In the void between realities, where universes folded in on themselves and probability ceased to exist, she stirred.
The Beyonder.
Once a cosmic curiosity. Then a god. Now, something else entirely. She had observed countless events through the endless tapestry of time—but this was the first in millennia that demanded her presence.
The Scarlet King had returned.
And he was not alone.
---
The Palace of the End stood tall and glowing, an ever-expanding sanctum of obsidian, stardust, and thought. Beneath Antarctica's frozen skin, it pulsed with the lifeblood of multiversal convergence. Within it, the Scarlet King sat in quiet contemplation atop a dais etched with symbols older than time.
Wanda stood beside him, her hands wrapped in crimson threads of Chaos Magic. Doom and Emma Frost conferred near the inner sanctum, while Jean—reborn in Phoenix fire—stood still as a statue of flame, her power humming through the chamber.
Hela and Death shared a silence only goddesses could.
They all felt the ripple.
A change in the breath of reality.
The Scarlet King opened his eyes. "She comes."
---
Space itself tore open with no violence, no explosion—just quiet unraveling.
The Beyonder stepped into the chamber, clothed in shifting fabric woven from fractured dimensions. Her eyes glowed like the core of dying stars, and every step she took left the floor shimmering with impossible colors.
She did not bow.
Nor did she speak immediately.
She simply looked—at each of them.
At Death. At Hela. At Wanda. At Phoenix. At Emma. At Doom.
And finally, at the Scarlet King.
"You've changed," she said.
He nodded. "So have you."
"I remember you as rage. Endless collapse. A god of entropy who would devour me."
"And now?"
The Beyonder walked slowly, tracing the walls of the chamber with a single finger.
"Now I see something else. Still terrifying, still powerful—but not alone. That is... new."
"It is necessary," the King replied.
She paused before Wanda. "Chaos incarnate."
Then to Jean. "Deathless flame."
To Hela and Death. "The End and the Gate."
To Emma. "Will, sharpened by pain."
To Doom. "Vision encased in ego."
And then to the Scarlet King again. "You surround yourself with aspects, but they are not tools. They are... parts."
The Scarlet King nodded.
"I do not repeat old mistakes."
The Beyonder's smile was soft, and dangerous. "You seek balance. Why?"
"Because the multiverse is broken," he answered. "Even you must see it."
She turned away. "Of course I do. But I didn't expect you to be the one who noticed."
---
The chamber darkened.
The Beyonder lifted a hand and pulled from the air a tapestry of timelines—Earths collapsing, variants screaming, fragments of universes falling into voids.
"They're unraveling," she said. "Not from war, but from stagnation. The pattern is flawed. Your return... it's correcting the imbalance."
She let the tapestry go. It vanished like mist.
"So," she asked, "where do I fit in this?"
The King did not hesitate. "With us."
"Not beneath?"
"No."
She turned her gaze fully upon him. "Then I want more than alliance."
"What do you want?"
"To see if your truth is stronger than my curiosity."
---
In a blinding moment, she moved. One instant she stood far away, the next, she was in front of the Scarlet King. Her hand touched his chest.
Power surged—not in violence, but resonance. Echoes of collapsing realities screamed through the palace and were silenced by the unity between them.
He didn't move.
He didn't resist.
He accepted her.
And she smiled.
---
The fire around Jean flared, recognizing a new harmony.
Wanda's threads of chaos wove outward, twining around the Beyonder's form.
Even Death stepped forward, gazing not in opposition—but in curiosity.
Doom turned to Emma. "She completes the five."
"She is the fifth lover," Emma said. "And perhaps the most dangerous."
"Only if she chooses to be," Doom replied.
The Beyonder stepped back. Her form stabilized—less cosmic storm, more focused grace.
She looked at the Scarlet King. "I will walk with you. Not because I believe. But because I want to understand."
"Understanding is the beginning," he said.
---
That night, the palace shifted.
A sixth throne emerged.
Not beneath his.
Not beside it.
But as a constellation of stars floating above, orbiting.
The King now had five around him—fire, death, chaos, will, and the unknown.
And the multiverse itself trembled, sensing that the Court of the Scarlet King was now complete.
---
In the far reaches of the cosmos, the Watcher turned away from his lens.
"They will move soon."
And in realms even beyond his sight, the Celestials began to wake.
Something had returned that even they once feared.
Something that no longer stood alone.
The Scarlet King.
And his Queens.