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Part 3

A few hours should not have been enough time for the shape of the world to change.

Natasha knew that better than most. She had seen governments fall in less, had watched cities turn from ordinary to catastrophic between one breath and the next. She had learned, young and brutally, that life never announced its breaking points with enough warning. Still, there was something wrong about the speed of this. Something unreal about walking the corridors of an ancient mountain kingdom while, somewhere far away, Wakanda opened itself for war.

Most of the others were already gone. T’Challa had taken the first group through with Thor’s help, along with enough of your soldiers to begin establishing order on the other side. The first wave of dragon kingdom forces had followed by rank and banner, disappearing in columns of fire and light through the impossible bridge Thor called like thunder given direction.

The transfer was still happening. Thousands did not move quietly, not even through magic. The castle had become a living machine beneath Natasha’s boots and every hallway carried the sound of preparation and through it all, Natasha could still feel your speech in her bones.

It sat under her skin like a second heartbeat. The sight of fifteen thousand warriors dropping to their knees before you had done something to the air around her. It had made all the old stories suddenly heavier…the books Bruce had shown them,the half-translated warnings and T’Challa’s unease. The way the people of the mountain kingdom had spoken of you in lowered voices, not because they hated you, but because reverence and fear had become too tangled to separate.

They had been right all the time. That was the thought Natasha could not outrun as she turned down another black stone corridor toward your chambers. They had been right after all. You were not the monster their legends had sharpened you into, Natasha knew that. She knew the warmth of your mouth in the morning and the softness of your fingers against the ruined map of her body. She knew the quiet way your voice had changed when you admitted your scars could not be touched and she knew you could listen.

But the Khaleesi from the books? The war queen whose name men screamed with blood on their tongues? She was real too and Natasha had seen her. And that was what made it worse. Not that the stories were lies, but they were only part of the truth.

She turned the final corner toward your chambers and stopped instantly when steel flashed up in front of her. Natasha froze with the kind of stillness that had kept her alive in rooms far more modern and no less deadly. Her hands stayed visible at her sides, fingers loose and shoulders relaxed, but every muscle was ready. Then a figure moved between them and the knight from the morning appeared. She stepped forward from the shadow beside the door like she had been carved there and had only now decided to become alive. Her armor was darker than Natasha remembered, fitted now for battle instead of duty.

The woman’s braid was pulled back so tightly it sharpened every line of her face and rings of steel and pale bone caught among the dark strands. Her eyes took Natasha apart in one pass. “State your purpose.”

Natasha kept her voice even. “I need to speak with the princess.”

The knight’s gaze did not move. “Khaleesi is preparing for war.”

“I know.”

“Then you know this is not the hour for interruption.”

Natasha’s jaw tightened and somewhere far below, another roar went through the castle as a fresh column of soldiers moved toward the Bifröst point. “It started.”

For the first time, the knight’s expression shifted. “King T’Challa sent me. Wakanda is under attack and I need to bring her now.”

The soldiers did not lower their spears. The knight looked at Natasha for one long, unreadable second but the chamber door opened behind her and all three spears withdrew at once. The soldiers stepped back and bowed their heads because you stood in the doorway and for one heartbeat, Natasha forgot the war. You were not dressed as you had been on the balcony. Not in the red-black gown that had turned royalty into prophecy. This was something else again..

Behind you, through the open balcony doors, Vhassar waited. He was crouched outside in the fading light, talons sunk into the black stone and vast head lowered toward the chamber as if the room itself belonged to him. Your gaze moved once over the spears, then to the knight. “She is expected.”

The knight bowed her head. “Khaleesi.”

You stepped aside and Natasha entered. The door closed behind her with a soft, heavy sound that somehow made the room feel too intimate despite the dragon watching from the balcony and the war gathering beyond every wall. For a moment neither of you spoke and Natasha’s eyes swept the chamber without meaning to. Pieces of armor lay arranged across a carved table and a sword rested there too, dark-hilted and long, the blade gleaming with a faint rippled pattern like frozen water. You turned back toward her. “What is it?”

Natasha heard the question clearly, but what came out of her mouth was not the message she had carried up the stairs. “What did you mean?”

Your brows drew together slightly. “Mean what?”

Natasha’s eyes stayed on yours. “On the balcony. When you said…” Her throat worked once because the words had followed her. They had sounded like a promise and a warning at the same time. “‘Let the world remember what rises when this kingdom is called to war.’”

For a second, you only stared at her. Then understanding touched your face because you heard the undertone in her voice. You always heard more than people meant to give you, so slowly, you stepped toward her. “Natasha.”

She did not move and that stopped you. Something flickered in your eyes then, something quieter and more dangerous because it looked almost like hurt before it disappeared. “You wanted my help.”

“I did.”

“You asked me to bring my kingdom into a war that was not yet ours.”

Natasha held your gaze. “Yes.”

“And now that you have seen what that means, you wonder if you asked for too much.”

She said nothing and that was answer enough. “You wanted enough violence to win.” you said softly. “But apparently not so much that it frightened you.”

Natasha breathed in once through her nose because the words hit. “I wanted enough to stop Thanos.” she said. “To keep Vision alive and to keep half the universe from disappearing if what Bruce thinks is right.”

“That is still the plan.”

“Is it?”

The question sat between you and outside, Vhassar shifted. Your face stilled and you came closer again, slower this time, as if approaching something wounded that might bolt or bite. “Are you scared of me?”

Natasha watched you carefully. No..not of you. Of what you could become, but because of what war would ask you to become..Of what she might do if she found herself still wanting you afterward. “No.”

Your eyes searched hers. “I’m not scared of you.” she repeated. “I just need to know we’re fighting the same war.”

For a moment, your expression gave her nothing. Then your gaze softened by a degree. “We are. You think my people are bloodthirsty.” you said. “They are. You think they would kill in my name if I asked, they would. You think my dragon could burn a battlefield until nothing living remained beneath him.” Natasha’s silence was hard and your voice lowered. “He could.” The admission landed colder because you did not dress it up.

“But I do not mistake slaughter for victory.” you said. “And I do not mistake rage for strategy. My people do not cross worlds today to conquer Wakanda. They come because a monster thinks life itself is his to count and cut. He will learn otherwise.”

Natasha wanted to believe that was enough. Maybe this was what war always was: giving dangerous people the right target and praying they remembered when to stop.

You looked past her then, toward the table, toward the armor and toward the sword waiting under the last light. “When I was young I thought the worst thing a ruler could be was cruel.” Natasha did not interrupt. “Then I learned there are many ways to become cruel. Some kings become cruel because they enjoy pain. Some because they forget the faces beneath their orders. Some because fear makes them call cowardice mercy.” Your eyes returned to her. “And some because they love their people so much they decide every atrocity is justified if it keeps them alive.” Your jaw tightened. “I have been all of those things in someone’s story. But today I intend to be useful.”

“It started..T’Challa told me to bring you.”

You turned to the table, lifted the dark sword and fastened it at your hip in one smooth motion. “Then we move.”

You crossed toward the balcony, but stopped after only a few steps and your gaze dropped to Natasha’s hair.

Natasha frowned. “What?”

“Why did you not do your hair?”

She stared at you. For one absurd second, in the middle of the end of the world, Natasha thought she had misheard. “My hair?”

“Yes.”

“My hair is not the problem right now.”

“It is if you intend to go to war beside my people.”

Natasha blinked once. “I’ve been going to war for years without anyone filing a complaint.”

A hint of amusement crossed your mouth, but it did not last. Your eyes remained on her hair, loose around her shoulders and unmarked by the language every soul in this kingdom seemed to understand.

“It is tradition, Natasha.” you said. “Every warrior wears their hair for war in the braids they have earned.”

Natasha’s breath stopped and Shuri’s voice came back with cruel clarity again and Natasha looked away first. It was instinct, stupid, maybe, but instinct all the same. She had stood naked before you and told you about the Red Room, had let your fingers touch scars other people had never been allowed to see and still this felt worse somehow. Scars could be explained as things done to her, but raids were different. Braids meant claiming what had followed.

You saw it. “Natasha.”

“I’m not one of your warriors.”

“No.” You stepped closer. “You are your own. This morning you told me pieces of your story. You thought they were only wounds because that is what the people who made them wanted you to believe.” Natasha said nothing.

“You survived a room built to unmake you.” you continued. “You turned the skills they forced upon you against men who thought girls could be forged into tools and never become judgment. You have walked through wars, betrayals, ghosts and the ruin of your own name. And still you came here asking strangers to save someone who cannot be saved by you alone.”

Your hand lifted slowly, giving her time to move away, but she didn’t. Your fingers brushed a strand of red hair near her cheek. “These are stories and you earned them.”

The words struck somewhere beneath armor and Natasha hated how badly she needed to hear them. You glanced toward the balcony. “We have little time.”

“Then don’t-”

“I am not asking.” The corner of your mouth lifted faintly. Natasha should have argued, she had argued with kings, gods, billionaires, assassins, men holding guns to her head, so she could have argued with you. Instead, she stood still and you moved behind her. The first touch of your fingers in her hair was careful and the room fell away by degrees. There was only the distant roar of the castle, the smoke warm breath of the dragon outside and your hands gathering the red strands at the back of Natasha’s head.

You worked quickly, but not carelessly. You separated sections with practiced ease, drawing them tight enough for battle, not enough to hurt. One braid at the temple. Another lower, woven back and a third, thicker, beginning near the crown and folding into the rest. Natasha watched your reflection in the darkened glass of a cabinet across the room and your face was calm. It was again not the Khaleesi addressing an army or the princess arguing before a throne. Just you, standing behind her, giving her something she had not known she wanted until it was already happening.

“What do they mean?” she asked before she could stop herself and your fingers paused only briefly. “The first is survival.” you said. “Because that is always where a warrior begins.”

Natasha’s eyes burned unexpectedly and your hands moved again. “The second is blood owed and blood refused.” That one you braided tighter.

“The third…” Your voice softened. “The third is for choosing who you become after others are finished choosing for you.” Natasha looked down and for a moment she was not in the chamber. She was young again and standing in a white room where girls were taught pain like language. She was older, with blood under her nails and red in her ledger. She was on the Helicarrie, in budapest, sokovia, lagos and safehouses and empty motel rooms, always moving, always surviving, always becoming useful enough to justify the space she took up in the world.

Then your hands left her hair and she almost missed the touch immediately. You came around in front of her and studied your work. Then you reached up to your own hair and Natasha frowned. “What are you doing?”

You removed one piece from your braid. A small silver clasp, narrow and beautifully made, shaped like two curved wings crossing over a blade. It had been woven near your temple, not as decoration but as part of the history your hair carried. You held it for one second in your palm and then you fixed it into Natasha’s braid.

Her heart gave a hard, “No..” she said softly. “That’s yours.”

“It still is.” You adjusted it once, securing the clasp with a final touch. “And now it marks my witness.”

Natasha did not trust herself to speak and your eyes lifted to hers. “The princess herself has given you blessing to wear braids in battle..” you said, voice low. “For her.” The last two words changed the temperature of the room. For her. Not for the kingdom or tradition. For you.

Natasha turned slightly toward the reflective glass and saw herself. At first, the sight did not fit. The red of her hair drawn back in braids that looked older than anything she had ever allowed herself to wear and the silver clasp catching near her temple like a claim and an honor at once.

You watched her face. “Do you like it?”

Natasha touched the edge of one braid with two fingers, the silver piece was cool beneath her glove. “Yes..” The answer came out rougher than she intended and your expression warmed just for a second. Then the distant thunder came again and Vhassar raised his head sharply. You turned too and the Khaleesi returned between one breath and the next. “Come.”

On the other side of the world, Wakanda was already bracing itself. The Quinjet had landed on a stretch of open ground near the palace. It was beautiful in the way untouched places were beautiful when they knew exactly how much blood had been spent to keep them untouched. Steve stepped down the ramp first and T’Challa stood waiting with Okoye at the front.

Steve approached him. “How does it look?”

T’Challa’s eyes moved toward the horizon. “The city evacuation has begun, but not finished. Our ground forces are taking position beyond the barrier and the border tribe holds the forward lines. The Dora remain at the palace and with my sister.“

“And the mountain forces?”

“Still arriving.”

As if summoned by the words, light split the air far behind them. A column of rainbow fire slammed into the open plain beyond Wakanda’s outer defenses and when it vanished, another formation stood where there had been empty grass. Then another column came and another. The hidden kingdom’s army spilled into Wakanda in disciplined waves and they did not stare at the city. They did not shout or break formation. They arrived, reformed and moved. Horses snorted and stamped, eyes rolling at the scent of a foreign land and banners snapped in the Wakandan wind.

Steve watched one company move into position behind a Wakandan shield line. “They’re efficient.”

T’Challa’s mouth tightened. “They have done this before.” No one asked what this meant because they all knew.

Vision was taken into the palace and laid beneath Shuri’s machines while Wanda stood beside him with the kind of terror that made silence feel loud. Outside, the world prepared to break. Steve, T’Challa, Okoye and the first of your commanders stood over a tactical projection near the city’s edge, adjusting lines as reports came in. The last of Wakanda’s civilians were still being moved inward and downward, away from the parts of the city most likely to take impact. The mountain soldiers watched the shield shimmer above the city when it flickered through calibration, eyes narrowed with the restrained interest of warriors seeing a magic that was not magic and deciding it would do.

Then the sky changed and every conversation thinned at once. Then a vibration passed through the soles of their boots, like something enormous had pressed its hand against the world from the other side. Sam’s voice cracked over comms. “We’ve got movement in the upper atmosphere.”

Rhodey followed a second later. “Multiple contacts. Big ones!”

Steve looked up and at first there was nothing. Then black ships broke through the clouds. One of them slowed over the city and its belly opened and T’Challa’s head snapped toward the palace. “Raise the shields.”

The order moved faster than sound and suddenly a weapon fired a massive blast toward Wakanda. For half a breath, everyone watched it fall. Then a roar split the sky and Vhassar came over the city like night given claws, wings stretched so wide they swallowed the sun beneath them. His roar hit the ground with physical force, making soldiers flinch and horses rear.

He was already turning toward the blast and drawing his breath. Then Wakanda’s shield rose and a ripple of blue white force shimmered above the city’s highest towers, then spread outward in a vast curve and raising across the sky like dawn bending itself into a dome. The energy blast struck it before Vhassar could loose fire and the impact lit the world. For an instant, the entire city vanished behind a bloom of white gold violence. The shield buckled but held, energy spreading across its surface in massive veins of light. The blast shattered against it, breaking apart into flaming fragments that dissolved before they could touch the towers below.

Vhassar banked hard above the dome, furious at being denied his target and released a roar so deep it seemed to drag across the bones of everyone beneath him. Then the rest of the shield completed its arc and it rolled over Wakanda like a second sky.

Only then did the enemy answer and more ships descended beyond the shield. They moved behind the barrier line, dark shapes circling like carrion denied the corpse. Some fired, the impacts struck the dome in bursts of white and blue, each hit sending vibrations through the city below. The whole of Wakanda seemed to ring under the assault.

Inside the palace, Shuri looked up sharply as the lights flickered and Wanda’s hand tightened around Vision’s. Outside, T’Challa’s expression hardened into something absolute. “Evacuate the city.” he commanded. “Now!”

The remaining civilians were moved in earnest, no longer with controlled urgency but with the full force of a nation that understood delay had ended. Transports lifted from lower platforms and royal guards redirected crowds into underground routes.

T’Challa turned and you had landed on the field moments before, sliding down from Vhassar’s back with Natasha behind you. The dragon crouched low and claws gouging deep scars into the Wakandan earth. His head swung toward every impact against the shield, teeth bared with firelight pulsing beneath black scales.

For a second, no one moved and wakandan warriors stared, even those who had already seen him in the mountain kingdom seemed struck again by the impossibility of a dragon standing before Wakanda’s shining city while alien warships hammered the sky.

Then Natasha stepped down beside you. Steve saw the braids first, his eyes caught on them, just for a second and Shuri, who had come out only briefly to receive a field update before returning to Vision, saw them too from the palace platform above.

You did not look away from T’Challa when he ooked at you. No words passed at first because they did not need to. Both of you understood exactly what came next, if the enemy could not break Wakanda from above, they would search for a breach and once they found it, the real battle would begin.

T’Challa gave you a single nod and you answered with one of your own, then you turned to Natasha. The battlefield noise seemed to fold around the two of you for one impossible heartbeat. The impacts against the shield, the cries and the dragon growling at your back. “You wanted the same war..” you said quietly. Natasha looked at you. “So stay alive long enough to see me prove it.”

Before she could answer, you stepped back onto Vhassar’s foreleg and climbed with practiced speed into the saddle between his shoulders. The dragon rose beneath you, unfolding to his full height and soldiers around him stumbled back despite themselves.

You looked once across the field and drew your sword. The mountain host saw it and a roar went through them. Vhassar launched, the force of his wings nearly knocked Natasha back. The dragon climbed fast, black wings beating once, twice and then he was above the forward lines and banking toward the outer perimeter where the enemy ships gathered beyond the shield.

T’Challa turned toward his commanders, “Complete evacuation. All units to battle positions.”

Thor’s bridge flashed one final time behind them and another wave of mountain warriors arrived. Then the Bifröst vanished and for one breath, there was only the shield, the ships beyond it and the gathered armies of two hidden kingdoms standing beneath a sky that was already burning.

Somewhere above, Vhassar roared again and this time, Wakanda answered. The shield was beautiful from a distance, but up close, it looked like the edge of the world. It rose in front of the armies in a vast wall of blue white force, humming with contained power so high it seemed to vanish into the bruised sky. Beyond it, the plain stretched open and waiting, green grass flattened by wind and the pressure of ships lowering through the clouds. Wakanda’s city gleamed behind them, protected beneath the dome but out here at the forward line there was no illusion of safety. Only the barrier and the enemy beyond it. Only the armies standing in front of a storm that had finally found ground. Together, they looked impossible. A wall of two secret worlds and two stories that should never have met.

Natasha stood near the forward line with Steve, T’Challa, Okoye, Bucky, Sam overhead, Rhodey higher still and Thor somewhere behind them coordinating the last scattered arrivals. But even as she watched the shield, part of her kept looking up. Vhassar circled above the battlefield. Every few passes, fire pulsed beneath his throat and you sat between the ridges of his shoulders with sword drawn and white braid streaming behind you like a battle standard. Everyone could feel the dragon waiting. Everyone could feel you waiting.

Then the sky split with sound. A massive enemy ship came down behind the shield line, burning through the clouds at a brutal angle. The thing hit the ground beyond the barrier with a force that shook the entire plain.

The impact rolled through the armies. Horses in your lines reared and screamed before their riders dragged them back under control and a tower of dirt and smoke exploded upward behind the blue wall, swallowing half the horizon.

Then silence of everyone waiting to see what crawled from the wreckage fell. Natasha’s fingers tightened around her batons and beside her, Steve lifted his shield slightly. The smoke shifted and for a while, nothing came, only the crackle of the wreckage and the low hum of the Wakandan barrier.

Then something inside the ship opened and darkness moved inside it. Natasha’s stomach tightened because at first, she could not make out shapes, only motion and a mass of limbs and teeth and bodies pressing forward in a crush so dense it looked less like an army and more like disease given muscle.

Then the first creatures spilled out. They came on all fours and two legs and everything between, bodies long and low, arms too many, mouths too wide and black flesh gleaming beneath patches of armor. They did not run like soldiers..they surged. They climbed over each other and slammed into one another. Thousands of them, then more and more. The plain beyond the shield filled with them until the ground seemed to be moving.

For one long second, the armies only stared. Not because they were afraid to fight, but because whatever those things were, they did not look like they understood death.

An Outrider reached the shield first and it hit the barrier at full speed and burned. Blue energy tore across its body, searing through flesh and armor and the creature screamed, or maybe snarled, or maybe the sound was only air ripping out of it as the shield took it apart. It should have stopped the others but it didn’t. Dozens hit more than hundreds.

They threw themselves into the barrier like water against stone, bodies striking and burning and falling, only for the creatures behind them to trample the dead and hurl themselves forward too. The shield flared brighter with every impact and sparks of energy crawled across its surface. One creature forced half its body through, the shield burned away one of its arms, then part of its shoulder, its flesh smoked and tore, but it kept crawling. Its remaining claws dug into the grass on the Wakandan side..pulled and came through with half its body ruined. Then it kept running and a ripple of horror passed through the line.

Not panic..horror. The thing was dying and did not care. Another broke through then three more. One emerged missing part of its jaw and still hurled itself toward the army with a shriek that did not belong on Earth.

The first Wakandan cannons opened fire. Blue blasts tore across the field and shredded the creatures that made it through. Border Tribe warriors raised their shields and fired in disciplined bursts and your archers answered almost at the same moment, bowstrings snapping in brutal rhythm. They flew dark and fast, tipped with black metal and something that sparked red where it struck. A mountain commander shouted an order and the second rank changed arrows.

For one moment, the wall of creatures faltered. Then more poured out of the ship and swallowed the burning ones beneath them. Bruce’s voice cut through comms, strained and breathless. “They’re not stopping.”

No one answered and outriders began to spread. At first it looked like chaos, just the mindless surge of bodies against resistance. Then Natasha saw the pattern and felt her blood go cold. They were running along the shield.

Thousands of them broke from the main crush and streamed left and right along the barrier, claws tearing up earth and bodies pouring around the defensive line in two black rivers. Bruce saw it too. “They’re circling. If they get around the barrier, they’ll come in from behind.”

Steve’s head snapped toward T’Challa. “If they circle us..it’s over.”

T’Challa stared at the creatures spreading around the shield, then at the lines of soldiers waiting for his command and Natasha saw the decision hit him. There was no good choice..only a choice that controlled where the catastrophe happened.

“Open a section.”

Okoye’s expression tightened. “My king-”

“Open it.”

The order traveled and for one suspended heartbeat, everyone seemed to understand what it meant at the exact same time. The forward army shifted and wakandan shields locked tighter. Your soldiers lowered spears and raised bows, cavalry riders pulled their mounts back, forming room for impact.

Above, Vhassar banked because you had seen the order. The shield flickered only a section at first..then the seam widened but the outriders noticed instantly. The entire mass turned toward it and Natasha had seen predators react slower to blood. They poured toward the opening with a shriek that tore over the field, thousands of bodies redirecting at once. The first line hit the gap like a wave breaking through a cracked dam.

The army tensed and every soldier became still. The creatures came closer and closer. T’Challa’s claws extended and your archers drew back to their cheeks and waited for the killing distance. The first outriders crossed the open ground between the barrier and the armies shrieking, their numbers filling the world till the sky roared. Vhassar dropped from above the shield like a falling star made of shadow.

His wings folded tight to his body, then snapped open at the last possible second. The force of it flattened the grass beneath him with yourself on his back with one hand gripping the saddle and the other lifting your sword toward the flood below. You screamed something in the old tongue and Natasha did not need T’Challa to translate it.

Vhassar opened his jaws and fire came out like the end of a world. A wall, roaring sheet of gold flame slammed down between the charging creatures and the waiting armies, engulfing the front wave completely. Heat struck the Wakandan line hard enough that soldiers turned their faces away. The air exploded white at the center and then deepened into orange, red, blue at the edges, devouring everything it touched.

The Outriders vanished in it and for a second there were shapes inside the flame: limbs, teeth, bodies twisting, then nothing but ash and collapsing silhouettes. The sound was monstrous. Vhassar was beating his wings above the inferno while you leaned forward on his back, white hair whipping wild in the heat and sword pointed down like you were directing judgment.

The army did not move because they couldn’t. They watched the fire cloud bloom across the field and understood, all at once, what kind of weapon had joined them.

Natasha stared, her breath caught somewhere in her chest and refused to move. This was what you meant..this was the answer inside your speech with the kingdom called to war. This.

The fire began to thin and the ground where the first wave had been was blackened and smoking, the grass burned away to raw earth. But beyond it, past the flame, the outriders were still coming. They ran through the smoke and over the burned dead. Through whatever fear should have stopped living things from advancing into dragonfire. A second wave poured through the open shield, then a third. Vhassar climbed again, roaring in frustration, banking for another pass, but the enemy had learned nothing because there was nothing in them meant to learn.

T’Challa stepped forward, his voice cut across the field, amplified by the mask, carrying over the crackling fire and the shriek of the enemy. “Wakanda forever!”

He crossed his arms over his chest and the words hit the army like a spark to dry kindling. “Wakanda forever!” the soldiers roared back and weapon rose. Then the entire line charged and wakandan warriors surged forward from the center, shields flashing, spears and sonic weapons firing as they ran. The Dora Milaje moved like a red blade, flawless and terrifying. The Jabari thundered beside them with roaring voices and your army came with them, black and silver and red, banners snapping, archers loosing as they advanced, swords drawn and spears lowered.

The armies met the Outriders with a sound everyone felt in their teeth. The impact was chaos. The first creature lunged at Natasha low with all claws and open mouth. Natasha dropped under it, drove one baton up beneath its jaw and released a burst of electricity that snapped its body rigid before she spun and kicked it into the path of a charging Wakandan shield strike.

Another came from the side and she pivoted, slammed both batons across its face, then drove her knee into its chest and rolled away as Steve’s shield took its head clean off with a brutal, ringing arc.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Steve said, already moving. There was no time after that because the battle swallowed language. Everywhere, bodies crashed and tore and fell. Wakandan shields flared as creatures slammed into them. Mountain soldiers fought in pairs and triads, one hooking limbs with spear shafts while another drove blades into exposed joints.

Your soldiers were different. That was the thing Natasha noticed between strikes and rolls and flashes of blue. They did not fight cleanly, they fought like people who had learned long ago that surviving monsters required becoming worse at the point of contact. They used knives after swords. Teeth when pinned or short axes hooked into alien limbs and dragged creatures down for the spear line behind them. Archers dropped bows and drew curved blades without pause when the fight came too close. They were terrifying and they were saving lives. Both things were true.

An Outrider leapt over a Wakandan shield line and landed in the gap between three mountain soldiers. It barely touched ground before one of them threw herself under its body, jammed a dagger into the soft underside of its throat and screamed as the others hacked it apart above her. A Wakandan warrior dragged her out before the corpse crushed her. She shoved herself upright, nodded once, and went back into the fight.

Then a shadow passed over the field and the temperature changed. “Down!” someone screamed and Natasha threw herself aside as Vhassar came low over the battlefield. His wings nearly brushed the heads of the mountain cavalry as he swept past and then fire poured from him again. This time it was not a wall between armies, it was a long, devastating line across the enemy flank, cutting through the Outriders trying to fold around the left side of the formation.

You were standing in the damn saddle. One hand braced against a ridge of black scale, the other holding your sword high while flame ripped beneath you. Your mouth was open in a scream Natasha could not hear over the roar, but she felt it. Every soldier wearing your colors felt it. So, your army answered and thousand voices shouted your title so hard it seemed to punch through the battle noise.

Vhassar banked sharply and climbed through smoke, dragging a trail of firelight behind him. Natasha watched for half a second too long when a creature slammed into her from the side. They hit the ground hard, it’s claws scraped across her shoulder armor, teeth snapping inches from her face. She jammed one baton sideways into its mouth and triggered the charge. The creature convulsed but did not stop. Its claws dug in and Natasha gritted her teeth and twisted, trying to get leverage.

Then a black arrow punched through its eye and the creature collapsed on top of her. Natasha shoved it off and looked up. One of your archers stood several yards away, bow already turning toward another target. A woman with gray in her braids and blood down one side of her face. She met Natasha’s eyes once and nodded at the silver clasp in her hair. Natasha felt Recognition pass between them. Acknowledgment that she stood under your witness and that she had been marked by you and had not run. Then the archer turned and kept killing.

The battle worsened by each minute. For every Outrider that fell, more came through the gap. The opened section of shield had become a wound the enemy poured itself into with no regard for survival. Wakandan artillery hammered the entrance and mountain archers rained flame and black iron. Vhassar burned line after line into ash..Still they came.

The ground became slick with mud and black blood and crushed grass. The air became smoke, metal, ozone, burning flesh, sweat, everything. Somewhere to the right, the first cavalry charge hit and your riders had waited until the enemy pressed too hard against the Wakandan flank. Then a horn sounded and the mounted line moved. Massive war horses crashed through the creatures with armored chests and iron shod hooves, riders leaning low with long blades extended. They did not charge once and vanish..they just cut through, turned in disciplined arcs and struck again where the line threatened to break.

A Wakandan unit began to buckle under the weight of too many Outriders, so a mountain shield wall slammed into place beside them without being ordered. For a moment the two formations fought awkwardly, styles different, rhythms clashing. Then the Wakandans adjusted and the mountain soldiers adjusted. Shield met shield and spear met spear.

Above them, Vhassar roared again. This time the sound was different. Natasha looked up sharply and one of the enemy ships had adjusted its position beyond the shield and fired not at the city, not at the armies, but at the dragon. The blast struck near Vhassar’s wing and fire and energy burst in the air beside him, throwing him sideways. The entire battlefield seemed to inhale as the dragon dropped several brutal feet before catching himself with a furious beat of wings.

Your army screamed in rage. Natasha’s heart stopped for one hideous second, till Vhassar recovered. He climbed, shaking smoke from his scales and the roar he gave then was not animal. It was ancient hatred..it was the mountain answering insult. It was every old story suddenly opening its jaws and you leaned forward on his neck, one hand pressed to his scales and even from below, Natasha saw the moment you chose.

Vhassar folded one wing, turned and flew straight for the ship. “Is she-” Sam’s voice broke over comms. “Is she going at the ship?”

No one answered, because yes..Yes, you were. Vhassar rose toward the shield dome, toward the warship hovering beyond it. The barrier shimmered between him and the enemy vessel and for or one second Natasha thought he would stop, that you would bank away, that even a dragon could not fight through Wakanda’s own defense. But the shield section above him flickered and T’Challa had seen. Someone in Wakandan command had understood and a narrow opening formed high in the dome.

Just wide enough for Vhassar to shot through it like a black spear. The shield sealed behind him and the enemy ship turned too slowly. Vhassar hit it with fire and the blast engulfed the side of the vessel in molten fury. Something inside the ship detonated and the craft tilted, trying to pull away from the dragon clinging to the air beside it like vengeance with wings.

You screamed again and this time Natasha heard part of it through the battlefield roar. Vhassar struck the ship with his claws, a chunk of the vessel ripped loose and fell, burning, against the outer side of the shield. The barrier flashed as debris broke apart across it and the soldiers below shouted, first in terror, then triumph.

Vhassar circled back through the shield opening before it sealed, trailing smoke and spark and dove toward the battlefield again. Natasha felt the effect before she saw it because your army surged. Every one of them had just remembered the old promise from your speech, that the sky itself had turned with them. That their Khaleesi had taken fire from a ship and answered it with dragon teeth.

The battle became endless again and minutes stretched into something shapeless. The open shield gate remained a mouth swallowing the enemy, but the enemy never seemed to run out. They fought until time stopped meaning anything. Minutes did not pass anymore only waves. One wave of creatures struck the line and broke against shields, spears, claws, blades and fire. Another followed before the first had finished dying. Then another and another. The battlefield became a place beyond strategy, beyond formations, beyond anything clean enough to be called a plan.

Above, Vhassar screamed and his sound had changed too. At the beginning of the battle, the dragon’s roar had been domination. An announcement like a promise that the sky belonged to him and everything beneath it was allowed to live only by mistake.

Now it was rage. Pain threaded through it, raw and thunderous, each roar shaking loose something inside the soldiers below and every time Natasha heard him, her eyes went up and every time, she found you. You and Vhassar had become the battlefield’s terrible rhythm. When the enemy pressed too hard on one flank, fire fell. When the shield gate nearly choked with too many bodies, Vhassar descended and turned the mouth of it into an inferno. When a ship tried to lower behind the line, the dragon rose toward it like vengeance summoned from another age.

But even a dragon could not be everywhere. Even you could not see everything and then the world narrowed. One moment the battle was everywhere, too loud and too close and too full of dying. The next, a blue shadow opened behind the field and it was not the Bifröst.

Natasha knew that instantly because the light was colder. It tore the air with a silence that seemed to swallow sound instead of making it. A dark blue fold opened near the trees beyond the main clash and for one impossible heartbeat, even the creatures nearest it seemed to hesitate. Then he stepped through and Natasha had imagined him too many ways. Like something vast and loud and monstrous enough to match the devastation moving in his name but he did not rush. He did not even look hurried.

He walked out of the blue shadow with the calm of someone arriving somewhere already owned with the gauntlet shone on his hand. Even from a distance, even through smoke and chaos and moving bodies, Natasha saw the stones. For half a second, the Avengers stopped being soldiers in a battle and became people staring at the thing they had failed to prevent all those years.

Then Wanda’s red light flared somewhere near the trees and everyone’s blood went cold. Thanos was moving toward a place no one had understood mattered until that moment. Not toward the city or toward the armies. Not even toward the dragon or the king or the shield gate.

Toward Vision and his final stone.

Words moved across the comms and through the battlefield like struck nerves and the team broke toward him. Natasha killed two Outriders in three seconds, slammed another away with both batons and turned toward the direction Steve had gone, till the sky flashed white. A blast from one of the ships tore across the upper air, too focused to be random and Natasha looked up sharply and saw it carve toward a moving shape in the smoke. It hit Vhassar near his shoulder and energy exploded against scale and air.

Vhassar’s roar cracked across the battlefield and for one sickening second he dropped. You nearly vanished in the flash and Natasha stopped breathing. Then the dragon caught himself with a savage beat of his wings, wounded smoke rolling from his side and you were still there too.

Suddenly your head snapped downward and Natasha followed your line of sight and saw them. A pocket of your soldiers had been cut off near the right side of the battlefield, beyond a collapsed section of shield wall and too far forward from the nearest Wakandan support. They were surrounded in a tightening ring of Outriders and at their center stood the knight from your chamber door. She fought like a thing that had never believed death could make her kneel. Her sword moved in brutal arcs, each strike opening something. Her armor was already torn along one side and blood blackened the silver chasing at her ribs.

You saw her and you you chose. Vhassar turned so sharply his injured wing shuddered when dropped from the sky. He hit the ground beside the encircled soldiers with a force that knocked creatures off their feet. One massive talon crushed three Outriders into the earth. His tail swept wide and broke a dozen more like brittle branches then fire erupted around him. A blazing ring of dragonflame exploded outward, enclosing the trapped soldiers in heat and light and death. Outriders caught at the edge of it shrieked as their bodies went up like oil soaked cloth and those already inside the circle were slaughtered by dragon claws, soldier blades and your sword flashing down from above as you slid from the saddle into the burning ground.

For one heartbeat, it looked like salvation. Your knight turned toward you and even across the battlefield, Natasha saw the relief on her face. Then everything changed when the Outriders shifted. The movement began as a ripple, then became a tide. Creatures that had been throwing themselves at Wakandan lines suddenly turned toward the fire circle. Others broke from the center and ran toward it and more came from the open shield gate, ignoring enemies closer to them, claws ripping the mud as they redirected.

Natasha saw the pattern before she understood it. Then the truth hit her. They were focusing on you.

“Protect your princess!” the knight screamed and spears lowered. Wounded men dragged themselves to their knees to fill gaps and mountain soldiers began moving toward you from every direction, abandoning smaller fights to form around the circle.

Natasha killed the creature in front of her and shoved forward, trying to reach the right side of the field. Inside the burning ring, you fought not from Vhassar’s back now. Your sword moved with a precision that was colder than fury and more frightening for it. You cut throats, split skulls, drove steel into joints and ripped it free before the bodies fell. Your armor was streaked with black blood and your braid had half come loose, white strands whipping around your face, darkened at the edges by soot.

You were not untouchable, that was what scared Natasha. On the dragon, above the field, you had looked like a piece of myth too high for consequences. On the ground, surrounded by soldiers dying to keep you alive, you looked mortal.

Then you saw Vhassar. The dragon had stepped beyond the fire circle, trying to keep the largest wave from reaching you. He burned the first ranks away, snapped one creature in his jaws and crushed another beneath his foot. But the Outriders came at him differently now. They climbed him, one hit his foreleg and dug claws beneath the scale. Another leapt onto his wing, then three more. They scrambled up his body, biting, clawing, tearing for the softer places where wing met shoulder, where armor like scales gave way to joints and scars.

Vhassar roared and slammed himself sideways, crushing dozens against the ground but more replaced them. He shook his head violently, tossing creatures from his neck and his tail lashed and cut through the swarm. Fire burst from his jaws in short, savage blasts, but they were too close now. Too close to burn them all without burning himself. They crawled over his back, clinging to ridges, stabbing with claws, dragging themselves toward his eyes.

You turned toward him. “Vhassar!” It was not a command, it was pain. You moved as if to run to him but your soldiers closed around you instantly, a ring of bodies blocked your path. “My lady, no!““Khaleesi, stay back!”

You slammed one soldier aside, eyes fixed on your dragon. “Move!”

They did not. They chose disobedience with terror on their faces. The knight stepped directly into your path and caught your arm. “You cannot.” You looked at her like you might kill her, then Vhassar screamed and the sound ripped the sky open.

He launched himself upward with dozens of creatures still clinging to him. Some fell immediately, tumbling from his wings and breaking against the ground. Others held on and climbed higher along his body as he rose. He thrashed midair and slammed back down onto the battlefield, crushing creatures beneath his own weight and shaking the earth hard enough that Natasha nearly lost her footing. He rose again, this time higher, his wings beat unevenly, one injured, one dragging the air harder to compensate. Creatures still clung to him in ugly clusters, crawling up his side, ripping at him like insects trying to eat a god alive.

You watched him and the sound that came out of you was not human. It started as a scream and turned into something older, rawer, torn from the deepest place grief and rage shared. Your soldiers screamed with you in rage. The fire circle began to die in places as the first burning edge faded, leaving smoke and bodies and a ring of blackened earth. Outriders pushed through the gaps and the fighting collapsed inward again.

You turned from the sky and something had changed. Natasha saw it even from too far away. The woman who had cried out for her dragon vanished behind a face made of war and took her sword in both hands and walked into the next wave. The soldiers around you followed and what happened after that was slaughter. There was no clean rhythm to it or graceful description. Your army hacked the creatures apart with a violence that had nothing left to do with glory. They cut and stabbed and crushed and dragged Outriders down in groups. Men with split lips and broken arms held creatures still while others drove spears through them.

Minutes passed when Natasha reached the edge of your formation at last and found herself back to back with the knight. The woman moved like she was bleeding from more than one place and had simply decided that blood did not matter. She took one creature through the throat, wrenched her blade free, then pivoted hard enough that her shoulder struck Natasha’s. For a brief, vicious stretch of battle, they fought as if they had done it before. The knight’s sword cleared high and Natasha took low. The knight hooked creatures off balance and Natasha finished them with blue light and broken bone. They turned around each other in tight, efficient brutality.

Then the battle shifted again and a creature came over the bodies too fast and hit you. Natasha saw the impact through the crush when one moment you were standing, sword red black in your hands, the next, an Outrider slammed into you from the side and drove you to the ground. The creature landed on top of you, jaws opening wide above your face. You caught it by the throat with both hands, arms shaking with the effort of holding its teeth back. The circle around you convulsed and the knight moved first. She cut through the creature nearest her, shoved Natasha aside without apology and reached you in three strides. Her sword plunged into the Outrider’s back, punching through with a wet crack and the creature stiffened, screamed and collapsed sideways off you.

The knight dropped to one knee and grabbed your arm. You sucked in a breath and looked up at her and for one terrible second, despite the blood and ash and corpses, there was relief in your face. “Thank you..” you breathed.

The knight hauled you up. “Are you hurt?”

You almost smiled till something moved behind her and Natasha saw it too late “No!”

The Outrider came from the smoke on all fours, half its face burned away, one arm missing below the elbow. It should have been dead..it should have been a corpse twitching in the mud but It launched itself anyway.

The knight turned, but not fast enough and clawed hand punched through her armor right trough her body. The sound was small compared to the rest of the battlefield. The knight’s eyes went wide and mouth opened with blood spilled over her lips.

For a second, she remained standing because the creature’s arm was still inside her, till you moved. Your sword was not in your hand, but your dagger was. You drove it into the creature’s skull with such force that the blade disappeared to the hilt. The Outrider collapsed, ripping its arm free as it fell.

Blood poured from the knights wound, dark and immediate spilling over the carved silver of her armor and down onto yours. She coughed once and red sprayed across your chest.

Your face went empty. “No..”

The knight’s knees buckled and you caught her before she hit the ground and went down with her, lowering her into the mud and blood as if gentleness still mattered here. The battle did not stop but around you, for one impossible moment, it seemed to recede. Your soldiers saw. Those closest formed a hard ring without being ordered, shields outward and bodies packed shoulder to shoulder. The world narrowed to a small space of churned earth, torn banners, falling ash and the woman dying in your arms.

You pressed both hands to the wound and blood seeped between your fingers immediately. “No, no, no-” you whispered and the words broke with each breath. “Stay with me..please stay with me..”

The knight tried to speak but only blood came first. You bent closer, one hand sliding behind her head, uncaring of the mud and the gore, the creatures still screaming beyond the ring. “Do not..” you said. “Do not do this..”

You pressed harder against the wound, as if command could hold blood inside a body that had already been opened too deeply. The knight’s hand lifted with visible effort and it caught weakly at the edge of your armor.

“My…princess..”

“Do not call me that.” Your voice cracked. “Not now..”

Her mouth trembled it might have been meant to be a smile. “I failed you.”

The words shattered something. “No.” Your head shook once violently. “No. You did not fail me.”

“I let them-”

“You saved me!”

The knight’s breath hitched and blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth. “You saved me..” you said again, louder, as if the battlefield needed to hear it, as if the gods themselves needed to write it down correctly. “You have always saved me.”

Her eyes glistened or maybe it was only blood and smoke and the reflection of fire. Your forehead lowered until it nearly touched hers. “Stay..” you begged. It was not a queen’s order or a princess’s command. Just a girl asking the first person who had ever sworn to her not to leave. „Please..”

The knight’s hand slid from your armor to your wrist, her fingers were slick with blood. “Forgive..me.”

A sob tore out of you. “There is nothing to forgive.” The knight looked at you a moment longer till her body eased. The tension left her all at once and her hand loosened around your wrist. Her eyes remained open, fixed on you and already seeing nothing.

You froze with your hands still pressed to the wound. Blood kept moving beneath them for another second, then even that began to slow. Your soldiers held the ring and killed anything that came too close, but their voices had changed. The rage was still there, but under it now was grief. Some of them had seen her die, others knew by the way the line around you stiffened.

The first knight sworn to you was gone. And you were kneeling in the blood with her body in your arms. Natasha reached you through the ring a few seconds later, though it felt like she had crossed a lifetime. “Y/n.”

You did not look up. Your white braid hung forward, loose and darkened with blood at the ends and your armor was red where the knight had coughed onto you. “Y/n..” Natasha said again.

A sound came out of you and Natasha crouched beside you, one hand reaching for your shoulder. “We have to move.”

“No.”

The word was immediate and Natasha’s chest tightened. “Listen to me.”

“No.”

The soldiers around you shifted with uneas, still holding the circle as more creatures hurled themselves into the shield wall. One went down inches from Natasha’s back while another was speared through the throat by a mountain guard with tears running through the blood on his face.

Natasha looked at the knight, at the wound and the open eyes. Then back at you. “I’m sorry..” she said and meant it with a force that hurt. “I am so sorry.”

You bent over the body, clutching her tighter. “She was mine..” Natasha’s throat closed.

“She was mine before anyone was..” you said, voice breaking apart. “Before the crown. Before the war. Before they all decided I was something worth kneeling to. She was there.”

“I know-“

“You don’t.”

The words struck, but Natasha let them. You were crying now, silently and then not silently, tears carving clean tracks through ash and blood on your face. Your hands shook against the knight’s armor. An Outrider slammed into the soldier wall behind you and the line buckled. Someone screamed and another soldier filled the space and drove a spear through its mouth.

Natasha’s instincts screamed. Everything was collapsing into one terrible point and you were kneeling in it, unable to let go. So, Natasha grabbed your arm and you jerked away violently. “Do not touch me!”

“We have to go.”

“I said no!”

Your voice cracked the air hard enough that one of the soldiers flinched. Your grief had teeth now and it came with authority and danger and something hot enough to burn everything around it. Natasha did not back off, she had been afraid of many things in her life but was not afraid of your grief. She moved in fast, caught your face between both hands and forced your gaze up to hers.

Your soldiers reacted instantly and bladed half turned but Natasha ignored them. “Look at me!”

You fought her for half a second till your eyes locked onto hers. They were devastated and bleeding in ways no armor could stop.

“I am sorry.” she said again. “I am sorry. She deserved better than this. You deserved to have more time to mourn her but if you stay here, you die here.”

Your lips parted but no sound came. “If you die here your soldiers break. Your dragon breaks and your kingdom breaks. And Thanos still walks to Vision.” Your face twisted at the name.

“Do you hear me?” Natasha said. “He is here. He is on the field. Wanda is trying to destroy the stone and if we do not keep fighting, every death here becomes for nothing.”

Tears slipped over Natasha’s fingers and you stared at her like she had struck you. “I can’t leave her.”

Natasha’s heart cracked and for one second, she wanted to let you stay. To let the battlefield be damned, to let you hold the dead because no one had ever let Natasha hold hers long enough and maybe someone should be allowed to grieve before becoming useful again. But that was not the world they were in. So she did the cruel and necessary thing.

“She is gone.” Natasha said and your eyes went wide. “I’m sorry..” Natasha whispered. “But she is gone..and you are not.”

You made a wounded sound and tried to look back down but Natasha did not let you. “Stay alive.” she said. “Make it mean something. Make them pay after we win. But get up.”

For a moment, nothing happened. The battle roared around them and shields cracked. Men screamed, vhassar shrieked somewhere above, the sound still too full of pain and the ground shook with another blast against the Wakandan barrier.

Then you inhaled and slowly, you looked down at your knight. Natasha released your face and your fingers, trembling, brushed the knight’s bloodied cheek and closed her eyes with your thumb. Then you leaned down and pressed your forehead to hers. None spoke. Not one soldier around you dared and when you lifted your head, tears were still falling, but your face had changed.

You looked around at the bodies. At the broken banners. At your soldiers dying in the mud and wakandans holding a line that shook beneath impossible numbers. At the sky, where Vhassar twisted and slammed himself against the air, still trying to scrape creatures from his back and your eyes followed him and the last softness in your expression burned away.

Then you looked back at Natasha and there was nothing human in your face for one terrifying second. You knelt beside the knight’s body and reached for your sword, your hand closed around the hilt and blood smeared across the grip.

The soldiers around you straightened when you stood as if pulled upward by invisible chains. You looked down at the dead woman one last time and your expression went blank. “Bring me Thanos.”

The soldiers nearest you reacted as if you had screamed. Some bowed their heads, others bared their teeth. One began to sob openly while tightening his grip on his spear, the cry passed outward through your forces, not loud yet, not frenzied, but deadly. “Bring her Thanos!” “Bring the Khaleesi Thanos!” “Thanos!”

Natasha felt ice move through her veins. “Y/n-”

You walked past her toward the trees and the place Thanos had gone. Natasha stepped after you, but your men closed around you at once like a living wall. They came from every direction, forming a hard protective shell of black armor and bloodied weapons.

The war did not stop because Thanos had come. The universe did not hold its breath just because the man who wanted to break it had stepped onto the field. Somewhere behind the tree line, the open gate still bled Outriders into the world and the two hidden armies still fought to keep that flood from swallowing everything.

And Thanos walked through it all as if war was only weather. Steve reached him first, he came out of the trees with his shield up and face streaked with blood. Thanos turned toward him with mild interest and Steve hit him with everything he had. The blow should have moved mountains but it barely turned Thanos’s head.

The Titan lifted one hand and struck Steve aside with the kind of effort a man might use to brush ash from his sleeve. Steve hit the ground hard and forced himself up again because of course he did. T’Challa came next, black suit flashing through the trees and claws out, faster than most eyes could follow. He lunged for Thanos’s side, aiming not to overpower but to distract, to cut, to buy seconds but Thanos caught him by the throat. For one horrible heartbeat, the king of Wakanda hung there in the Titan’s grip, claws scraping uselessly against the gauntlet arm. Then Thanos threw him away and T’Challa crashed through brush and earth, disappearing into the smoke.

More Avengers and soldiers came but none of them mattered. That was what made Natasha’s stomach turn cold as she forced herself through the edge of the forest, limping now, one shoulder burning from a claw strike and one cheek cut open near the jaw.

They were not losing to an army anymore…they were losing to inevitability with a face.

Then the mountain soldiers appeared between the trees. They moved with terrible discipline despite the chaos behind them, forming a wall in the forest where no wall should have existed. Their faces were streaked with blood, some were limping, some had wounds that should have taken them from the fight entirely. But they had heard your order and they had obeyed.

At their center, you walked and Natasha saw you and felt the world tilt. You looked wrong. Your face was too still beneath the blood and ash and your white hair had come half loose from its war braids. Your armor was smeared with the blood of your knight and Natasha knew, with sick certainty, that you had not noticed. Your eyes found Thanos and Natasha saw your expression change. You stared at him as though you had tried to imagine him a hundred ways and none of them had been enough.

Then Wanda screamed and everyone head turned. Vision was there, kneeling near the trees, his body battered and his face full of peace that did not belong on a battlefield. Wanda stood before him with both hands raised and red power trembling from her fingers toward the stone in his forehead.

She was destroying it.

The Mind Stone cracked under Wanda’s power and Vision’s body arched, but his eyes stayed on Wanda. “I just feel you..” he said, voice breaking through the sound of the stone dying.

Wanda sobbed. Her grief tore through the forest and Natasha felt it more sharply than any explosion. It was the sound of someone doing the impossible thing because there was no other way left to love.

And you..you stopped. For one second, the rage in you faltered as you watched Wanda fall apart while killing the person she loved and Natasha saw the moment it struck you somewhere deep enough to wound..grief recognized grief.

Wanda’s red power surged brighter and Vision looked at her. When the stone shattered, light exploded outward and the force threw leaves and ash through the air. When the light faded, Vision was gone limp and gray on the ground.

For a second, there was only the sound of Wanda’s sobbing. Thanos stood several paces away and looked at what she had done. Then he smiled.

“No.” Wanda whispered, voice ruined. “It’s over.”

Thanos’s expression almost softened. “My child..That was not the end.”

He raised the gauntlet and the green stone flared. Suddenly the explosion folded inward and splinters of light returned to the space where they had shattered. Leaves flew backward through the air and Wanda’s scream caught and bent into itself. Vision’s broken body lifted, rewove, rebuilt with a horrifying, merciless precision..and came back screaming.

The mind stone reformed in his forehead and when Wanda saw it happen, she lunged at Thanos with a cry that contained every ounce of love and rage and horror a body could survive. Red power slammed toward him, but Thanos punched her aside. She flew back and hit the ground hard, her power sputtering out around her like dying embers.

Natasha moved and so did everyone else. But Thanos was already stepping toward Vision. He tried to move, tried to push himself up, but his body had just been torn apart and brought back wrong and still he tried. Natasha ran toward him, because she didn’t think about it. There was no plan left, only stop him. She launched herself from the side, batons sparking and aiming for the gauntlet arm. Thanos did not even fully look at her when his hand snapped out and the blow hit her across the chest like being struck by a car. Her body slammed into a tree with enough force to crack bark. Pain exploded through her ribs and the world went white, then black at the edges. She hit the ground on one knee, choking on air that would not come.

When her vision cleared, she saw Thanos reach Vision. He grabbed him by the neck and lifted him. She tried to stand but her legs failed. Thanos raised his other hand toward the stone..till a small shadow moved behind him. You came through the smoke with a scream that tore the forest apart.

Your men had opened enough of a path and you hurled yourself through it, sword drawn back, both hands on the hilt and blade angled for the side of Thanos’s neck. Your face was grief sharpened into murder, your braid streamed behind you. Blood flew from the edge of your armor and the sound that came from your throat did not belong to a princess, a queen, or any woman who had ever been taught restraint. For one glorious, impossible second, Natasha believed you might reach him.

But then Thanos turned and his hand shot out and caught you by the throat. The impact stopped you midair and your sword fell from your fingers. It hit the ground point first, then tipped into the leaves. The force of the catch drove every breath from your body and your hands flew to his arm with fingers clawing at the purple skin as he lifted you higher.

The forest seemed to go silent when Thanos looked at you. His head tilted slightly, as if he had found something unexpected in the middle of all this noise and you just choked with your nails digging into his arm.

Your soldiers roared, the sound broke the moment open when they attacked all at once. A wall of them surged from behind with spears thrust for Thanos’s side. One soldier threw himself bodily at the gauntlet arm like his weight alone might drag a god down.

Thanks moved one finger, a stone on the gauntlet flashed..and the soldiers vanished. One instant they were there, roaring your name, the next there was empty air. Weapons clattered into leaves and a spear dropped and rolled against Natasha’s boot.

You saw it and Natasha watched the realization go through your face. At first, disbelief, then something worse. Out of a sudden, you understood what Natasha had meant. Thanos was not merely strong..no, he was indeed a force with no doubt in him. No hesitation, no rage clouding judgment or grief to reach for. No crack obvious enough for a blade. He erased people because they were in the way and then he looked back at you.

“So young.” he said, his voice was almost gentle „And so brave.” You glared at him with pure, helpless hatred, still choking and clawing at his grip.

“Your kind always fascinates me.” Thanos continued. “Kings. Queens. Children dressed in duty. You carry the weight of nations and mistake sacrifice for control.”

Your lips pulled back from your teeth but sound came out because his grip tightened slightly. “You would have made a formidable ruler.”

Your knee shifted, Natasha saw it and so did Thanos, but too late. A small blade slid from a sheath hidden near your thigh and you caught it between two fingers and drove it into his forearm with everything you had left. The knife sank into his flesh and Thanos’s eyes hardened.

His grip loosened and you dropped. You hit the ground hard, rolled through leaves and blood and came up on one knee coughing violently. The knife remained buried in his arm and for the first time, Thanos looked angry. He looked down at the blade, then back at you.

You reached for your sword as he took one step toward you and suddenly the ground shook. Vhassar landed behind you with a force that split the earth, he came down like night collapsing. Trees bent under the blast of his wings and leaves and ash exploded outward. Natasha had only enough time to turn her face away when Vhassar fired.

The fireball swallowed Thanos completely and burst outward with such force that every living thing nearby recoiled. Natasha threw one arm over her face and curled behind the tree that had nearly broken her ribs. The heat punched through the air, sucking moisture from her mouth and burning across exposed skin.

The trees in front of Vhassar bent black and burning. Leaves flashed into ash before they could fall. The fire roared and roared and roared, endless and fed by a dragon’s wounded rage. Time stopped inside the heat while Vhassar kept firing until the forest ahead was nothing but flame. Then, finally, it ended.

Smoke collapsed into the space where Thanos had stood and ash rained down in slow, gray sheets. You pushed yourself up behind Vhassar’s foreleg, one hand still at your throat and eyes locked on the burning cloud. Natasha lifted her head and for one second, hope rose. Then the smoke moved and Thanos stood inside the blackened earth.

He looked at Vhassar and for the first time, something like appreciation crossed his face. “Impressive.” The word fell like a stone. Vhassar snarled, smoke pouring between his teeth, preparing to fire again, but Thanos just turned away as if the dragon had become irrelevant.

He walked toward Vision again and you stared at him, shocked beyond rage. Then rage returned and you lunged forward.

“THANOS!” Vhassar moved faster and one massive wing swept down in front of you, blocking your path. Then the other curled around, enclosing you between black, scarred membranes and his own battered body. He lowered his head, rumbling deep and completely refusing you. You shoved against the wing. “Move!” The dragon did not. “Vhassar, move!” But he held you there protecting you and saving you from yourself.

Thanos reached Vision and everyone tried to crawl forward. Thanos lifted Vision again, this time with one hand locked around his throat and the other reaching toward the stone in his forehead. Vision looked almost peaceful for one heartbeat till Thanos dug his fingers into the Mind Stone and tore the stone free. Vision’s body went gray instantly. He dropped to the ground like something discarded while Wanda screamed from where she lay..The last stone glowed in Thanos’s hand and he placed it into the gauntlet.

The universe seemed to stop. For one second, every sound flattened. The six stones burned together while Thanos flexed his hand and power rolled across the forest in a silent wave.

Then lightning struck and Thor came out of the sky like a god finally arriving too late and refusing to accept it. Stormbreaker spun in his hands as he slammed into Thanos with a roar that shook the trees, driving the axe deep into the Titan’s chest.

For the second time, Thanos bled and he looked down at the axe buried in him. Thor shoved the weapon deeper, face twisted with grief and rage. “I told you..” he growled. “You’d die for that.”

Thanos grimaced and looked at Thor with something almost like pity. “You should have gone for the head.”

He raised the gauntlet and Thors face changed when Thanos snapped his fingers. Light exploded from the gauntlet and for a second, everyone saw nothing. Then the forest returned and Thanos stood there, wounded, breathing hard and Thor stared at him with horror dawning too late.

The gauntlet was burned and Thanos looked past them all. Then the blue shadow opened behind him again and he fell into it.

Everything went still till Vhassar’s wings slowly unfurled. You stood beneath them and for once, even you did not move. Your face was turned toward the place where Thanos had disappeared. The dragon lowered his head and a wounded sound rumbled from his chest. You turned to him as if waking from underwater and your hand lifted slowly, then pressed beneath his jaw. Vhassar leaned into the touch despite the blood running in dark lines down his neck and shoulder and stepped beneath his head, both hands now stroking along the black scales.

“Easy..” you whispered and he closed his eyes. The sight of it nearly broke Natasha. All that power..all that fire and ancient wrath.. And here he was, bowing his massive head into your bloody hands because he had failed to stop the man who had torn the stone from Vision’s skull.

No one spoke. Then, somewhere behind Natasha, Bucky’s voice came softly. “Steve?”

Steve turned and Bucky stood a few steps away, his rifle hanging loose in one hand. He looked confused, like something was happening to him and he did not understand why his body had decided to betray him.

His knees weakened and his body began to come apart. It started at his left side and moved through him like wind through ash. His arm broke apart first, then his shoulder, then his chest. His rifle slipped through fingers that were no longer there. Then he was gone and only dust drifted down where he had stood.

Then another cry came from the field and another. Across the battlefield, people began to vanish. Not just people, but Outriders too, some still mid lunge, collapsing into dust before they struck. Horses reared as riders disappeared from their saddles and a Dora Milaje warrior reached for the woman beside her and caught only ash.

“What is happening?” you asked, but one answered. Your voice rose sharper now. “What is happening?”

T’Challa turned toward Okoye, his mask retracted, confusion and concern on his face. He took one step toward her and he stopped. His body began to break apart, Okoye saw it and froze. “My king?”

T’Challa looked down at himself, then back at her, his hand vanished before it reached out to her. Wanda was next and Sam’s voice crackled over comms, panicked for the first time. “Cap?” Then static.

A few yards away, one of your soldiers stared at his own arms as they turned to dust. The men did not scream, just turned toward you instead. “Khale-” You moved toward him, but the soldier vanished before you reached him.

Another followed, then another. Your army, the one that had screamed for blood beneath your balcony, the one that had crossed worlds for you, the one that had formed walls around your grief, began to disappear before your eyes. You staggered back. “No.”

A young mountain soldier fell to his knees, staring at the sky as his body came apart from the chest outward. “My lady?”

You ran to him and he reached for you. His hand became ash in yours and you froze. The dust slipped through your fingers and Vhassar roared at whatever invisible force was taking pieces of it away. The sound was so full of terror that every surviving soul turned toward him.

Dragons were not meant to sound afraid, but he was. Because you were surrounded by vanishing people and there was nothing to burn, nothing to bite or to kill. He swung his head toward you, eyes wide and wild, wings spreading instinctively as if he could shield you from the universe itself. You looked at him, then at the dust in your hand. Then at Natasha and her face had no answer in it.

“What is happening?” you whispered and Natasha could not speak. She looked around and saw Steve still kneeling where Bucky had vanished. Okoye on the ground where T’Challa had been. Thor standing over Vision’s body, axe in his hand, staring at nothing. Bruce in the distance, half out of the Hulkbuster, turning in circles as people disappeared around him. And you. You, who had called a kingdom to war. You, who had watched your knight die in your arms. You, who had flown at Thanos with a sword and been caught like a child.

You stood beneath your wounded dragon while your people turned to ash. The battle faded around them, but not because it had been won…because half of it no longer existed.

A silence spread slowly over the field, more terrible than any roar. Your hand closed around empty air where a soldier’s fingers had been and your knees buckled. Vhassar caught you before you fell, lowering his head beneath your shoulder, pressing you upright with desperate gentleness. You clung to him like someone who had finally reached the edge of what could be survived and found the edge had moved farther away.

Natasha forced herself to stand and every part of her hurt. She crossed the distance to you slowly, afraid that if she moved too quickly, the world might take someone else. You did not look at her until she was close and when you did, Natasha saw the exact moment you understood.

Thanos had won.

The sentence sat behind your eyes before either of you said it. Your lips parted, but no sound came. Natasha reached for you, then stopped, remembering the knight, remembering your scream, remembering how little comfort hands could give when the whole universe had opened and taken what it wanted. Then you reached first, your fingers caught the edge of Natasha’s sleeve as if checking she was real. As if making sure she would not turn to dust too.

Natasha covered your hand with hers. “I’m here.” Vhassar lowered his head around both of you, a massive, wounded shadow, shielding you from ash that still drifted through the air like dirty snow.

In the field beyond, survivors of two hidden kingdoms stared at the spaces where half their armies had been. No one cheered or gave orders. No one knew what victory or defeat meant anymore.

The world had not ended loudly. It had snapped and had gone quiet.

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