The Fall wasn't death.It was awakening.
The Stark sister didn't crash.
She landed — in silence, in smoke, in a realm that had forgotten light.
All around her, shards of broken realities floated like fractured constellations. Time was no longer linear. It bled in reverse, spiraled, stopped, and replayed itself out of spite.
She stood on a narrow obsidian bridge suspended over nothing. Below her, echoes of failed timelines shimmered—flashes of Avengers dying in alternate Endgames, Thanos winning in universes that never healed, Peter Parker alone with a shattered mask, Loki forgotten in cellars of time.
And above her?
The stars wept red.
A pulse.
Her arc reactor flashed once—like a heartbeat synced to a storm.
Then came the crack—like a mirror snapping under the weight of a truth long denied.
She turned sharply.
Behind her, the Mirror Man returned.
No longer fully masked.
Now half of his face—her face, scarred and aged—was exposed. But not just aged.
Corrupted.
"You wanted to see who you become?" he asked, stepping onto the bridge. Each footstep echoed like thunder, shattering illusions around them. Ghosts of heroes flickered and died.
She raised her repulsors, stance low, chest heaving.
"I'll never become you."
The Mirror Man chuckled. "You already did. Just not yet."
Scene Shift: Multiversal Borderlands
A blinding flash.
Loki clutched the tesseract shard tighter as the multiversal rupture carved the air open in front of him. He wasn't alone now.
Behind him stood a ragged team:
A blood-soaked Peter Parker, dragging a lifeless Venom symbiote behind him.
A variant of Steve Rogers, in Hydra black, gripping Mjolnir with trembling hands.
A blindfolded Wanda, floating three inches above ground, her voice whispering Latin incantations not meant for any realm.
Loki stared through the opening rift. "She's awakening. If we don't reach her now..."
Peter interrupted, voice hoarse:
"Then Oblivion wins. And there won't be anything left to save."
Back to the Bridge
The Stark sister lunged.
She blasted the Mirror Man with a pulse strong enough to break metal. He didn't dodge. He absorbed it—his chest reactor glowing gold-black.
He stepped closer.
"You think power is your curse. But it was your love that fractured the timelines."
Her repulsors stuttered.
Images assaulted her vision—
Tony dying again, whispering "I'm proud of you."
Peter, reaching out, lips mouthing "Don't leave."
A future child, never born, calling her "Mom."
She screamed and launched forward, landing a punch so hard it cracked his mirrored half-mask.
Underneath it?
A tear rolled down his cheek.
"Do you understand now?" he whispered. "I never wanted to become me, either."
The bridge began collapsing behind them.
Reality was crumbling.
She took a step back.
"Why are you showing me this?"
The Mirror Man pointed upward.
"Because something worse is coming."
And the sky split open.
From the heavens descended a throne — not floating, not hovering — but carried by six broken Sentinels stitched together from shattered Stark tech and Ultron's abandoned code.
Sitting on the throne—
Oblivion.
No longer a shadow. No longer a whisper.
He had form now.
He wore armor laced with cosmic threads, a crown of bent Infinity Shards, and his fingers — long, rotted, glowed with rewritten script from the Book of Vishanti and the Darkhold.
"Daughter of Stark," his voice echoed through dimensions, "You were meant to wake me."
The Mirror Man dropped to one knee.
The Stark sister didn't.
She stared into the godless being's abyssal eyes and asked, barely a whisper:
"What do you want from me?"
Oblivion raised his hand.
The skies behind him opened again — this time revealing Earth.
Burning.
And on it… the Avengers' Tower collapsing in real time.
Her lips parted. "No…"
Oblivion's voice rang clear:
"You get to choose, Stark. Let me finish what was begun… or sacrifice everything you love to delay the inevitable."
Suddenly—a scream through the void.
"Don't trust him!"
A portal snapped open behind her.
It was Peter.
His mask half-burned. His voice cracking. Reaching out—
"We found your real origin. Don't choose yet. Don't—"
SNAP.
The portal shattered.
And the bridge beneath her gave way.
She fell—
This time not into darkness…
But into her own memory.
A lab.
A birth not natural.
And a name she'd never heard.
"Project: Nova Iron."