Peter had thrown a massive wrench into the gears, and Knull was absolutely not going to sit idly by.
When Riot's Codex mysteriously vanished from the hive-mind network, Knull realized a tactical anomaly had occurred. The vigilant defenders of Earth were proving to be more resourceful than anticipated. So, the King in Black abandoned his slow, psychological game of chess. He decided to flip the entire board.
The Sanctum Sanctorum was the only location in Manhattan that Knull could not physically perceive or penetrate. The magical wards were too thick, and the vetting process at the doors was flawless; Stephen Strange's screening spells ensured no infected civilians crossed the threshold.
But even the most airtight, meticulous defenses have a blind spot.
That oversight arrived in a puff of brimstone and blue smoke. Kurt Wagner—Nightcrawler of the X-Men—had spent the last several hours teleporting across the burning city, rescuing stranded civilians and gathering lost combatants like the Thunderbolts. He eventually teleported his massive group of survivors to the perimeter of the Sanctum.
Following Strange's strict quarantine protocols, Kurt didn't teleport directly inside. He obediently held his refugees outside the perimeter to await screening.
But Knull didn't actually need to infiltrate the Sanctum. He only needed its exact GPS coordinates.
The moment the refugees gathered outside the barrier, the dormant Klyntar cells hiding within several of the "rescued" civilians violently activated. The black sludge erupted, tearing out of the hosts and instantly coalescing into a single, towering mass of alien biomass right on the Sanctum's front step.
Nightcrawler narrowly managed to teleport away before the sludge could touch him. If Knull had managed to assimilate a mutant with localized spatial-teleportation, the entire planet would have fallen in minutes.
"He didn't want to infiltrate, Spider-Man. He just wanted a target." Emma Frost's telepathic voice echoed grimly inside Peter's mind, projecting the horrific events happening at the Sanctum directly into his visual cortex.
"So, this giant blob of space-mud is an assassin?" Peter thought back, swinging frantically toward Greenwich Village. "Doesn't look very nimble."
Through Emma's telepathic feed, Peter watched the towering mass of black sludge hurl itself directly at the X-Men guarding the entrance. Cyclops immediately adjusted his visor, unleashing a devastating, wide-beam optic blast that shattered the blob into a thousand pieces.
But the biomass wasn't finished transforming.
Before Peter could even process the warning, the scattered sludge instantly pulled itself back together, expanding exponentially. Enormous, bat-like wings unfurled from the creature's back. The towering beast burst straight up through the antique floorboards of the Sanctum, its massive head rearing back to spew a terrifying torrent of black fire into the ceiling.
It was a dragon. Knull had manifested a clone of Grendel directly inside the safe house.
Knull hadn't launched a surprise attack to gain a tactical foothold; he had simply chosen to eradicate the stronghold entirely.
Endless waves of liquid symbiote sludge surged outward from the dragon's body like a bursting dam. Standing at the forefront of the defensive line, Captain America raised his shield, opening his mouth to issue an order. He didn't even get a single syllable out. The tidal wave of black slime crashed over him, swallowing the super-soldier whole.
A agonizing second later, a corrupted, pitch-black Captain America stood up, his white eyes dead and expressionless, his shield coated in alien sludge.
Cyclops unleashed continuous, maximum-power optic blasts to stem the tide, but the black ocean surged from every hallway and window, instantly engulfing him. Wolverine, Colossus, and the rest of the X-Men were swallowed in the blink of an eye. Iceman desperately blanketed the room in absolute zero temperatures, freezing huge chunks of the sludge into solid black ice, but the sheer volume was too much. The ice cracked, and Bobby Drake was dragged under.
"SPIDER! WE MUST LEAVE!"
Thor's booming voice snapped Peter out of the telepathic horror show. The Thunder God grabbed Peter by the shoulder, snagged Cindy Moon by the wrist, and launched them all into the sky.
Below them, the Hulk carefully scooped Kitty Pryde onto his massive back and leaped with earth-shattering force, clearing the block in a single bound.
The two heavy-hitters landed on the roof of a towering skyscraper a safe distance from the Sanctum. Peter stumbled forward to the ledge, his breath catching in his throat.
The black, liquid symbiote wave was bursting out of the Sanctum's windows and doors, spilling into the streets like a catastrophic flood. It aggressively expanded, devouring every stray civilian, police officer, and fleeing hero in its path, dragging them back into the dark embrace of the hive-mind.
"This is just... outrageous," Peter whispered, his shoulders slumping in sheer defeat. "We worked so hard. We came up with so many counter-measures to hold the line, and he just breaks our defense in a single second."
Peter looked down at the streets. All of their grueling rescue ops—Captain America's tireless defense, the Ultron drones, the bottlenecked bridges—felt entirely pointless now. Knull had just swallowed Cap, the X-Men, and dozens of others in one fell swoop. The street-level Defenders and the Thunderbolts trapped outside the safe zones were essentially doomed.
Peter turned to Thor, desperation in his white lenses. "Thor... how did you actually beat him back in the Middle Ages?"
"I could destroy this avatar directly," Thor growled, lightning sparking across his silver armor. "But sadly, Knull's true consciousness is severed from this form. My lightning would eradicate the sludge, but it cannot permanently seal the god."
Peter took a ragged breath. The black waves below were crashing heavily against the edges of Doctor Strange's golden barrier. The sludge was accumulating, rising higher and higher, drowning the first floors of the surrounding buildings. Manhattan was sinking into the abyss.
Even miles away, deep beneath the city in the sewer systems, Doctor Octopus witnessed the black sludge seeping through the grate covers. Otto slammed his fist on his console, activating a localized molecular force field, praying the invisible bubble would hold until the surface war ended.
"We have to go," Peter ordered, his voice hardening. "The Baxter Building is the only stronghold left on the board."
Just as Peter raised his wrist to fire a web-line, the air in front of them sparked. A golden Sling Ring portal spun open, revealing the brightly lit, chaotic interior of Reed Richards's primary laboratory.
They didn't hesitate. The spiders, the god, the mutant, and the Hulk all rushed through.
The portal snapped shut behind them.
Inside the lab, the tension was suffocating.
"We've lost complete contact with Rogers," Tony Stark said, his voice tight with barely suppressed panic. He paced in front of a holographic array. "The X-Men, the remaining Avengers, the Thunderbolts—they've all gone completely dark."
Tony turned, spotting Peter and his eclectic crew stepping out of the portal. He forced his usual, arrogant smirk, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Brought another new girl to the apocalypse, Spider-Man?"
"We are way past the time for jokes, Mr. Stark," Peter said gravely, stepping up to the console. "Manhattan is drowning. We need a win. How is the project coming along?"
"We're out of time, kid," Reed Richards sighed heavily, rubbing his exhausted, bloodshot eyes. "We've been running the synthesizers at maximum capacity for hours. The current coagulant yield will only lock the symbiote's molecular structure for exactly three minutes."
Reed leaned over the table, delivering the brutal reality. "Three minutes is a microscopic window. We cannot guarantee that you—or Venom—will be able to physically consume and assimilate a fifty-meter dragon in one hundred and eighty seconds."
"And that's not even the biggest hurdle," Reed added grimly. "To apply the coagulant, someone has to physically break through Knull's defensive line, get right up to Grendel's main body, and manually trigger the payload. And to top it all off... we have absolutely no empirical data confirming that your 'eating the Codex' theory will actually trigger a cosmic shutdown."
"Spider-Man's theory works."
A golden portal spun open in the center of the lab. Doctor Stephen Strange stepped out, his Cloak of Levitation battered and torn, his face pale with immense magical exhaustion.
He looked directly at Peter, his eyes intense.
"I just finished a deep-time divination," Strange announced, his voice echoing in the quiet lab. "I looked forward into the tangled webs of fate. I have seen the future where Knull is permanently sealed."
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