The emergency landing of the Quinjet was barely noticed amidst the settling dust and residual magnetic chaos of the Parisian outskirts. As the rear ramp lowered, the three figures—two vibrant, one subdued—stepped onto the ground, the air still thick with the smell of scorched earth and spent energy.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I must remind you that the situation out there is not good," the ordinary-looking, sharp-eyed middle-aged man, Barton, addressed his charges with the dry pragmatism of a field veteran.
"Nick told you to be flexible, but it would be best if you held onto the edges of this city. Besides, the magnetic storms and lightning up there are too intense for conventional planes to fly over, and while this jet is shielded, I won't stick around long enough to find out how Magneto reacts to its presence. I'll be nearby to greet you on the extraction path."
"Don't worry, Barton," the silver-haired man, Pete, waved his hand with a characteristic flick of impatience. His hyperactive energy seemed to vibrate in the cool, ruined air. "We'll handle the minor issues—the one who can fly Mach 20 is already out of the equation. I wonder if I'm faster than a dead man's final trajectory?"
Before Barton could reply with a characteristic deadpan observation, a blur of silver-blue streaked across the ground. Pete was gone.
A second later, a bolt of residual lightning flashed on top of a distant, partially collapsed building—the electrical discharge tracking the energy trail of his impossible acceleration. With another nearly instantaneous flash, he vanished completely from their sight, heading straight toward the center of the conflict.
The woman, Wanda, shook her head, a faint red glow sparking at her fingertips in annoyance. "Do you think I should introduce Pete to a girl, Barton? He's still like a kid who hasn't grown up at all. His constant need to measure himself against impossible speed records drives me absolutely mad."
"Don't ask me such questions, Wanda. I don't want to become the target of an invisible man's prank," Barton replied, emphasizing his unwillingness to interfere in Maximoff sibling dynamics. He was an archer; he preferred targets he could see and calculations he could trust, unlike the raw forces of speed and probability manipulation currently setting off every warning light on his tactical display.
"Well, I'm not getting any emotional answers from you either," Wanda sighed, shrugging off the heavy reality of the task ahead. She closed her eyes, and a sudden cloud of crimson smoke—a visible manifestation of her burgeoning power—rose from the ground, quickly obscuring her silhouette. When the smoke cleared, she had vanished, not with a burst of speed like her brother, but with a silent, disconcerting ripple that indicated a calculated, psychic transit across the devastated landscape.
Barton watched the two prodigies disappear. After confirming the Quinjet was truly empty, he lifted the highly specialized fighter vertically, piloting it away from the lethal, metal-rich downtown sector. The central district, still radiating the chaotic energies of Magneto's presence, was a magnetized minefield. He had no intention of allowing the King of Metal to turn his aircraft into a toy.
Meanwhile, impossibly far above, Zhou Yi had already entered the vacuum of space, a place where his hyper-adapted body could survive, but where his already ruined armor offered little comfort. The nanometal was peeling away in sheets, oxidized and fatigued by the previous onslaught.
As he plunged upward, Medusa—now acting as his operational conscience—had successfully seized control of the necessary orbital satellites and localized his position relative to the magnetic tear.
"Sir, location confirmed. Coordinates for the fissure's nadir have been uploaded to your internal navigation. I must remind you that the ultra-high-speed particle interference near the magnetic rift is critical. Once you approach the event horizon of the solar wind, our communication will be severed, and I will be unable to provide you with any further assistance or telemetry feedback."
"Enough, Medusa," Zhou Yi grunted, his voice a strained whisper amplified by the broken helmet's comms. "Calculate the precise gravity range required to contain the plasma. I'll handle the rest myself. You've done your job perfectly."
"Affirmative, Sir. Analysis complete. According to satellite and energy signature tracking, you need to maintain a sustained gravitational field with a radius of 36 meters. This is the minimum necessary to prevent the concentrated solar wind from leaking at the edges while simultaneously forcing the severed magnetic field lines to reconnect. However, I must reiterate: the solar wind will converge toward the central force field under the influence of gravity. This is an exponential concentration of thermal energy. Even with your history of plasma contact, the unforeseen dangers remain catastrophic."
"That is acceptable. Your work is done, Medusa. All that remains is the execution, and then my safe return." The last phrase was spoken without conviction, a lie he offered the AI for the sake of functional finality.
"Very well, Sir. Good fortune." The AI fell silent, the calm cessation of assistance serving as the ultimate confirmation of his fatal trajectory.
Approximately sixty meters above his head, the raging solar hurricane swept through the magnetic gap, the final, tenuous atmospheric impurities—the last barrier—burning away in golden incandescence. The gap, an impossible window to deep space, was about to become the funnel of planetary destruction.
Zhou Yi's mission was to prevent the flow.
He extended his will, forcing a massive gravitational field into being. The field, requiring a radius of 36 meters, surpassed his previous operational record by over twelve meters, a feat of immense, body-breaking exertion. The gravity began to spread, reaching the 24-meter limit that was once his absolute maximum.
But it was nowhere near enough.
Zhou Yi gritted his teeth, the pain in his shattered left shoulder and the agony in his neck muscles screaming a warning of systemic failure. He began to expand the field further, his sheer will acting as the only governor preventing the collapse of his damaged internal systems.
With every increment of expansion, his burden grew heavier. He felt a profound weakness radiating through his limbs: muscle fatigue, the pain of ruptured internal organs, and a dizzying emptiness in his mind that threatened to steal his consciousness. It was a primal, suffocating revulsion to his own body's impending failure, yet he pushed through. This was the point of no return.
The gravity field crested thirty meters, still shy of the critical target. Zhou Yi exerted himself once more, feeling the absolute depletion of his reserves. He was not drawing on power; he was scraping the very silt at the bottom of the lake—the deepest, most inaccessible remnants of his bio-energy. He forced his eyes open, resisting the blissful lure of unconsciousness.
The gravitational field reached the required 36-meter radius. He had exhausted everything to achieve this distance. He felt as if the slightest mental lapse would cause him to fall back to Earth, a dead weight. Yet, his will remained dominant.
Dragging his body and the immense 36-meter gravitational field, Zhou Yi flew toward the marked magnetic fissure. As he approached, the massive gravity field began to interlock with the Earth's geomagnetic field, not in conflict, but in a horrific, synergistic embrace.
Magneto's focus on maintaining the magnetic fissure had left the massive, passive planetary field vulnerable. The colossal magnetic field accepted Zhou Yi's gravitational field without hindrance, allowing the Gravitational Focus Point to form seamlessly within the Earth's own protective shield.
The connection was established, and the true danger began.
A powerful gravitational sphere now hung at the edge of the magnetosphere, its immense pull instantly drawing all matter toward its center. The last atmospheric impurities—the only thing standing between Zhou Yi and the plasma—were rapidly absorbed into his field, flowing toward the central force point. Their hindering effect diminished to nothing. Zhou Yi had become the final, solitary barrier.
The accumulated power of his will finally burst through the physical limits, and the intensity of the gravity began to increase wildly. Magnetic flux began to deteriorate under the immense gravitational compression, and the repulsion rate of the atmospheric impurities accelerated to nothingness. The golden solar wind was upon him, a blinding, multi-million-degree river of plasma.
But the gravitational force was still insufficient to contain light particles. The solar wind was floating freely within the magnetic field, not being fully attracted by gravity. The force required to attract and neutralize light particles was immense, requiring the gravitational field to be strengthened even further—a fatal adjustment.
Zhou Yi did the only thing left: he penetrated his will deep into his own cellular structure, consciously beginning to consume his own life force as the final energy source. He was burning his own candle to fuel the anomaly. He had never fought a battle of such scope and self-annihilation. He had won the day for people he barely knew, for a future he might never see.
"Maybe if Tony knew this, he'd laugh at me for the rest of his life," he sneered to himself, the grim humor serving as his final anchor. With that last thought, he leaned against the absolute limits of gravity.
A vast void appeared at the center of the magnetic fissure—not a black hole, but a gravitational anomaly with the properties of a boundless, all-consuming chasm. It had no color, no mass, only purpose: to swallow everything. When gravity reached that ultimate, controlled limit, this temporary void was born from sheer, concentrated will.
The solar wind, still surging with limitless power, instantly began to converge. From the vantage point of Earth, observers saw an endless stream of pure gold light in space, rushing not toward the planet, but toward a single, invisible point, swirling like a colossal vortex in the ocean.
It was an entity invisible to the naked eye; all detection devices failed the moment they tried to penetrate it. It was a portal to an infinite void that could only be entered, never exited. The solar wind lingered above the atmosphere, contained, neutralized, and swallowed.
The people of Paris wept with joy, oblivious to the fact that their champion was now performing the physics of a non-singularity celestial body, powered only by his own dying biological spark.
The immense gravitational force was so powerful it was now absorbing and containing light—Zhou Yi had achieved the impossible. His protection from the solar wind came from the shield of atmospheric impurities he had absorbed, allowing him to barely maintain his force field.
But that shield was rapidly depleting, burning away in the face of the core temperature, which had reached millions of degrees Celsius.
He could no longer resist the heat. The last of the impurities evaporated.
The Dawn Armor vanished completely. The nanometal, a forged and useless entity, could not withstand a second of this heat; it instantly sublimated into nothingness.
Zhou Yi's naked body was exposed to the endless solar storm. Terrifying heat and light enveloped his being. He felt an emptying of all sensation, his consciousness becoming chaotic, then blank. Everything before his eyes went utterly black.
"Is this… the end of me? I am so reluctant…"
As his last thought faded, his gravitational field began to collapse. Like a supernova, the contained golden liquid of the solar wind gushed out into space, creating vast, dazzling patterns.
The intensity of the golden light was so immense it was clearly visible to half the Earth's population, a silent, beautiful, apocalyptic scene. And in this final, terrifying eruption of spent energy, the entire world was left silent, watching the death of a king.
The massive discharge of golden plasma high above Paris signaled two things: the world was safe, and the ultimate threat had been neutralized by the ultimate sacrifice.
Magneto, still dazed and spitting blood at the base of the shattered Eiffel Tower—a consequence of the geomagnetic feedback from Zhou Yi's final pulse—bowed his head and sighed.
He had already sensed the Knight of Dawn's biomagnetic signature fading entirely from his perception. The cessation of the gravitational field meant only one thing: complete victory in the ideological war. The hero had died.
But there was no pride in his victory. He felt hollow, drained, yet absolutely resolved. He had proved his point: the cost of saving humanity was the annihilation of the savior. He slowly, painfully, rose to his feet.
He began walking silently toward the center of the wreckage, intent on confirming the final, irreversible nature of his triumph, when the world around him shrieked.