In the endless expanse of the cosmos, Captain Marvel was still tumbling helplessly through the void.
Suddenly, a blinding flash of light erupted before her, so intensely bright it nearly seared her retinas.
When the harsh glare finally faded, she stared at the space where the Ice Crystal planet had just been.
It was completely empty.
‘What… what just happened?!
Was the planet… destroyed?’
The realization hit her like a physical blow, leaving her with a suffocating, chaotic mix of emotions.
She felt bitter regret over her own weakness and burning hatred for Thanos’s ruthless cruelty, yet also a shameful spark of relief for escaping with her life.
Tangled within it all was a creeping, undeniable sense of dread.
She had assumed he was just there to conquer the planet, never imagining he would just outright obliterate it.
The sheer scale of the atrocity brought back the gruesome rumors she had heard about the Mad Titan.
Tales of him eating children for meals, bathing daily in the blood of his enemies, and slaughtering innocents by the hour purely for entertainment.
She used to brush them off as exaggerated myths, but now?
She firmly believed those horror stories didn’t even capture a fraction of his true evil.
He had to be the absolute most malevolent being in the entire universe.
‘If only I could just clench my fist and smash it straight into that smug purple face,’ she thought, her hatred burning white-hot.
Miraculously, that overwhelming fury seemed to act as a catalyst.
The cosmic energy within her veins slowly began to surge once more, actively repairing her shattered body.
She had no idea how it was happening, but she wasn’t about to question a miracle.
She immediately focused her mind, seizing the opportunity to heal her severe wounds.
…
Time flew by.
Over a month had passed since the annihilation of the Ice Crystal planet and Thanos’s return to Tyro.
Right now, he was sweating it out in the Sanctuary’s Gravity Room, relentlessly pushing his limits.
Only this time, the artificial gravity was cranked all the way up to two thousand times normal pressure.
After acquiring the Star-Absorbing Art and the Mind Stone, his raw strength had skyrocketed once again, allowing his body to perfectly adapt to the crushing two-thousand-fold gravity.
Knock, knock…
The heavy doors slid open, revealing Proxima Midnight standing in the doorway, clad in her usual sleek leather combat suit.
“My Lord, Corvus Glaive has returned,” she reported.
“And he brings vital news.”
Corvus was her lover, so it made perfect sense that she was the one delivering the message.
“Deep Blue, shut down the gravity system.”
“Yes, Master,” the AI chimed.
As the crushing weight vanished from the room, Proxima stepped inside and dropped to one knee before him.
Thanos rested his massive sword on the floor.
“What news?” he asked calmly.
Proxima kept her head bowed respectfully.
“Corvus reports that he has discovered an uncharted wormhole.
The destination on the other side is the exact location you have been searching for over the last four hundred years—the Milky Way galaxy.”
Thanos narrowed his eyes, a dangerous glint flickering in his gaze.
‘So, the plot is finally kicking into gear.’ He had scoured the cosmos for the Milky Way for over four centuries with zero luck, yet now it practically dropped right into his lap.
He was never one to sit back and play passively.
If he had the chance to wipe out Earth early, there was absolutely no way he was going to sit around and let its heroes grow into a massive headache.
Over four hundred years ago, shortly after conquering his first few star systems, he had dispatched scouts to gather intel on the Milky Way and Asgard.
While they brought back plenty of cosmic rumors about the Golden Realm, they had never managed to pin down its exact coordinates.
Hell, no one even knew where the Milky Way was.
The universe was simply too incredibly vast—so infinitely expansive that a measurement like a ‘light-year’ felt entirely insignificant.
Because of these staggering distances, intergalactic travel heavily relied on wormholes.
The void between two galaxies was often measured in tens of thousands of light-years, a gap very few modern warships could cross via conventional warp drives.
Therefore, natural and artificial wormholes served as the absolute lifelines of interstellar navigation.
After mulling it over for a moment, Thanos spoke into the air.
“Deep Blue, summon Corvus Glaive.”
“Right away, Master.”
Thanos then looked down at Proxima Midnight.
“You need to step up your training.”
His five generals were by no means weak by the universe’s standards.
But if they ever had to face off against the absolute freaks and walking cheat codes native to Earth, their current strength wouldn’t even be close to enough.
Proxima flinched slightly.
She vastly preferred the bloody thrill of the battlefield over the sheer, monotonous grind of physical training.
But the humiliating memory of nearly being beaten to death by Captain Marvel recently flashed in her mind, forcing her to swallow her pride.
She nodded firmly.
Thanos ordered Deep Blue to reactivate the two-thousand-fold gravity and immediately resumed his workout.
Proxima instantly flared her dark energy, frantically shielding her body just to avoid being flattened into a bloody pancake by the crushing pressure.
Unlike Thanos’s Power of Destruction, her foundation was built on dark energy.
But as the seconds ticked by, her reserves rapidly drained, and her legs began to violently shake.
Two thousand times gravity was simply too much for her.
Forget trying to move or train—just standing there without having her bones shatter was a miracle.
Seeing her on the verge of collapse, Thanos dismissed her, ordering her to focus on her own rigorous training outside.
Three days later, the heavy doors to the Gravity Room slid open once more, and a tall, gaunt man strode inside.
Clad in pitch-black armor and radiating a suffocating aura of pure death, he gripped a wicked, double-bladed polearm in his hand.
This was the infamous Corvus Glaive, the leader of the Black Order.
And the weapon in his grasp was his namesake—the glaive that housed his very soul.
The moment he stepped fully into the Gravity Room, Corvus violently stumbled.
However, his death aura instantly flared, allowing him to forcibly stabilize his footing against the immense pressure.
He quickly marched up to Thanos and dropped to one knee.
“Corvus Glaive greets you, My Lord.”
Thanos paused his workout, looking down at his chief lieutenant.
With his deathly pale, ashen skin and a gaunt, spindly frame, Corvus looked exactly like a walking corpse.
Thanos remembered well enough that in the original comics, this guy wasn’t exactly the poster child for loyalty, having actively betrayed his master the moment Thanos showed a hint of weakness.
He wasn’t going to outright despise Corvus for something he hadn’t done yet, but he was definitely going to keep a close eye on him.
After all, the cinematic universe version of Corvus was fiercely loyal, fighting to the bitter end against the Avengers without ever once taking a single step back.
He wasn’t about to blindly judge someone’s character purely based on half-remembered comic panels or movie scenes.
A little healthy caution was more than enough.
“Proxima Midnight tells me you’ve discovered an uncharted wormhole leading directly to the Milky Way,” Thanos rumbled.
“Is that true?”
Corvus nodded respectfully.
“It is, My Lord.
And during the expedition, I also saved someone.”
“Oh?
Saved someone?” Thanos raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Keeping his head bowed low, Corvus slowly began to recount the entire ordeal from the very beginning.