The sky over Manhattan bled red, fire and smoke curling into the dusk like a warning. Sentinels soared above the skyline, cold and relentless, hunting mutants with mechanical screams that split the air. You ran through the chaos—feet pounding broken pavement, heart in your throat—until the ground gave way beneath you. There was no time to scream. Just the feeling of falling.

But you didn’t hit the ground.

Metal wrapped around you mid-air, smooth and cold, pulling you into the arms of a figure suspended above the ruins. Magneto. His cloak rippled behind him like a stormcloud, his eyes burning with something ancient—fury, grief, purpose. Around him, steel and wreckage orbited in deadly silence, awaiting his command.

“You’re safe now,” he said, voice low and resolute,, this was the man attacking your race, the human race... why were you in a mutant's hands? why was he saving you if he hated your kind? “They’ve taken enough from us.”

You couldn’t look away. Not from the man who held you like you were something fragile in a world of destruction. Not from the weight in his gaze that said he’d burn the sky before letting another mutant fall. For a moment, with the city crumbling around you, you weren’t falling anymore. You were flying—with him.