Doom Supreme’s temporal energy flared as Strange Supreme arrived by his side, the two sorcerors prepared for battle. She came soon enough: the Scarlet Witch, the most dangerous being in the multiverse. And beside her…was Requiem!
They arrived without transition. No descent. No motion. No sense of crossing from one place to another. One moment, twelve figures stood as victors and survivors of their battles. The next, they were simply there. An endless desert stretched outward, but it was not the same as before. The ground was darker, heavier, like crushed obsidian mixed with ash. The sky above was fractured; cracked faintly with streaks of dim light, as though something beyond it was trying to break through.
There were statues. Not of god, nor titans…but of the fallen. Colossal, broken effigies of the numerous dead contestants scattered across the wasteland; faces carved in their likeness, bodies shattered, half-buried, as if this place already knew how it ended. For a moment, nothing moved. Then, the absence was felt.
Scarlet Witch stood still, her hands faintly trembling. No chaos magic bent around her. No reality warped at her will. Only silence answered her call. Nearby, Merged Sentry lifted his head slightly. The balance within him remained, but the overwhelming scale of it had been reduced. The Void did not spill outward, it waited.
God Emperor Doom stood unmoving, unwilling to boast despite his incredible victory. He could feel something familiar: a cosmic presence.Across the field, Doom Supreme felt the same presence. The Dark Dimension was gone. The external well of power he once manipulated had been cut cleanly. What remained was his mastery alone. And for him, that was enough.
In the darkness, twelve survivors stood, registering that they had yet to win the challenges ahead. Then the sky tore open, and an ultraviolet light split the fractured heavens, casting long shadows across the broken statues. Six streaks of energy followed, tearing downward across the wasteland before crashing into distant regions with catastrophic force. The ground trembled. The statues groaned.
And I spoke.
Six relics had been cast across this grave of futures. Six sources of power. Six paths forward. The Infinity Gauntlet, the Darkhold, the Cosmic Cube, the Ultimate Nullifier, the Casket of Ancient Winters, and a fragment of the Phoenix Force. Only those who claimed them would advance.
And with that…LET THE TRIAL BEGIN!
The desert erupted. No alliances formed. No hesitation lingered. Everyone moved at once, drawn toward the falling lights, toward power, toward survival.
A storm was the first to rise.
At the shattered remains of a statue bearing Maestro’s likeness, frost exploded outward, freezing ash into jagged ice. The Casket of Ancient Winters revealed itself within the ruin, ancient cold spilling into the desert. The World Breaker Hulk arrived, not as a ruler, nor as a force to be challenged. As inevitability. The frost surged toward him, and he grabbed it. He roared in victory, hunting for a toy to test this on.
Elsewhere, reality pulsed.
Above a broken colossus of Lilith, a perfect cube hovered, shifting through impossible geometries. The Cosmic Cube bent the space around it, distorting distance, gravity, direction. Wolverine reached it first, teleporting away and appearing behind Hunter. He drove a claw through the half-blood’s chest, ending his cursed life.
A flicker of red approached a statue of Kahhori. Scarlet Witch arrived seconds later, reaching out and chanting a strange scripture. The Darkhold revealed itself, floating to her side before she vanished. Forbidden knowledge coursed through her once again as she reappeared above a depowered Firehair, and snuffed her out.
Far from the others, a crater carved itself into existence, the ground erased rather than broken. At its center rested the Ultimate Nullifier, silent and absolute. God Emperor Doom approached without hesitation. Across from him, another presence arrived: Xu Wenwu. For a moment, neither moved.
Then both did.
The clash was instantaneous: power against power, precision against overwhelming force. The Nullifier sat between them, untouched, as the desert itself seemed to collapse under the weight of their exchange. Doom adapted first. Not overpowering, but outmaneuvering. He broke the rhythm and redirected the force, and in that single opening…he claimed it. Wenwu rushed forward, only for the God Emperor to erase his very existence.
Fire fell from the sky. Not light, not energy, but flame. The Phoenix fragment crashed into the desert like a dying star, igniting everything around it in violent, unstable bursts. The ground melted, reformed, then burned again as the power lashed out at anything that approached. Old Man Logan and the Goddess of Life were fighting when this happened, breaking away so they could claim a key to survival. Old Man Logan touched it first, the flaming bird coiling into his body.
The Old Man Phoenix…only for a moment, as Hela threw a blade into his heart. He struggled to recover as the Goddess claimed the Phoenix fragment. Then he arrived: Doom Supreme, empowered by time. He simply thought it, and the bird came to his side as if it had always been there. Old Man Logan cursed under his breath as they washed away in the face of Doom.
The Merged Sentry flew around, looking for the last key: the Infinity Gauntlet. He found it in the remains of the Cosmic Ghost Rider, brimming with all six Stones. The moment his hand closed around the Gauntlet, the desert seemed to dim, light and darkness folding inward as the artifact recognised something it had never held before. He let out a roar of victory, once which stirred me awake. There had been twelve. Now there were six.
Doom Supreme, carrying both time and order on his person. World Breaker Hulk, holding the Casket, unbroken, unbent. Scarlet Witch, reunited with the Darkhold. God Emperor Doom, the Nullifier resting in silent obedience. Iron God, the Cube stabilised within perfect calculation. And Merged Sentry, light and Void balanced, now holding infinity itself.
They looked to the sky…to me. With a single word, the relics vanished. The next second, they did. They were but six now.
The next challenge would cut them further.