Cassandra Nova's grip tightened around Danny Rand's throat as she turned toward the masked figure. The air around them seemed to ripple under her psionic influence. The snow at her feet twisted into jagged, crystalline tendrils, stretching toward the intruder like grasping claws.
But he stood unfazed.
The figure took a step forward. Cassandra tried to throw the ice shard, but she couldn't. The ice was under Aron's control. He raised a single hand, fingers curling slightly, and the monks who had been broken, beaten, barely clinging to life, suddenly gasped.
A golden-red glow pulsed from his fingertips, washing over the fallen monks like firelight on ice. Their wounds closed, bones realigned, breath returned to their collapsed lungs. The dead did not rise, but those on the brink of death were snatched back from oblivion. Their eyes fluttered open, weak but aware, their fingers twitching as warmth filled their shattered bodies.
Danny Rand, still struggling in Cassandra's grasp, felt it too. Strength flooded his limbs, his chi igniting once again. The pain that had been strangling him loosened its grip, and his dimmed fist sparked to life once more.
Cassandra's pale eyes narrowed, her grip on his throat going slack as she focused on the masked man.
"…So," she murmured, tilting her head slightly. "You did well to hide your death, Aron."
The masked figure exhaled, the cold air around him swirling. His voice was so cold that made everyone shiver. Danny's senses screamed, telling him to just run away. His chi wavered.
"I never died, Cassandra." His eyes were burning with a golden fire that should not belong to something so cold. "But you will wish that I had."
Cassandra scoffed, letting Danny fall into the snow with a muffled thud. She took a step forward, her coat billowing behind her. "And here I thought you were content playing ghost," she mused. "Hiding in shadows. Pretending to be a myth." Her lips curled into something between a smirk and a snarl. "What changed?"
Aron's fingers twitched, and an invisible force slammed into Cassandra's chest, sending her skidding back across the snow. She twisted in the air, landing gracefully on her feet, but her expression flickered.
She wasn't expecting that. She knew that he was alive but never thought that he would come for her this soon. She could run into one of her space pockets or into some isolated dimension, but now that he found her, her fate was sealed.
Cassandra knows that hiding from the Phoenix is impossible.
Aron let the Phoenix Force coil around him, its golden light flickering beneath his icy exterior. The monks, now healed, watched quietly as they held their breath. Even Danny, still catching his breath, found himself staring.
Cassandra straightened, brushing snow off her coat as if nothing had happened. "Fine," she said, her voice still as smooth as silk. "Let's get this over with, then."
She lunged.
The air between them crackled as she unleashed a telekinetic blast, the force of it warping reality itself. Snow and stone twisted midair, reshaped into a whirlwind of deadly shards aimed straight for Aron's heart.
But he didn't move.
He simply raised a hand.
The Phoenix Force erupted.
A golden light pulsed outward, consuming the oncoming attack like dry leaves in a firestorm. The storm Cassandra had summoned dissipated instantly, its energy unraveled at the molecular level, undone by a force far greater.
Cassandra staggered. Her connection to the attack had been severed before she could even register it.
Aron tilted his head. "Not so fun when it happens to you, is it?"
For the first time, genuine confusion flickered in Cassandra's expression. "What—"
She froze.
A strange, alien sensation crashed into her like a tidal wave. It was something she never experienced.
"What's going on?"
It was empathy.
Aron had reached into her mind, not to crush it, not to control it, but to force her to feel the suffering she had inflicted on others. Every life she had destroyed, every innocent she had slaughtered, every mind she had twisted—she felt all of it at once.
The weight of a thousand screams filled her skull. The agony of broken bodies, of shattered souls, of people begging for mercy she never granted... it all surged through her, drowning her in an ocean of unbearable emotion.
She stumbled backward, clutching her head as if trying to rip the feeling out of herself.
"N-no—" she gasped, her breath hitching. "You… you can't—"
Aron took another step forward, his golden eyes glowing beneath his frozen mask. "What's wrong, Cassandra?" His voice was laced with mockery. "Don't like the taste of your own medicine?"
She dropped to her knees, her hands digging into the snow. She was hyperventilating. Tears streamed down her face... real, genuine tears, foreign to someone who had never truly felt before.
She felt.
And she hated it.
All that pain... Screaming... Everything, she hated everything...
Aron crouched in front of her, tilting his head like a predator watching its prey struggle. "This is only a fraction of what you've done," he whispered. "A mere drop in the ocean of suffering you've created. Tell me, how does it feel?"
Cassandra let out a strangled sob.
Her body convulsed as wave after wave of raw, unfiltered agony wracked her nerves. She saw them. The faces of the people she had crushed, the eyes of children she had burned from existence, the minds she had wiped clean. They stared at her. Reached for her. Pulled at her with grasping hands, whispering, screaming, pleading.
"Stop," she choked. "STOP!"
Aron smiled.
"No."
He reached forward, his fingers brushing her temple.
Her body seized. Her eyes rolled back as her own mind betrayed her, dragging her into the abyss she had so carelessly tossed others into.
Danny Rand, watching from the side, could barely process what he was witnessing. He had seen Cassandra Nova tear through powerful warriors like paper, had seen her rip through the minds of elite monks with a thought. But now…
She was nothing.
A crumbling, weeping mess on her knees before Aron.
Cassandra let out a ragged gasp as the Phoenix Force coiled tighter around her mind. The emotions kept pouring in, burning her from the inside out.
"Mercy…" she whispered.
Aron's fingers twitched. The Phoenix Force pulsed.
Then, just as suddenly as it had started—
He stopped.
Cassandra collapsed forward, barely catching herself before she hit the snow. She trembled, her entire body wracked with silent sobs. The weight of what she had felt, what she had done, still clung to her like a sickness she couldn't shake.
Aron stood. "Now you die." He flicked his fingers.
A wisp of dark purple energy slithered through the air, its presence more ominous than any force she had ever encountered. It coiled around her body, sinking into her flesh like venom. She gasped, clawing at her arms, her chest, her face—anywhere she could feel the corruption spreading.
"No...!"
Her voice broke into a whisper.
Her flesh blackened.
Her veins pulsed with unnatural energy.
Her very essence, her soul, began unraveling.
Everyone watched in stunned silence as Cassandra Nova's body started to disintegrate from the inside out. Her molecules, her very existence, were being erased, stripped away layer by layer. Her skin flaked off like ash caught in the wind. Her bones cracked apart, fading into oblivion before they could hit the ground.
Cassandra screamed—a sound that carried no power, no authority, only raw fear.
For the first time, she had no control.
She reached out with her mind, desperate to latch onto anything—Aron, Danny, the monks, even the snow beneath her feet. But there was nothing. The world rejected her, the Death Aura rejecting even the concept of her presence.
Her body faded, piece by piece, until the last remnants of her existence dissolved into the air.
Cassandra Nova was gone.
But her suffering had just begun.
...
[The Realm of Death]
Darkness.
Silence.
The weight of eternity pressed against her.
Cassandra opened her eyes—if she still had them. She was aware again, but she had no body, no form. Only a lingering sense of self, a twisted knot of consciousness drifting in an endless void.
Then, a voice... soft, melodic, yet laced with something ancient and cruel.
A giggle.
"Oh, my, my…"
The darkness parted, revealing a vast throne room draped in shadows and cold fire. The very air shimmered with the weight of lost souls, their whispers an eternal chorus of suffering.
Before her stood a towering figure, her presence both mesmerizing and horrifying.
Lady Death.
Her gown was woven from the void itself, trailing into infinity, her skin a pale luminescence that defied the abyss surrounding her. Deep violet lips curled into an amused smirk, and her hollow, otherworldly eyes gleamed with cruel delight.
She leaned forward, resting her chin on a delicate hand, her fingers tapping rhythmically.
"My dear Cassandra Nova," Lady Death cooed. "You have finally arrived."
Cassandra tried to speak, but her words were stolen, lost in the void before they could form.
Lady Death giggled again, a sound like breaking glass. "Speechless? That's rare for you." She reached out with a single finger, tapping the space where Cassandra's soul should be.
A pulse of agony erupted through Cassandra's very essence.
She shrieked, her cries lost in the infinite halls of Death's domain.
Lady Death sighed dramatically. "I must say, Aron has a way of delivering me the most delicious souls. First, Apocalypse. Now you." She tilted her head, considering. "You, Cassandra, are something special. So utterly, completely corrupt... you don't even regret your sins, do you?"
Cassandra trembled, the weight of endless suffering pressing against her like a tidal wave. She tried to move, to escape, but there was nowhere to go.
Lady Death's smirk widened. "How wonderful."
She rose from her throne, her form shifting, twisting, towering over Cassandra like an eclipse swallowing the last light of the universe.
"I think you deserve something special," she whispered.
With a flick of her wrist, the void tore open.
A chasm of endless torment stretched before Cassandra, filled with the wails of those who had been condemned before her. A pit of pure, undiluted suffering.
The deepest part of Death's realm.
A place for those beyond redemption.
A place where even the concept of hope had been slaughtered.
Lady Death grabbed Cassandra by what remained of her essence, her grip gentle yet unbreakable. She leaned in close, whispering into the shattered remnants of Cassandra's being.
"You will suffer forever, Cassandra Nova."
And then, she threw her into the abyss.
Cassandra fell.
Her screams stretched into eternity.
"Now, all that's left is Thanos... It's about time for the final showdown. The Mad Titan vs The Asgardians vs My Love..." Lady Death giggled with a blush as she could still remember the pleasure Aron gave her the last time. "Hurry up, love... I am barely holding on to my urges."
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[14 advance chapters] [No double billing]
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