Marvel: The Awakened One

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”Something’s happening in Hong Kong.”

”What?”

”Reports are coming in. Some kind of unknown darkness is enveloping the entire city.”

Sharon hung up her phone and looked at Hawk and Gwen, a deeply apologetic expression on her face. ”I’m so sorry, guys. I have to go back.”

As everyone knows:

When it’s 1:00 PM in the Western Hemisphere, it’s 1:00 AM in the East.

So…

Hawk’s eyes flared with a brilliant golden light as his gaze pierced the distance, locking onto the coordinates of Hong Kong.

In an instant.

A torrent of images flashed across his golden pupils.

Until—

He saw it. The sky above a burning Hong Kong was consumed by an unnatural, roiling blackness, accompanied by violent flashes of demonic lightning. The darkness was descending.

The Dark Dimension!

Dormammu.

However…

Hawk pulled his gaze back and looked at Sharon. ”It’s nothing you can’t handle. But if you’re worried, you should head back and check it out.”

Sharon managed a tight smile. ”The brass is calling. It’s not exactly optional. But again, congratulations to both of you. I really am sorry to run out like this.”

”Thank you, Sharon,” Hawk said.

Gwen pulled her into a warm hug. ”Be safe. I’ll bring you a souvenir from the honeymoon.”

”I’ll hold you to that.” Sharon squeezed her back, then turned and hurried toward the street where her transport was waiting.

Gwen watched her go, then looked at Hawk with a curious tilt of her head.

”You’re not going to go see the Sorcerer Supreme off?”

”The Ancient One is already retired.”

”And…?”

”And I’m not going.”

Hawk shrugged nonchalantly.

He was friends with the Sorcerer Supreme. He was not friends with the newly minted Doctor Strange.

The reason was simple.

When Gwen playfully corrected him to call her Dr. Phoenix, it was cute, and he loved it.

When Stephen Strange obnoxiously corrected people to call him Doctor Strange, it just made Hawk want to punch him in the face.

So…

He wasn’t going.

Just then.

CRACK!

A deafening clap of thunder split the clear blue sky. Thor, the God of Thunder, made a spectacular, if abrupt, exit. To the collective shock and awe of the remaining guests, Thor raised Mjolnir high. A blinding pillar of iridescent light—the Bifrost—slammed down from the heavens, engulfing him and instantly tearing him away from Earth.

Hawk and Gwen exchanged a look, then walked over to where he had been standing.

Gwen spoke first.

”Jane, did Thor just…”

”Heimdall saw a darkness approaching Asgard,” Jane explained, her expression a mix of worry and understanding as she watched them approach. ”He had to go back immediately.”

Hawk nodded slowly.

It made sense.

Simply put: Even though Earth had technically fallen off the World Tree, the metaphysical ties connecting it to the larger Yggdrasil cosmos were still intact. The bones were broken, but the sinews remained.

Now that Dormammu was manifesting in the Eastern Hemisphere, the dark, corrosive energy bleeding through from the Dark Dimension was naturally going to spill over and threaten Asgard as well.

But—

Fortunately, Dormammu had the good sense not to crash Hawk’s actual wedding ceremony. He had waited until the vows were spoken and the reception was winding down before making his grand entrance.

They were already in the ’seeing the guests off’ phase.

Gwen had even changed out of her wedding dress.

If Dormammu had shown up even an hour earlier, Hawk would have absolutely lost his mind. He would have flown to Hong Kong and beaten the cosmic entity’s brains out just on principle.

Once again, Gwen cared deeply about this wedding. And Hawk had wanted to give her a perfect, flawless day, one she could look back on with nothing but happiness and smiles. Any interruption would have sent Gwen into a tailspin, which would have instantly ignited Hawk’s fury.

But now?

It was fine.

The wedding was technically over, and the crisis was happening on the exact opposite side of the planet. It wouldn’t affect New York in the slightest.

The sudden departures of Sharon and Thor were just minor hiccups. With the help of the Chloes and the Stacys, Hawk and Gwen stuck to the schedule Gwen had meticulously outlined in her binder, graciously seeing off the last of their guests.

However, Peter, Hawk’s best friend, hadn’t left yet.

Felicia had taken little Ben Hawk Parker inside to help Gwen pack up her bridal suite.

Hawk and Peter were standing on the lawn, chatting as the catering crew began breaking down the tables and chairs around them.

”Did Mary Jane try to talk to you?”

”No.”

Peter shook his head. ”MJ and I are done. That ship sailed a long time ago.”

Hawk smiled. ”I know. I’m just making sure you know. You and Felicia have a good thing going.”

It’s a well-known fact.

No matter which universe, which timeline, or which version you’re looking at, Spider-Man’s heart almost always overrides his head.

Hawk had watched Peter build this happy life. And as his friend, he wasn’t about to let Peter self-sabotage and tear it all down.

And at a wedding, when old flames unexpectedly cross paths... it only takes one spark to start a forest fire.

So!

Hawk felt it was his duty as a friend to give Peter a gentle reminder.

Peter, of course, understood exactly what Hawk was getting at. He met his friend’s gaze steadily. ”Don’t worry, Hawk. I get it. Didn’t you notice today? I was either glued to your side or Felicia’s. I love Ben, and I love Felicia. I’m not going to do anything to hurt them.”

Hawk gave an approving grunt.

Just then.

His intuition flared. He turned his gaze back toward Hong Kong.

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At this exact moment, Hong Kong was entirely consumed by an abyss of endless darkness. The Kamar-Taj Sanctum in the city had detonated into a massive fireball.

But!

The Sanctum remained frozen in that state of explosion, mid-fireball. It was as if time itself had been paused.

And within that frozen moment of time, a lone figure marched resolutely into the encroaching darkness.

”Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

The Time Stone within the Eye of Agamotto on his chest blazed with power. Glowing, emerald-green temporal rings encircled his right arm as Stephen Strange strode fearlessly into the void.

And then—

He died!

And then, he resurrected, shouted ”Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” again, and marched back into the darkness.

Stephen Strange wasn’t rewinding his own personal timeline.

He was doing something far more complex. Before he even stepped into the Dark Dimension, he had trapped the flow of time itself in an infinite, self-contained loop.

It was a forbidden temporal art of Kamar-Taj.

This specific spell wasn’t about changing the past. As long as the caster was willing to pay the horrific, repetitive toll, they could use the Time Stone to lock a specific pocket of existence into an endless cycle.

The Ancient One had retired.

Strange had taken the mantle. As the newly appointed earthly avatar of the Vishanti, Doctor Strange now had an ocean of mystical energy at his disposal to sustain the spell.

That was the only reason a rookie sorcerer with less than two and a half years of training had the sheer audacity to walk up to Dormammu, the Lord of the Dark Dimension, and demand a negotiation.

Through Hawk’s eyes, he saw Strange enter the loop, die, and restart countless times.

He could see the infinite repetitions because he had already collapsed his own timeline, elevating his perception beyond the constraints of normal temporal flow.

But to everyone else in the universe—to anyone bound by linear time—Doctor Strange simply walked into the Dark Dimension once.

And then…

The battle was decided.

Dormammu, roaring in frustrated, impotent rage, gathered his zealot followers and retreated, abandoning Earth without another word.

But the Hong Kong street, especially the area surrounding the Sanctum, was already a devastated ruin.

The next second, Doctor Strange levitated above the wreckage. The Time Stone within the Eye of Agamotto flared, emitting an emerald-green light so brilliant it was impossible to look at directly.

The light didn’t just shine; it flowed. Like a living, luminescent river, it surged outward from him in all directions.

In a flash.

The frozen time suddenly snapped back into motion.

But not forward.

Backward!

Time reversal!

The exploding Sanctum rapidly contracted, the massive fireball shrinking and vanishing before their eyes.

In the distance, a skyscraper that had been sheared in half began to reassemble itself. The billions of shards of glass, brick, and twisted metal defied gravity, pulling free from the rubble and flying backward along their exact trajectories of destruction.

The thick clouds of dust that choked the air rapidly coalesced and vanished.

Twisted steel rebar groaned a deep, metallic protest as it straightened itself out, seamlessly slotting back into its original position.

The massive, jagged fissures tearing through the streets zipped shut like healing wounds.

The spiderweb cracks on the asphalt rippled and shrank, disappearing completely.

An overturned double-decker bus slowly expanded from its crushed, mangled state, righting itself and landing softly back on its tires. Even the scratches on its paint job were magically buffed away.

A woman who had been impaled by a length of rebar watched in shock as the jagged steel slowly withdrew from her chest. The blood wasn’t pulled out; it defied all medical logic and flowed backward, returning into her body.

Almost the instant the blood rushed back in, the gaping wound in her chest seemed to be smoothed over by an invisible hand, disappearing without a trace or a scar.

In a matter of seconds.

Hong Kong was restored to the exact state it had been in before the darkness ever arrived.

To the rest of the world, it would seem as though a massive patch of darkness had briefly blotted out the sky over the city, and then simply vanished. Nothing had happened.

The darkness came, and then, the darkness left.

Except…

Hiss.

Time…

Hawk, having already collapsed his own timeline and elevated himself to a plane equal to the timeline itself, watched Doctor Strange reverse time on a massive scale, and drew in a sharp breath.

Holy shit.

What happened to the absolute rule that the past cannot be changed?

’I thought we agreed the past was fixed!’

What the hell did you just do?

Stephen Strange...

Hawk was profoundly shaken.

Just then, Standing next to him, Peter suddenly felt something go horribly wrong.

He instinctively clutched his chest, his face draining of color, and looked at Hawk.

”Hawk…”

”Peter!”

Hawk snapped back to reality, his eyes locking onto Peter. His pupils contracted sharply.

In his vision, Peter seemed to be… fading away. Slipping further and further out of reach.

Peter opened his mouth, his voice tight. ”Something’s… something’s wrong.”

”What’s happening?” Hawk grabbed Peter’s arm, his mind racing through a dozen different possibilities.

Right at that moment.

From the bridal suite on the left side of the church, Gwen screamed his name.

”HAWK!”

Still holding onto Peter, Hawk teleported, appearing instantly inside the room.

There.

Gwen was desperately holding onto Felicia, who was looking just as pale and disoriented as Peter.

”Hawk! Felicia is…”

Gwen looked up as Hawk materialized, but before she could finish her sentence.

Like a gentle breeze blowing away a reflection in a pool of water.

Peter Parker.

Felicia Hardy.

And…

Little Ben Hawk Parker.

They simply vanished. They faded from Hawk and Gwen’s sight as if they had never existed at all.

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