The sudden, suffocating darkness brought every intelligence agency on the planet back to their feet.
The terrifying sky phenomenon had appeared three times now. Most global organizations still had absolutely no scientific explanation for it. Not every military faction possessed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ultimate clearance level, and the hastily deployed "annual celestial anomaly" cover story was wearing dangerously thin.
In a secured, hidden compound elsewhere on the globe, Ajak looked up through a massive skylight, watching the sun vanish, and calmly folded her hands.
"The wishing process has begun," she murmured.
She turned to the others. "When the sky clears, we start aggressively preparing for the next cycle. Begin collecting spherical stones worldwide."
The Eternals answered in perfect unison.
Half a world away in Wakanda, T'Challa gave the pitch-black afternoon sky a single, assessing glance and simply went back to his training. He hadn't qualified to compete this year. He hadn't even rated a spectator seat. The previous tournament had settled that brutal question clearly enough—he just wasn't at that god-tier level yet. He didn't resent it. He simply hoped whoever won the cosmic power was originally from Earth.
Xu Wenwu and Ying Li stood quietly at the outer perimeter of the island.
As ranking Fraternity members, they had been formally allowed to stay on the grounds, but the wishing platform was well ahead of them. It didn't matter. Five hundred meters of glowing green dragon was terrifyingly visible from absolutely anywhere on the island.
Ying Li stared upward, her voice a quiet, breathless whisper. "Is this the Fraternity's dragon?"
She gripped Wenwu's arm. "It's so much larger than the Great Protector. And this color—is this a green dragon?" She paused, a small smile touching her lips. "The Great Protector asked to meet him, you know. Someday."
Xu Wenwu gently rested a hand at the small of her back. "We're already lucky Smith let us stay to watch the summit. Let Tony have his moment."
Tony Stark hadn't moved a muscle.
He was staring straight up at the sky, his jaw slightly open, wearing the exact expression he sometimes got when a piece of impossible engineering completely broke his foundational assumptions about physics. He had known, intellectually, that the ultimate wish went to a summoned dragon and not the physical balls themselves.
Seeing it, however, was fundamentally different.
"That thing can grant anything," Tony whispered to no one.
Shang-Chi and Xialing had seen Shenron once before, but the exposure didn't help. The sheer, impossible scale of the beast pressed down on the chest like raw gravity—not his size alone, but the ancient, cosmic weight standing behind it. Shang-Chi had trained under his immortal father; he had sparred with people who could effortlessly level buildings. But he understood deeply, in his gut, that if Shenron simply decided to end this conversation, absolutely none of them would even have the time to register they were dead.
At the edge of the adamantium platform, Happy Hogan had his large hand pressed firmly over his mouth. Pepper Potts stood rigidly beside him, doing the exact same thing. Neither of them dared to speak.
Harley Keener looked like it was Christmas morning. "That is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Nothing in any comic book looks like that."
Then, Shenron's booming voice came crashing down from the stars.
"Human who summoned me—state your wish. I can grant any wish. I may grant two."
The shocked silence lasted exactly two seconds. Then, every single head on the platform snapped around to look at Smith Doyle.
Tony pointed a trembling finger upward. "Two?"
"The dragon is recovering his cosmic strength," Smith explained, his voice entirely calm under the shadow of the beast. "The wish capacity naturally increases with it. But the tournament champion's reward is still one." Smith nodded toward the dragon. "Go ahead, Tony."
Shang-Chi processed this staggering information quietly. Two wishes. One for Tony Stark. Which meant Smith Doyle held the second one, and Smith could use it for—
Tony stepped forward, squaring his shoulders, and raised his voice to the heavens.
"Great dragon! I want you to resurrect my parents. They died in a car accident on December 16, 1990."
Shenron's massive, glowing red eyes pulsed in the dark.
"I am sorry. Your parents did not die in a car accident."
The cosmic words landed on the platform like a physical, crushing blow.
Tony stood perfectly, terrifyingly still. The color completely drained from his face.
Smith immediately stepped up beside the frozen billionaire and spoke, his voice a low, commanding anchor: "Tony. Drop the car accident. Just give him the exact date and ask for the resurrection."
Tony's face violently moved through several distinct things at once—confusion, horror, rage, and agonizing realization. He ruthlessly filed them all away in the dark.
"Great dragon." Tony's voice was suddenly cold and impossibly steady. "Please resurrect my parents who died on December 16, 1990."
Shenron's eyes flashed brilliantly.
"Your wish is very simple."
Howard Stark and Maria Stark instantly appeared on the center of the platform.
Tony looked at them, and whatever dam he had been desperately holding back for thirty years violently ruptured all at once. He didn't even try to stop the tears.
Howard and Maria blinked, shielding their eyes against the ambient light. They had been somewhere else—somewhere cold and distant that neither of them was ever going to accurately describe—and now they suddenly weren't. They took in the massive, terrifying dragon, the indestructible platform, the bewildered faces staring at them.
Howard's sharp eyes found Tony's older, bearded face, and stayed there.
"Tell me your second wish," Shenron's voice boomed, interrupting the reunion. "If you have none, I will take my leave."
Shang-Chi opened his mouth to suggest something, anything.
Smith Doyle was already speaking.
"Shenron. Resurrect every single Earthling who died in the Battle of New York against the Chitauri army."
Shang-Chi went completely still. He slowly turned to look at GOD. Smith was just calmly watching the dragon.
It had been less than a year since the sky tore open over New York. Shang-Chi knew the exact, agonizing toll because he had watched ordinary people he'd met in the city refuse to talk about the family members they had lost in the rubble. The profound grief hadn't even had the time to settle into functional scar tissue yet. It was still a raw, bleeding wound across the entire planet.
Shenron's eyes flashed a final, blinding red.
"Simple. Your wish is granted."
"All wishes fulfilled. Farewell."
The dragon dissolved into golden light. The seven Dragon Balls immediately separated and began to rise into the atmosphere to scatter—but Smith calmly extended one hand.
The cosmic artifacts stopped dead in midair. They reversed their trajectory and drifted gently down to rest on the platform directly in front of him. They were dull, gray, and already turned to solid stone.
Shang-Chi crossed the distance in four rapid steps and bowed deeply, his voice thick with emotion. "Thank you. Genuinely—thank you. You just gave back entire families."
Tony finally turned around from his parents. He didn't have the words for the sheer, impossible magnitude of what had just happened. He just raised a single, trembling thumb up.
Across the platform, the other spectators were profoundly quiet in the specific way people get when they have witnessed something they won't know how to adequately explain to anyone else for years.
And thousands of miles away, in New York City, in quiet apartments, corporate offices, busy street corners, and hospital waiting rooms, thousands of people who had absolutely not been there the day before were suddenly standing bewildered in rooms that knew them.