Kang possessed the Time Stone. And while the emerald singularity was severely muffled inside the pocket dimension of the Soul Stone, restricting his ability to simply freeze his enemies in their tracks, Kang was nothing if not a brilliant tactician.
If he couldn't manipulate the present, he would simply borrow from the past.
Kang began fracturing his own timeline. He pulled countless versions of himself—time remnants—from split seconds in the past and future, dragging them all into the current localized space. It was a cowardly, grinding war of attrition. The heroes' stamina was finite. They had limited oxygen, limited muscle endurance, and limited patience. Kang, however, had an endless supply of himself.
As long as the "Prime" Kang holding the Time Stone remained alive, the purple-armored army would simply keep replenishing.
Inside the sprawling, pristine Kree space station of Mar-Vell's dream world, Peter and the combined team of heroes crept carefully down a glowing metallic corridor. According to Mar-Vell's earlier monitor scan, Kang was waiting in this exact sector.
They turned the corner. A single Kang stood at the end of the hall, aggressively tapping at a Kree holographic terminal, attempting to slice into the station's mainframe.
Reed Richards stepped forward, his expression stern and commanding. "Kang the Conqueror! Your plan has already been mathematically compromised! If you surrender now—"
KABOOM.
A blinding, deafening blast of blue plasma completely vaporized the console, the wall, and the Conqueror. A pair of smoking purple boots clattered to the floor.
Reed blinked, completely stunned.
Behind him, Rocket Raccoon lowered a heavy, smoking rocket launcher from his shoulder. He nonchalantly blew a wisp of smoke off the barrel. "What? Did you guys have more questions for him?"
"Actually, if you do have any questions, I am always available."
The cold, electronically modulated voice echoed from every single direction at once.
A heavy, synchronized marching sound vibrated through the metal floorboards. From the intersecting corridors, the catwalks above, and the shadows of the botanical bays, they emerged. Hundreds of Conqueror Kangs. An endless, purple-and-green phalanx of heavily armed time-travelers, all aiming their temporal blasters directly at the small group of heroes.
"Well, that's not good," Star-Lord muttered, drawing his quad-blasters.
"I've got this," Johnny Storm smirked.
The Human Torch stepped to the front of the group. "FLAME ON!"
Johnny didn't just ignite; he went completely supernova. A massive, roaring tidal wave of superheated, white-hot fire exploded outward, instantly engulfing the entire corridor. The sheer kinetic thermal force slammed into the Kang army. While the thirty-first-century armor was highly resistant to standard heat, Johnny was currently burning at the temperature of a localized sun.
Dozens of Kangs melted into slag instantly, their time remnants popping out of existence.
"See?!" Johnny yelled over the roaring flames, tossing a fiery thumbs-up to the group. "There is absolutely nothing that high temperatures can't solve! And if there is, it just means you aren't burning it hot enough!"
"JOHNNY!" Susan Storm screamed, throwing up a massive, blue invisible forcefield around the heroes. "You just melted a hole in the hull!"
Johnny looked down. The reinforced Kree floor paneling had completely liquefied under his boots.
With a deafening shriek of tearing metal, the exterior hull breached. The absolute vacuum of deep space instantly began violently sucking the oxygen, the flames, and the debris out of the station. Johnny yelped, his flames sputtering out as he was violently yanked toward the black void.
Adam Warlock's eyes glowed, preparing to forcibly teleport the entire team out of the collapsing illusion.
Suddenly, a blue streak shot past them.
Mar-Vell flew gracefully over the chaotic vortex. He raised his wrist, his Kree command bracelet flashing. A stream of hard-light, geometric energy sprayed over the massive breach, instantly sealing the hole and restoring the artificial gravity and oxygen flow.
Mar-Vell landed lightly on his feet. He looked at the chaos, looked at the remaining Kangs, and let out a tired sigh.
With a simple blink, Mar-Vell shattered his own illusion.
The entire Kree space station dissolved into golden dust. The group crashed unceremoniously back onto the golden, violet-dotted fields of the Soul Stone's central dimension.
Johnny groaned, picking himself up from the dirt. He pointed an accusing finger at the Kree operative. "Thanks for the save, buddy. But if you knew it was a dream, why didn't you just collapse the pocket universe to begin with?!"
Mar-Vell casually brushed some dirt off his green-and-white uniform. "Force of habit. I don't like leaving a messy workspace."
Peter shook his head, looking around the golden void. The space station was gone, but Kang's army was not. Hundreds of purple-armored warlords still surrounded them on the golden grass, their weapons raised.
"Alright, guys," Peter sighed, dropping into a combat crouch. "The good news is, only one of these guys actually has the Time Stone. The bad news is, there's about three hundred of him."
"And the worse news," Cindy Moon added, her eyes tracking the weapons, "is that every single one of them is holding a containment pistol calibrated specifically to execute Korvac."
Behind the heroes, Michael Korvac shivered. His fragmented mind couldn't process the overwhelming threat of an entire army. Panic seized him. His physical form flickered with blue light, and he instantly vanished from the battlefield, fleeing to the only hiding spot left.
Dozens of Kang containment beams fired, scorching the empty grass where Korvac had just been standing.
"Where did he go?!" Peter yelled, dodging a plasma bolt.
"Major Danvers' pocket universe!" Adam Warlock shouted over the laser fire, projecting a golden shield to block a barrage. "It is the only door left open!"
Peter fired two web-lines, ripping a Kang duplicate off his feet and slamming him into another. "So... there's nobody left out here but us and the Conquerors?"
Peter cracked his knuckles, a sharp, dangerous grin spreading beneath his mask. "Well then, everybody get ready for a workout. We break every single Kang we see!"
Michael Korvac materialized in the shadows of a quiet, moonlit suburban living room.
This was Major Carol Danvers' pocket universe. And it was, by far, the most unique dimension within the Soul Stone. Carol was a completely ordinary human. She had no alien DNA, no spider-bites, no cosmic radiation. Furthermore, because Venom had shielded Gwen Stacy from the initial blast, the Soul Stone hadn't absorbed Gwen's consciousness, meaning it had to artificially construct a fake Gwen to populate the background.
Korvac crouched in the dark, his glowing eyes scanning the room.
He was endlessly fascinated. What did an ordinary person truly desire? Korvac had peered into the minds of the others. Drax, Gamora, Star-Lord, Rocket, Mar-Vell, even the Thing—despite their immense power or tragic pasts, all of them secretly yearned for an ordinary, peaceful life where their strength wasn't required.
Korvac suppressed his cosmic energy signature, rendering himself entirely invisible. He silently floated up the carpeted stairs, drawn by the sound of hushed, happy voices.
He phased his head through the wall of a master bedroom.
Carol Danvers sat on the edge of a bed, wearing comfortable sweatpants and an oversized Air Force t-shirt. She looked exhausted, but incredibly happy. Her greatest wish in life was simply to be a pilot—specifically, one who broke the atmospheric barrier. In this perfect world, her husband, Michael Rossi, helped her achieve that dream by engineering next-generation hypersonic jets for the military.
"Shh, keep your voice down, she finally fell asleep," Carol whispered, leaning her head against her husband's shoulder.
They had a daughter. Korvac watched them.
He listened as the decorated Air Force pilot and the brilliant engineer quietly discussed the most remarkably mundane things. Which amusement park should they visit this weekend? Where should they make dinner reservations for their upcoming anniversary? Did her cousin finally get that promotion?
Korvac hovered in the drywall, perfectly still. He had witnessed the minds of gods, aliens, and superheroes. And looking at this ordinary woman in her ordinary home, he finally understood.
There is no difference.
"They are all exactly the same," Korvac muttered to himself, the fragmented pieces of his personality finally locking into a cohesive truth.
Heroes and ordinary people. Scientists and the ignorant. Mortals and gods. Their souls were neither inherently noble nor inherently base. They all experienced the exact same spectrum of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. Emotionally, fundamentally, every single living creature was equal.
But Kang did not believe that.
Kang believed he was a god. He considered himself superior to the very fabric of reality itself.
The realization acted like a key unlocking a vault of repressed trauma. Korvac's mind plunged backward, violently remembering his own past—which was actually the universe's future.
He remembered the thirty-first century.
He remembered Kang standing on the bridge of a temporal warship. He remembered Kang violently tearing open a natural, beautiful spatial rift in the cosmos. He remembered Kang forcefully chaining that rift, shoving it into a biological containment shell, and artificially forging a soul to suffer inside it.
He remembered Kang holding the newly birthed, agonizingly confused Cosmic Cube up to the stars, his voice echoing with absolute tyranny.
"The Kang Dynasty has arrived."
In the dark hallway of the suburban home, Korvac's eyes ignited with the heat of a dying sun.
The rage of a chained god could not be contained by a quiet dream. The sheer, apocalyptic fury of his traumatic awakening erupted.
Carol Danvers' perfect world didn't just fade. It was violently, instantly vaporized by a tidal wave of blinding, annihilating cosmic energy.