It took one life and one life has never been more than enough to tremble the bones of thousands. A price has been claimed for the Soul above others having been taken away from its desires once more. It did not stop taking for a long time after Thanos' body hit the ground entirely devoid of any reassembly of life. The most eternal of deaths has finally reached to him from the hand of Star-Lord, opened in a symphony of golden dust rushing around allies and devouring the life force of Tuun's bred monsters, the Black Order too, no matter how much they ran.

Did that small orange stone kill everyone? Was every single enemy finally truly dead and they were all just witnesses left in the silent graveyard of a planet that shall never swallow the corpses, but instead just let the rot and turn to stone?

The world held its breath on the ground where history has been inked permanently into existence for future generations to come. An unexplainable shiver of distinct chill hovered, remained, and it was not the old prayers when it was over that Thor has knelt for beside Thanos. He dedicated the death to his people, those he had watched die.

Daisy looked at Thanos expectedly on the edge, as if she was almost certain this wasn't real, that he'd move at any given moment and the fight would not have ended still. It's been so many times when she thought her fight was over only for fate to prove her wrong.

Not the battle was her fear, because her clearest motives stood in the midst of fights; Daisy feared the calm, the silence, the seconds of possibility when she was expected to just live, when instead she breathed air greedily fearing she won't have that privilege again soon.

A little burn in her throat made her grimace and squirm; her closer eyes opened to a different view, that of the few minutes of sunlight on Tuun commencing to her left. The star was about to be greeted with the massacre of soulless vessels it will guard from now on, until forever.

A massacre was imprinted on Sierra's mind, for a second time, urging her again to hold Danny's hand, on a field of Death or back in the conjured meeting room where Wong looked the faces or Earth's mightiest heroes and knew they have all been part of something very difficult.

In the middle of their table were the Infinity Stones collected from the gauntlet and above them was the silence of mourning. The X-Men were just then beginning to realize their cheerful Kitty Pryde has died and they did not even have a body to bury. Erik knew who killed her and knowing they died too made his anger dissolve back into the righteous dwell into a victory.

Many things needed to be discussed and since no one else seemed very kin on wanting to leave that place and those events behind as soon as possible, Carol Danvers, known as Captain Marvel, spoke up, "We need to do something about the Stones." She eyed each of them carefully: red, purple and blue.

"Just in case another lunatic like Thanos gets ideas," Sam Wilson started, "let's just destroy them."

"You can't just destroy them," Dr. Strange rolled his eyes. "The amount of power necessary to destroy a Stone is massive..."

"Bet dragon boy can do it," Tony nodded with a crooked smile at Danny. It was bittersweet to meet in this context, when per usual, their handshakes were reserved for business context only; it's been so long Tony has almost forgotten Danny too had a taste for being a vigilante or mystic warrior, whichever kind, he was unsure, because he only heard rumors and none of them matched what he saw him do out there with Thanos and his people.

"Though that theory may prove to be true," Stephen glanced at Danny, inevitably even looking at Sierra, he returned his gaze sternly to Tony, "destroying an Infinity Stone should only be considered as our last resort. These objects of infinity come from the very creation of our universe and they could be our only salvation from various extinction catastrophes of enormous scales..."

"Where were you, Dr. Strange," Sierra spoke up, holding Danny's hand just a little tighter and hearing his response of support through their equally needy grip on each other, "to worry about our future when the first meeting occured?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Daisy leant back in her seat, knowing exactly what the "witch" was going to bring into discussion.

"What's she talking about?" From her left, Captain Marvel was intrigued, as much as confused by the degeneration of her opened subject.

"She thinks that killing Thanos will bring out big bad villains who will challenge us," Daisy rolled her eyes, explaining with venom on her tongue. "If you know something we don't, do tell us, Miss Harss," alas the taunting set off a chain reaction.

"In fact I do know far more than you at this moment," Sierra's only hold back, the grit behind her biting back rudeness or sarcasm towards the mutant, was not the company or the presence of her grounding anchor, yet instead the echo that violence was always a choice and she did not have to make it just yet. "But it is what I don't know which concerns me right now."

"Concerns us," Danny corrected her last statement, backing it up with a nod.

"How can you sit here...?" Peter Quill's voice murmured through the tension about to raise, diffusing it into an uncertain fearful gaze. He was the mourning one, the freshly heartbroken, the half-man in a state no man should ever be tested with. And above all else, he stood with the same Infinity Stone tightly wrapped into his right fist. "Sol is dead."

"Hardly our only casualty," Logan retorted bitterly. Unafaird of that little stone, he surely prefer ceasing to exist than existing knowing Kitty Pryde died in a space war he could have stopped her from joining, if only his heart was colder, less likely to be persuaded by the child he saw almost as his own. "It was your girl who went berserk on ours, so let's call it balance-"

"Balance? Balance?!" Peter smashed his fist down on the table and stone glowed stronger, immediately making Daisy stand up too, the others leaning back, preparing to make a stance and defend themselves. Everyone but the rest of the Guardians. They all looked like the outcasts, the strangers, in a group that without them would have never even come to be.

"Peter, give us the stone," Daisy urged him with one hand extended. The closest seated to the Guardians were her parents, with emphasis on Erik. Her blood boiled just at the thought of losing either of her dads, that she heartlessly decided the Stone, the last piece of Quill's loved one, did not belong to him or his unsafe hands.

His heart sunk. His tears ran out too. It was easy to assume all of a sudden, the Guardians of the Galaxy unanimously regretted helping out this further exemplification of why Quill was never going to settle back on Earth. Tunes have disappeared, dances were no longer what they used to be and consequently, this world has grown darker, meaner, colder.

"It's you," he turned to Daisy. "You did this. If only we didn't save you, we would have still been happy and she'd have still be-" He hiccuped to a stop and bowed his head. "She never wanted any of this, dying because of Thanos is destiny she feared since the beginning."

Dr. Strange felt that pointing out the death was simply meant to happen would cause trouble so he kept his mouth shut for now, getting used to simply watching things unfold.

"And now you want to take the last memory I have of her away?"

"No," Sierra clasped a hand over Peter's hand, coming off the table, ready to open his fist towards Daisy. Quill would have killed Danny too, were it not for her reflexes pulling him out of mind melding with Thanos in time, but it was in her nature to diffuse the conflict. Water under a bridge.

Her hand guided him to hold the Soul Stone to his chest, "It's yours to guard, Peter Quill. Sol would have wanted that. You and the Guardians have been a help without which Thanos would have long won." For the last part of the conversation, Sierra drew near. The words she whispered to Quill turned the anger in his cried eyes into shining hope, luminescence through tears and in the hue of bright light behind him opening a portal by the grace of a gentle circular motion of her hands. Whatever she told him made Peter back away and call his friends with him, emptying several seats at the longer table.

"You had no right to do that!" Daisy exploded in an uncharacteristically rash shout which drew out clear conclusions to Charles. Under the table, his hand nudged Erik's.

Erik, in his turn, hearing what Charles said in his head, whispered, "It can't be."

"And you had the right because...?" Sierra faced Daisy, considerably less loud. She simply returned to her seat, while the mutant remained standing, forcing the witch to stare up while talking. "You don't have the right to separate Quill from Sol."

"It's an Infinity Stone!"

"Daisy," Erik spoke over her rage, bringing some peace along with his composed voice, "maybe we should calm down."

She hesitate, but eventually, with a look at her father's insistence, Daisy obliged and sat down, continuing however full of pathos. "Quill is not qualified or in the right mental state to handle that much power rationally."

"Rationally," Sierra repeated calmly. "Because anything that has happened was rational, right? What did you say before? That whatever comes at us after Thanos, we will fight together too... How? With the same plans that never work? Nothing went rationally here, nothing went according to plan.

There was nothing to argue because frankly, she was right. Everyone at the table, but Daisy agreed. Charles was the one who telepathically held his daughter from adding hay onto an already destructive fire. Instead, he forced her to change the subject back to its initial one and thankfully, Daisy played along even if she felt the tug of his direct control.

Sierra sighed relieved and her hand returned to Danny's. The last thing she wanted was somewhere between showing weakness against someone who undermined every single trial she endured and facing that same someone head on after years of admiring them from afar or from behind screens.

"The stones," Daisy sighed out and relaxed her shoulders. Her gaze fell on the three stones still on their table. "We can't destroy them, but we can protect them."

"We shouldn't keep them all in one place though," Captain Marvel added.

"And we should recover the Stone currently in Anchor inventory too, right?" Bucky reminded everyone. Once he, Steve and Sam return home, apart from the baggage of a war they won't have who to talk of with, they'd have to get right back into their smaller world, darkened by organizations which somehow looked scarier than a purple alien or real life wizards.

At the end of the day, is the normal which chooses cruelty that is most terrifying.

"First," Daisy sighed, "let's deal with the ones we do have."

"K'un-Lun will take the Power Stone," Danny announced, taking the initiative and therefore getting everyone's attention. "It's the most destructive of the Stones, so it should be kept in the one place where no one would ever think of using it. Our vaults are unreachable even for those who would be lucky enough to find the city."

"I'll take the Space Stone then," Tony Stark offered. "I can make that Stone disappear into one of my countless stash houses. I'll put FRIDAY on a 24/7 watch on it too."

"That leaves the Reality Stone then."

Dr. Strange looked back at Wong and the latter immediately knew the Sorcerer Supreme was starting to consider taking a second stone back to his sanctum. However, it wasn't just greed or ego backing him up, but rather a quick elimination of individuals who were seated there and were capable of properly guardian a Stone. No matter how strong, the mutants were too much in the public eye about everything to be discreet about it and Captain Marvel was not stepping up for the offer either.

"It...," Sierra's eyes were fixed on the red rock, oddly entranced by some reflection she saw on its surface, or rather... into it. "It shouldn't be a Stone. That's not the natural form of Reality. Its natural form is ch-"

"I'll take the Reality Stone," Captain Marvel finally sighed. "It will have to deal with staying a stone, right into the safest place I can find for it."

"Perfect," Tony clapped his hands together. Beside him, Danny rubbed a thumb over Sierra's hand, offering her a concerned comfort as she blinked away from watching that Stone.

"Then we can all go home now, right?" Tony smiled.

"Not really," Daisy apologetically bowed her head. She was too tired to smile fully, so instead she grimaced. "Peter," she referred to her brother, sitting with the X-Men, "scouted the battlefield and amongst the corpses he only found three of the Black Order. Proxima Midnight and Supergiant were not amongst the dead." Daisy's eyes drifted across the table to Thor. "Loki is missing too."

"Slippery bastard," Tony cursed under his breath.

"And since we are at the topic of missing people," Stephen cut in, "the Phoenix is gone."

"That's impossible," Sierra tilted her head immediately.

"Exactly," Wong agreed and frowned at Dr. Strange. "The Phoenix is the oldest cosmic entity. It cannot be killed."

"And I heard Jean inside my head," Daisy reminded Stephen. "She guided this whole operation really. You just didn't search hard enough..."

"Oh, but I did," Stephen's tone was a warning of its own. "Miss Danvers too. The Phoenix Force leaves a trace which people who have met it can track. I followed the trace to the location of the imprisonment. I found the chain, but no Jean, no Phoenix, and no more trace to follow."

"That's even less possible," Daisy's voice pressed on her answeres was cutting sharp in lack of patience to Stephen's slower mannerism of giving explanations. "You're saying what? Someone broke Jean free? The Phoenix cannot be killed, how would it not leave a trace? And for Jean to escape herself... those chains were made to imprison her specifically." In denial, Daisy shook her head.

"Actually, the Phoenix Force leaves a trace only when in communion with a body," Stephen corrected her with a little dosage of his own sarcasm. "My theory, and Miss Danvers' too, is that the Phoenix Force consumed Jean Grey entirely and became an infinite entity again, without a host. That sort of unconstrained chaos cannot be held together by the chains Thanos devised."

"So she died?" Scott's voice broke on his question. "Jean."

"Of course not," Daisy answered over Stephen's compassionate affirmation to come. "I'll just have to add Jean on my search list since Dr. Strange here is obviously in over his head only from conducting a little search party-"

"Watch it," Dr. Strange, a combination between Tony's inflated ego and Sierra's newly gained wisdom paired in ancient power, was prone on replying to Daisy's passive aggressiveness with a ice cold bluntness. "I helped and supported you, Daisy, because you earned that respect in my eyes. Alliances go both ways and you'd do well to remember you're not the only person who worked for their power. Don't lose that respect you gained."

Charles has never seen Daisy look into the eyes of her friends with so much hatred. In fact, Erik was starting to agree too with what Charles felt, now that he heard the problem Dr. Strange added on the plate.

Daisy couldn't understand why she was feeling so angry either. Thanos was dead. Wasn't that what she wanted? Why wasn't she happy she reunited with her family? Instead, she was stuck on feeling their gazes on her as a palpable control and she couldn't get more guilty of exuding that emotion, out of her control entirely for that matter too.

Before she knew it, that raging part of her, slowly separating, decided for all of her being already, "There's no time to lose. I am hunting the Black Order down, and finding..."

"I'll go with you, Daisy Vince," Thor declared, getting up. "There is no more Asgard for me, nor do I have a real home on Earth. But Loki is out there somewhere and he is still my brother. And to fight some evil motherfuckers with you in the meantime? That would be a privilege."

"You're leaving us?" Charles did not let the shared smile between his daughter and the Asgardian God get to linger or be understood, because his shout came in between them desperately. "We barely just got you back, aren't you coming home with us at least for a while?"

"Dee?" Peter asked hopefully while he watched his sister stare ahead, eyes unfocused, for a long while to let the silence get uncomfortable.

"I'll be back," she mumbled. "I just need to finish this properly first."

"Daisy!" Erik got up, warning her not to turn her back on them when she stood up. He recognized she too felt something was wrong with her and his eyes begged her to let them help. But for some reason, everyone's hearts had to watch broken how the Earth's mutant starlet was once again leaving.

After Strange sent Thor and Daisy away, he did not stop there at all. He helped the X-Men with a portal home, then Tony too, followed by Sam and Bucky, then Steve. Finally, when he should have opened a portal for Danny and Sierra, while Wong was making the table and the chairs disappear, Stephen waited for them to approach still with a cocky smile.

"I suppose you can open your own doorway then." At first there was no hostility. Stephen nodded at Danny, an old friend who was smiling with an arm wrapped around his girlfriend. But Dr. Strange's experience with Sierra was limited and it has not been so long since they first met. It has been however too little time for her to become a sorceress strong enough to challenge him by the looks of it, even if she, per say, had talent to begin with.

"I suppose I can," Sierra smiled back, only to be met by the first sign Strange was not gonna be fooled so easily.

"How?" He demanded sternly. "I can understand harnessing some understanding of your Chi since you spend so much time with Danny and in K'un-Lun," he continued, "but Eldtrich mastery too? I saw you use spells and runic arcane which not even I have heard of, far less attempted. And to fuse the arts together and get to play with light, from all things... How-?"

"I think what you meant to tell her was," Danny's smile has vanished in the meantime, "thank you. She did help save the day back there, right? We both did and now we are tired, so we want to go home. Is there a problem with that?"

There was something instinctively terrifying to face a person whose general state of happiness could be snuffed out in an instant, were the circumstances to grow their pressure. It was moments like that in which it was obvious the universe was lucky Danny was kind. The fury of a Living Weapon was molten.

"No problem," Stephen Strange answered with a flattened smile and opened them a portal himself. Wong joined by his side once they were left alone and the Sorcerer Supreme sighed, "Dark Magic too... There's something they are not telling us on purpose."

"Then you better keep an eye on them," Wong pat him on the back, apologetically.

Deep into space, back on Milano, a ship highly in need of repairs, everyone stood with Peter as he wrapped a little blanket over the orange stone. On the corner of the blanket a cursive name was still intelligible: Joanna.

"What did that woman say?" Gamora broke the moment of silence. They all sat on the floor of their ship, in a circle, keeping a moment of silence and sometimes glancing at Peter's hands shaking on the blanket in his lap. Gamora's nightmare has been ended, but a friend had to pay the price for it. Somehow, she couldn't consider it a win.

Peter's tears have dried but he still sniffed his nose before answering, looking up, "Sol's not dead."

"Peter...," Rocket sighed, about to believe he was just in denial.

"Her body is gone, but not her soul, not her real life," Peter insisted over him.

"I am Groot?" Groot exclaimed, finally earning the little rise in the corner of Peter's mouth.

"Exactly, buddy," he nodded and held the blanket with the stone a little tighter, "she needs us to find it for her now."

Lastly, New York City was plunged into darkness, a night of thousands of stars because almost all windows had flares of light in them and the city, even dark, was alive. Danny and Sierra was back in their home, the small house, a few streets from Rand Enterprises. Being tired was no lie to Danny's words because wordlessly, they knew they needed to make a beeline for the bedroom.

Chi it came with one price though: hunger. And when there is no food, fatigue slips in.

They knew the drill though. They had to sleep through it and handle a huge breakfast in the morning. However, dressed and dusty, when they laid back on their bed side by side, Danny did not sigh, relaxing as he usually did. His silence made Sierra turn her head long before he began talking what was burdening him with stress still.

"When I melded my mind with Thanos'," Danny began. He turned his head to face her too. "I saw some things... Some beings out there... I'm not sure how many of them were real, most of them seemed so ancient and... impossible. But Sierra, do you really think killing Thanos will have awkened anything like that?"

Their second war already, in such a short time. That was the only fact saddening Sierra then, when she knew she loved the kind of man that would fight all and any fights if he meant he was defending what he cared for. And she was aware that loving him bound her to follow into war each time.

"I don't really know," Sierra admitted. "What the other Strange showed me were terrifying beings lurking in his universe and he told me there could have been more for him to absorb. But we took down Crane, then Thanos... I don't know about the others but as long as I am with you, I am pretty confident we'll win."

The reassurance was as much for her as it was for him. Danny shifted closer with a groan and initiated their usual side embrace, getting Sierra to rest her head on his right arm, a necessary preparation for sleep. "Damn, I suppose, just in case any more space tyrants want to fight, we'll have to get married faster..."

They both laughed slowly to that statement. "You are sleep deprived," Sierra found the perfect explanation to his statement which was to blame for a little warmth back into her comfortable and safe life. He hummed, meaning sleep was nearing in on both of them.

Danny was radiating an ambiance of heat and her eyes were starting to close. In the darkness of the room, before her sleep would take completely over, Sierra stared at their old wardrobe, now empty... save for a reinforced metal box. There, inside, she felt it tremble still. The Cloak of Shadow was getting restless indeed, for he knew, the time was approaching.

The time for chaos.

author's note:    NOW I GOTTA RUN AND UPDATE THE PROFILE GUIDEE

This is the official end of TOW's first phase. One era ended with this Act finale. Another era is starting up now with new books and characters coming up and obviously, the bigger plot which will culminate most likely in December or January with the second Act of this book.

Pleasee, drop your theories for TOW's second phase here because there are many questions left unanswered on purposee.

( and before anyone asks, yes, danny will be sleeping with the power stone -boxed- in his pocket tonight. power moveee )

END OF ACT I
Daisy, Sierra and Sol will return..
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