endless, patient, and indifferent. Between them moved a single figure, cutting through the void like a shard of living light. No ship. No armor. Just will.
Ikaris.
His body glowed faintly against the darkness, cosmic energy flowing beneath his skin. To lesser beings, space was a frozen graveyard; to him, it was as natural as wind. He could feel the faint hum of starlight brushing past him, the radiation of dying suns whispering stories of time.
He had been flying for days or perhaps centuries. The Eternals no longer measured time as mortals did. Only the mission mattered, and the mission had led him here, following the faint tremor of an unfamiliar signal.
The readings were strange molecular frequencies bending in ways that should have been impossible for natural life. The source came from a small, blue world orbiting an ordinary star.
Earth.
He had seen it once, long ago a primitive planet, its creatures still learning to shape fire and fear. The Celestials had marked it as a developing world, unready for cosmic awareness. Yet the signal pulsed from it with precision and rhythm, like a heartbeat.
And it carried a resonance he recognized.
Sersi.
A name he hadn't spoken aloud in centuries. The Eternal who had loved too deeply, interfered too often, and vanished without a trace. She had believed in life — even fragile, flawed life. She had called it compassion. The others called it weakness.
Ikaris slowed as he approached the planet's edge, feeling its magnetic field brush against him like breath. The atmosphere shimmered below — layers of blue and white stretching across oceans and continents.
Then he felt it.Not just life but power.
Energy patterns are interwoven with biology, fluctuating through every living being. The signal wasn't a beacon. It was the planet itself — humming with molecular rearrangement, an inheritance written into human DNA.
Sersi's legacy.
He broke through the atmosphere in silence, descending like a meteor of gold and flame. The clouds parted around him, revealing a world ablaze with civilization. Cities sparkled across the surface, and in those lights he saw something that shouldn't exist people wielding forces beyond comprehension.
A child leaping effortlessly across rooftops, leaving trails of frost in her wake.A man bending steel beams with his bare hands.Flames, wind, light all shaped by will.
They called these gifts Quirks.He called them proof.
He landed upon a lonely ridge at twilight, the world stretching wide before him. The wind carried sounds of laughter, engines, and distant thunder all tangled into one vibrant pulse. He closed his eyes, letting the frequencies wash over him.
Sersi had not simply altered humanity. She had awakened it.
For a long while, Ikaris stood motionless, his golden eyes reflecting the horizon's glow. He could feel the weight of a thousand decisions pressing on him the old code of the Eternals, the silent expectations of his kin, the memory of her voice saying:
"Let them become what they are meant to be."
Now, they had.And the universe had sent him to decide what that meant.
The air trembled around him as he rose slowly into the dusk, suspended between two choices — judgment or understanding.
Below him, Earth glimmered a young world burning with borrowed light.Above him, the stars waited for his answer.
He whispered to no one,"Sersi… what have you done?"