Then Luke stepped out of the portal and arrived on Earth in the year 2007.
New York stretched out before him, alive and ordinary in a way that almost felt strange after everything he had seen. Traffic filled the streets, lights covered the skyline, people moved through the city without fear, without knowing what was coming.
This was before everything.
Before Tony Stark was kidnapped in Afghanistan.
Before Iron Man.
Before the public even knew superheroes existed.
Luke stood above the city for a moment, the TemPad still in his hand as he looked down at the timeline readings moving across the screen.
He had a thought.
Why not go straight to the point before Superior Iron Man used the Infinity Stones?
Stop him there.
Prevent everything before it happened.
Simple.
Except it wasn't.
Luke's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at the branching calculations forming on the TemPad.
Time didn't like direct interference, especially at that scale. Changing something small created ripples. Changing something tied to Infinity Stones, dimensional travel, and mass universal destruction created fractures.
If he stopped it now, the original chain of events wouldn't disappear cleanly.
It would split.
One reality where Earth had been erased.
Another where it survived.
Both existing simultaneously.
And that created worse problems.
Causality loops.
Paradox pressure.
Competing branches trying to stabilize around contradictory outcomes.
The TVA called them unstable timelines for a reason.
Once enough paradoxes stacked together, timelines stopped behaving properly. Events lost fixed order. Cause and effect started overlapping. In extreme cases, entire branches collapsed because reality itself couldn't reconcile the contradiction.
Luke looked back at the city.
"…Time really is annoying," he muttered.
Because fixing the problem wasn't difficult.
Fixing it without breaking reality further was the actual issue.
Luke closed the TemPad and moved through New York before stopping near the Sanctum.
Then he stepped onto the balcony of the New York Sanctum.
The moment he landed, he saw he wasn't alone.
The Ancient One was already there waiting for him.
She stood calmly near the edge of the balcony, robes moving slightly with the wind, the Eye of Agamotto resting around her neck. Her expression didn't carry surprise or caution. If anything, she looked like she had already accepted this meeting long before it happened.
"I was expecting you," she said, her gaze settling on Luke.
Luke glanced briefly toward the Time Stone hanging at her chest before looking back at her.
"So you predicted I would come for the Time Stone?" he asked. With the Eye of Agamotto in her possession, seeing fragments of possible futures wasn't impossible.
"Yes," she answered simply.
There was no hesitation in it.
No attempt to hide the truth.
Luke studied her for a second, then asked directly,
"So… will you cooperate?"
The Ancient One remained silent for a moment, her eyes staying on him as if measuring something beyond his words.
"You are asking for one of the fundamental pillars holding reality together," she said calmly. "And you speak of it as though you are borrowing a tool."
Luke didn't deny it.
"Because that's what it is right now," he replied. "A tool I need."
Her gaze sharpened slightly at that answer.
"The Time Stone does not simply alter events," she said. "It affects causality itself. Every change creates consequences, and from what I have already seen… you are standing at the center of too many possibilities already."
Luke leaned lightly against the balcony railing.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed."
That earned the faintest shift in her expression, not amusement exactly, but acknowledgment.
"You have already interfered with timelines beyond what should be possible," the Ancient One continued. "Most realities would have collapsed under the strain."
"But they didn't," Luke replied.
"No," she admitted quietly. "They didn't."
Silence settled briefly between them while the sounds of the city carried below.
Then the Ancient One looked directly at him again.
"You are trying to reverse a destruction caused by Infinity Stones through temporal interference," she said. "Do you understand what kind of paradox that creates?"
"Yeah," Luke answered. "That's why I came here instead of brute-forcing it."
That answer seemed to matter more than the others.
The Ancient One lowered her eyes briefly toward the Eye of Agamotto, fingers brushing lightly against it.
"I looked ahead," she said at last. "Not at one future. Many."
"And?"
Her gaze returned to him.
"In most of them," she said quietly, "giving you the Time Stone was a mistake."
Then after a short pause, she added,
"But the futures where I refused were worse."
The wind moved lightly across the balcony as the Ancient One lowered her gaze toward the Eye of Agamotto resting against her chest.
"At least in the futures where I gave you the Time Stone," she continued, "there remained a possibility your actions succeeded." Her voice stayed calm, but there was weight behind the words now.
"But in the futures where I refused… you eventually chose another path."
Luke remained silent, already knowing that wouldn't have ended well.
The Ancient One slowly opened the Eye of Agamotto.
Green light spread outward as the mechanism unfolded, revealing the Time Stone suspended at its center. The energy around it bent space subtly, ancient and powerful in a way few things in existence were.
She carefully removed the stone, holding it between her fingers without fully touching its surface.
"In those futures," she said, looking at the glowing gem, "your alternative solution destroyed this universe entirely."
That finally made Luke's expression shift slightly.
Not guilt.
Just confirmation.
The Ancient One raised her eyes toward him again.
"So I would rather place my faith in the possibility where you succeed," she said, extending the stone toward him, "than guarantee the destruction of this reality by forcing you into desperation."
The green glow reflected faintly across Luke's face as he reached toward the Time Stone.
*****
A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of the Webnovel release schedule, you can join my Patreon!
The Patreon version is 50 chapters ahead.
👉 patreon.com/Universal_Peace