While the titanic clash between William and the Hulk tore through the planet like a second apocalypse, deep within the bowels of the emperor's blackstone prison, hidden beneath layers of seismic shields and reality-warping wards, two prisoners stirred.
"WHOOSH!"
A piercing beam of silvery cosmic energy sliced through the chaos, obliterating a defensive turret and crashing through a phalanx of royal guards like a divine bowling ball. Men screamed, bones snapped, and armor crumpled like tinfoil as two figures burst through the wreckage.
They ran like thunder made flesh.
One was sleek and shimmering, a figure of pure energy and grace, gliding just above the ground like a ghost dipped in mercury, the Silver Surfer.
The other was brute incarnate: towering, broad-shouldered, with the face of a war-hardened stallion and eyes like twin suns, Beta Ray Bill, once a champion of worlds, now a prisoner no longer.
The floor cracked beneath their steps as they sprinted through flickering corridors, alarms howling, smoke curling in their wake. They moved with purpose, toward the storage vaults, where their legacies lay sealed behind beams of searing plasma.
They turned a corner, and there it was.
A vault door of shimmering red laser grids stood between them and their salvation. Beyond it, floating in stasis, glowed two artifacts: a cosmic surfboard forged in the stars... and Stormbreaker, the mighty uru-axe, humming like a slumbering beast.
Bill and the Surfer exchanged a single nod, no words needed. In an instant, they split.
"HRRAAAAGH!" Beta Ray Bill roared as he launched himself into a pack of oncoming guards like a living battering ram. Plasma blasts scorched his hide, blades scraped his armor, but none could slow the fury of a Korbinite denied his war-hammer.
Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer hovered before the laser door, hands outstretched. His body began to glow brighter, hotter. Cosmic energy surged down his arms and blasted into the shimmering defenses.
"ZRRRAK-KOOM!" The first burst bent the barrier. The second cracked it.
Behind him, screams echoed, organic and wet.
He glanced back just in time to see Bill lifting a screaming guard off the floor by his helmeted head. The Korbinite's fingers tightened until—
POP.
Blood misted the air.
The other guards, wide-eyed and trembling, turned and fled. Some dropped their weapons. One soiled himself.
"POW!"
A final burst of cosmic fire blew the door's core apart. Sparks flew, and the red energy grids collapsed in on themselves with a screech, leaving the vault wide open.
"COME ON!"
Surfer called out, hovering toward his board.
"Got it!"
Bill grunted, flinging a broken guard aside like trash before charging in behind him.
Each grabbed their weapon.
Silver Surfer's board responded to his touch like an extension of his will, lifting him into the air with grace. Power flooded back into him, familiar and empowering.
Stormbreaker flew into Bill's hand with a deafening crack, arcs of lightning dancing across the walls. His eyes blazed with golden energy. He exhaled like a dragon waking from hibernation.
Outside, the world was breaking.
From above the arena, the city shimmered in strange light. Storm clouds formed in unnatural spirals, cloaking the skyline like the fingers of a god.
The clouds pulsed, green.
They weren't just clouds. They were... sick.
"CRACKLE!"
Lightning writhed through the sky like a crown of snakes, casting jagged shadows across the landscape. Civilians ran. Some fell to their knees. The sky felt wrong, like a curse whispered across dimensions.
And then, a flash.
High above the carnage, two figures ascended, rising like angels of vengeance. At that altitude, the stars began to twinkle, and the curve of the planet was visible beneath them.
They looked down.
And saw Hell.
A storm churned across the distant continent, green, gold, and unnatural. Arcs of golden light spider-webbed across the ground, drawing glowing patterns into the surface of the earth itself.
Beta Ray Bill narrowed his eyes.
"What do you make of this, Surfer?"
The Silver Surfer hovered in silence, jaw clenched. He had seen supernovae, watched stars be born and gods die, but this? This was new.
"I… do not know. But I feel it… whatever it is, it's ancient. And angry."
He clenched his fist, feeling his power return bit by bit, like blood rushing back to a limb.
"We must tread carefully. We're not at full strength yet."
"RUMBLE!"
The planet convulsed.
A continent, visible from orbit, caved in upon itself, imploding violently, before detonating outward in a blossom of golden-green fire. The shockwave tore through the atmosphere, a visible ring expanding across the planet.
The two cosmic warriors were silent.
Then they descended.
When they reached the battlefield, the magnitude of the moment hit them like gravity.
There he was.
The Hulk, colossal, monstrous, wild with fury. Every muscle on his body seemed to pulse with radioactive wrath. But facing him was something even stranger...
A man.
A man with hair like liquid gold, glowing with energy that bent the space around him. He was smaller, leaner, but every movement of his body was precise, calculated, and impossible to read.
They were fighting. And the world was breaking underfoot.
"BOOM!"
A collision of fists sent out a shockwave so strong that it cracked the clouds above them. Trees flattened. Mountains rippled.
The Surfer's eyes widened.
Hulk staggered back, a grotesque spatter of green blood trailing from a shattered right fist. It was already healing, tissue crawling over the cracks like something alive.
The golden-haired stranger stood firm, breathing slowly, eyes glowing like stars.
Who was this man who could harm the Hulk?
The air itself seemed to burn.
The shockwave from their last exchange hadn't even fully dispersed before Hulk lunged again, roaring, his body expanding mid-leap, muscles bulging grotesquely with gamma fury. The force of his launch shattered the ground beneath him, cratering the earth for miles.
William didn't move at first. He waited.
His golden eyes tracked the incoming juggernaut with eerie calm. His breathing was steady. Each heartbeat pumped more golden energy through his veins. He could feel it, the rhythm of the world, the distortion of reality around the Hulk, the ripples in space-time he was generating just by existing.
And then, he vanished.
Not teleportation. Not speed.
Precision.
He twisted to the side at the last second, narrowly avoiding Hulk's colossal fist. The green behemoth crashed into the mountain behind him, disintegrating half of it with the sheer force of impact. Boulders the size of buildings were launched into the sky like shrapnel.
William emerged from the dust mid-spin, slamming a knee into Hulk's ribs as the giant tried to recover. The sound was like a cannon going off underwater, a deep, concussive WHUMP that sent Hulk sprawling through a forest, leveling it like a meteor strike.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Three craters formed in rapid succession as Hulk tumbled through them, finally skidding to a halt several miles away.
He got up.
Of course he did.
His breathing was heavier now. His chest rose and fell, steam hissing from his skin. Blood leaked from his mouth, but his expression was unchanged.
Rage. Pure and endless.
He slammed his fists together. The earth quaked.
And then, he charged.
This time, William met him halfway.
They collided again, fist to fist, blow for blow, like the detonation of small suns. Thunder roared across the sky with each impact. Lightning bent sideways from the force of their hits. Valleys collapsed, rivers boiled away, and clouds spiraled into unnatural vortexes above them.
Every time Hulk hit William, the ground split.
Every time William struck Hulk, his bones cracked.
But William kept pushing forward.
Hulk grabbed a mountain and ripped it from the earth.
"RAAAAGHHHH!"
He flung it like a spear.
William didn't dodge. He punched through it, his fist a golden comet that vaporized the rock mid-flight.
From above, Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill could only watch in awe.
"By the stars…" Surfer murmured.
"That man… he's not just holding his own. He's matching the Hulk." Bill added, eyes wide with disbelief.
Down below, Hulk was growing angrier. More unstable. The very ground around him began to twist, corrupted by uncontrolled gamma. Strange green cracks formed in the earth like infected veins, leaking sick energy into the sky.
William saw it, but he didn't stop.
He landed a devastating elbow across Hulk's jaw, then followed up with a blinding uppercut that sent the jade titan hurtling into the upper atmosphere, trailing green blood.
And then, William launched himself after him.
They met above the stratosphere, where the blue of the sky gave way to stars. And there, suspended in orbit, they continued.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Blow after blow echoed into the void. Satellites shattered. Aurora lights danced violently across the planet.
William twisted around Hulk mid-air and slammed him back down, like a divine meteor. The Hulk hit the planet with a soundless detonation, creating a crater that lit up the world map.
William descended like a god returning to judgment.
He landed beside the broken crater, steam hissing off his shoulders. He looked down at the center where Hulk lay.
But the silence didn't last.