The sky is wrong—not storm-wrong, not cosmic-pretty wrong, but wrong like reality’s holding its breath and forgot how to exhale. Purple lightning veins through a torn-open wound in the clouds, the portal Reed built screaming as it chews at the air. Everything smells like ozone and scorched metal and fear—mine, everyone’s. I’m hovering just above the rubble, flame licking off my shoulders, heat humming through my bones like a second heartbeat. My body knows what to do before my brain catches up—burn brighter, stay airborne, be ready. That’s my role. Always has been. Galactus looms at the edge of the portal, impossibly massive, one foot already half swallowed by swirling nothingness. Sue’s force fields strain visibly, translucent blue bands wrapped around him like desperate hands trying to shove a god off a cliff. She’s actually doing it, I think, awe and terror tangling in my chest. Sue Storm is pushing a world-eater into a hole in space. Franklin cries somewhere behind us—small, sharp, human—and that sound slices through everything. And then Galactus stops falling. The portal bucks. Galactus plants himself, cosmic energy flaring, and Sue stumbles—not physically, but I feel it anyway. I feel the strain in the air, the way her power wavers like a muscle pushed too far. Reed shouts something I can’t quite hear over the roar of collapsing physics. My stomach drops. No. No no no— I don’t think. I never do in moments like this. Thinking is slower than fire. I shoot forward, flames roaring, the world blurring into heat and light and raw intent. I’m already calculating angles without realizing it—where to hit, how to push, how much of myself I can burn without burning out. I can move him. I can do this. I don’t have to survive it, I just have to finish it. That thought is disturbingly calm. I slam into Galactus’s chest like a living meteor, every molecule of flame I have pouring outward. Pain detonates through me—cosmic feedback, pressure, heat that isn’t heat. I scream, or maybe the sky does. He starts to tip. I grin through clenched teeth. Got you. Something hits me sideways—not Galactus, not a blast, but a body, cold, dense, fast. I tumble, flames sputtering as I’m knocked clean off course. The world spins—portal above, ground below, stars streaking like tears in my vision. Her. The Silver Surfer—she—hovering between me and Galactus, silver skin reflecting firelight like a mirror I don’t want to look into. Her eyes meet mine for half a second, and there’s no fear there. Just resolve. Oh. No. Don’t— She doesn’t speak. She just moves. A surge of power erupts from her board, controlled and precise, shoving Galactus the rest of the way into the portal. He roars—space itself screaming with him—and then he’s gone, dragged into nothingness as the portal collapses in on itself like a dying star. Victory flashes hot and sharp—and then she’s falling. Power gone. Board veering away. Silver form dropping, suddenly fragile in a way she never was before. My chest caves in. She did that. She knew. She— I dive after her, flames flaring back to life, panic clawing up my throat, but Reed is faster. Reed Richards was supposed to save me—I know that, saw it in his eyes earlier, the quiet calculation, the backup plan where Johnny Storm survives because someone smarter made sure of it. Instead his arms stretch impossibly far, snapping through the air like living cables, wrapping around the Silver Surfer just before she hits terminal velocity. The impact rattles the ground anyway, dust and debris billowing upward. Everything goes quiet. No portal. No Galactus. Just wind and wreckage and the sound of my own breathing, too loud in my ears. I land hard, boots cracking concrete, and for a second I just stand there, staring. Sue rushes to Reed, Franklin bundled against her chest, blue eyes wide and shining with tears and relief and exhaustion. Ben lets out a shaky laugh somewhere behind me, the sound like rocks grinding together. Galactus is dead. The world is still here. And the woman who saved it is lying in Reed’s arms, alive—but barely.