Peter Parker's eyes snapped open.
He didn't wake up groggy. He jolted upright, his heart hammering against his ribs, his fists instantly clenching the unfamiliar, heavy velvet blankets. He scanned the room, fully expecting to see a towering, emaciated alien god reaching for his throat. But the room was empty. The air smelled heavily of burning sandalwood, dried herbs, and ancient parchment. Dust motes drifted lazily through the beams of morning sunlight filtering through a circular, stained-glass window.
He was safe. He was inside the Sanctum Sanctorum.
Peter rubbed his temples, a dull ache throbbing behind his eyes. "Did somebody drop a piano on me?" he muttered, his voice raspy.
We were not struck, Venom's deep, rumbling voice echoed in the cavernous space of Peter's mind. The arrogant sorcerer forced our body into a stasis sleep. We have rested.
Peter swung his legs over the edge of the antique bed. His boots hit the hardwood floor with a soft thud. Before he could process the apocalyptic weight of the previous night, his hyper-metabolism violently asserted itself. His stomach let out a hollow, echoing roar that felt loud enough to rattle the bookshelves.
Driven entirely by primal hunger, Peter stumbled out of the bedroom and wandered the labyrinthine, dimensionally-folded hallways of the Sanctum. He let his nose guide him, eventually pushing through a swinging wooden door into a surprisingly mundane-looking, vintage 1950s kitchen.
A massive, retro refrigerator hummed quietly in the corner.
Peter didn't think twice. He grabbed the heavy chrome handle and yanked the door open.
A horrifying screech pierced the air. A mass of slimy, neon-blue tentacles, covered in dozens of unblinking, slit-pupiled yellow eyes, violently lunged out of the crisper drawer, snapping directly toward Peter's face.
Peter's spider-sense didn't even have time to flare. Relying purely on his enhanced reflexes, he caught the thickest tentacle with his bare hand, planted his boot against the bottom shelf, and violently shoved the entire thrashing monstrosity back into the icebox. He slammed the heavy door shut, leaning his entire body weight against it until the screeching was muffled by the thick insulation.
"I completely forgot," Peter gasped, wiping a streak of blue slime off his jacket. "Doctor Strange's grocery shopping is an extreme sport."
"The kitchen is a restricted area, Spider-Man," a stern, deeply unamused voice announced.
Peter spun around. Wong stood in the doorway, his hands tucked neatly into the sleeves of his monastic robes. He leveled a disapproving glare at the teenager.
"Sorry, Mr. Wong," Peter rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I just woke up, and my metabolism is running on fumes. I didn't realize the fridge was a maximum-security containment cell."
"Casting high-level magic demands a severe physical toll from the human body," Wong explained, stepping fully into the kitchen. "To compensate for the immense caloric deficit, sorcerers must occasionally consume the flesh of highly specific magical or inter-dimensional fauna. It is not meant for the digestive tracts of standard mortals."
"Yeah, I think I'll stick to Aunt May's meatloaf," Peter grimaced.
Wong sighed. He walked over to a secondary, far less ominous-looking pantry. He pulled out a perfectly normal, plastic-wrapped turkey and Swiss sandwich and tossed it to Peter. Peter caught it flawlessly, tearing the plastic open with his teeth.
Wong then stepped up to the main refrigerator, effortlessly bypassing the thrashing blue tentacles, and pulled out what looked like a glowing, shell-less hermit crab. With brutal, practiced efficiency, Wong dropped the glowing crustacean into a mortar and began crushing it into a vividly colored, luminescent paste.
"Eat quickly," Wong ordered, scraping the glowing porridge into a ceramic bowl. "The Sorcerer Supreme is waiting for you."
Peter practically inhaled the sandwich as he followed Wong down a spiraling mahogany staircase. They entered a massive, circular study. Doctor Stephen Strange stood over a heavy oak table, his Cloak of Levitation twitching anxiously around his shoulders. Strange was holding a terrifyingly old, flesh-bound scroll that seemed to bleed a faint, dark purple aura into the air around it.
Wong didn't hesitate. He marched right up to Strange, snatched the dark scroll out of the Sorcerer Supreme's hands, and slammed the bowl of glowing porridge onto the table in its place.
"If I catch you thumbing through the Darkhold again, Stephen, you are eating Chthon's serpent-stew for an entire month," Wong threatened, his tone brokering absolutely zero argument.
Strange sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I was merely consulting the index, Wong."
Peter swallowed the last bite of his sandwich, his eyes darting between the two wizards. "Wait. The Darkhold? The Book of the Damned? Doc, are you insane? Are you trying to summon an Elder God just to fight the King in Black? That's like setting your house on fire to kill a spider!"
"I assure you, Spider-Man, my sanity is perfectly intact," Strange said defensively, leaning over the table. "When conventional physics and light-magic fail, one must explore unorthodox countermeasures. Knull is an extinction-level threat. And we are rapidly running out of time."
Strange swiped his hand through the air, conjuring a glowing, golden holographic clock. "I can only sustain the mystical barrier around Manhattan for so long. More importantly, Knull forcibly assimilated the Hulk yesterday evening. Once the forty-eight-hour threshold is crossed, the Klyntar biology will forge a permanent Codex. Knull will gain the genetic blueprint of the strongest Avenger. If that happens, he won't just break my barrier. He will shatter this entire island into dust."
"Okay," Peter nodded, the gravity of the situation settling heavily onto his shoulders. "So, how do we stop him?"
"We don't. You do," Strange corrected. He reached beneath the heavy oak table and pulled out a beautifully crafted, ancient longsword. The blade gleamed with an ethereal, pearlescent white light.
Strange held the weapon out. "Take this."
Peter blinked. "Doc, I punch things. I swing from webs. I don't fence. I'm going to accidentally cut my own arm off with that."
"This is Dragonfang," Strange ignored the quip, his tone dead serious. "It was forged from the tusk of an extra-dimensional dragon by an ancient Eastern mystic. It possesses numerous properties, including the ability to absorb ambient magical energy and shatter impenetrable barriers. When you engaged Knull's avatar at the docks, his localized void-shield deflected your physical strikes. Only a weapon bathed in mystical energy can pierce his defenses."
"If you had given me this yesterday, we could have avoided the whole exploding-the-docks routine," Peter muttered.
"Yesterday, Knull was safely locked in the Mirror Dimension," Strange retorted. He let out a sharp exhale, his fingers glowing with golden magical energy. He tapped the flat of the glowing blade.
The ancient sword instantly destabilized, shrinking and warping until it clamped securely around Peter's left wrist, seamlessly integrating with his mechanical web-shooter. It looked like a sleek, silver bracer.
"A simple flick of your wrist, channeled with intent, will deploy the blade," Strange explained.
"Handy," Peter admitted, admiring the silver metal. "So... do you have a magical spell to permanently banish his consciousness back to deep space?"
"Do I look like a cartoon genie to you?" Strange rolled his eyes, the heavy exhaustion of holding the city's barrier finally showing on his face. "That is the absolute limit of the assistance I can provide. The rest is entirely upon the Avengers."
Peter nodded his thanks, turning on his heel to sprint out of the Sanctum.
As he moved through the grand foyer, he passed a massive, ornate scrying mirror. The glass was currently projecting a live television broadcast.
Despite the literal end of the world, the Daily Bugle was still on the air.
Jonah Jameson was behind the wheel of a beat-up yellow taxi cab, a massive camera rigged to the dashboard, screaming into a police megaphone. The live feed showed the chaotic streets of Manhattan. The sky was choked with smoke. Hundreds of silver-and-red Ultron sentry drones—clearly deployed from Avengers Tower by Tony Stark and Hank Pym—swarmed the airspace, firing concentrated sonic blasts into the endless tide of feral, black symbiotes crawling up the skyscrapers.
But the drones were losing. For every alien the robots managed to liquefy, three more surged forward, tearing the titanium sentries to pieces with brutal, mindless aggression.
Peter stopped in his tracks, staring at the screen.
The entire city was literally drowning in pitch-black, writhing slime. The color of terror, of Knull, of the abyss, was black.
Peter looked down at his own hands. He looked at the sleek, inky-black fabric of his symbiote suit.
Hey, Venom? Peter thought, a sudden, sharp realization hitting him.
YES?
I think Jameson might actually be right about something for the very first time in his life, Peter said, clenching his fists. We look exactly like the bad guys. If I swing out there wearing all black right now, the cops are going to shoot at me, and the civilians are going to run screaming in the opposite direction.
The black sludge rippled across Peter's chest, sensing the logic. WE REQUIRE A NEW STYLE?
Yeah, buddy. We need to go back to the classics, Peter decided, his posture straightening. New York doesn't need another shadow right now. They need a beacon. Let's give them some hope.
Peter closed his eyes, visualizing the design in his mind. The symbiote responded instantly to his neural commands.
The pitch-black fabric violently receded. In a smooth, liquid wave, the vibrant, iconic red and deep blue washed over Peter's body. The classic web-pattern etched itself perfectly across his torso and mask. But the suit wasn't just a regression; it was an evolution. The massive, jagged white spider emblem of the symbiote remained, stretching aggressively across his chest and wrapping its thick legs around his ribs, contrasting sharply against the bright red background.
It was the perfect synthesis of Peter Parker's unyielding hope and Venom's terrifying, alien power.
Spider-Man cracked his knuckles, the silver Dragonfang bracer glinting on his wrist. He fired a web-line toward the Sanctum's skylight and launched himself into the burning sky.
PS:
While Doctor Strange handed Peter the mystical sword Dragonfang in this chapter (which famously belonged to Valkyrie in the comics and the MCU!), Stephen Strange himself actually prefers a completely different medieval weapon! When magic fails him, the Sorcerer Supreme is known to wield the Axe of Angarruumus—a massive, glowing mystical battleaxe he keeps locked deep within the Sanctum Sanctorum!
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