Marvel: The Great Century

If the universe is a well-thumbed book, then Earth, not just one Earth but countless Earths, is the same page repeatedly filled in by the same character.

The official record of that day reads: In October 2026, a massive collision occurred across the multiverse. Earths collided, worlds merged, and seventeen forces took root anew on the same stretch of land. There was no warning, no countdown, not even a proper crash. On an ordinary morning, New Yorkers opened their windows and saw a nineteenth-century gas lamp hanging from a fire hydrant across the street. They turned their heads and spotted a six-meter-tall iron colossus standing on a rooftop down the block.

At that moment, memories were rewritten. Eighty-five percent of the population believed the world had always been this way: a Gothic church belonged beside the Empire State Building's spire, and a shipwreck from another era belonged beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. They went to work as usual, argued as usual, and cursed as usual when coffee prices went up. No one thought anything was wrong.

Only fifteen percent of the world remained, like old pages that refused to disappear in a book that had been torn apart and pieced back together. They floated at the edge of the new world, with no home and no name. Later, people called them Echo Fragments.

Later still, everyone forgot.

Except one person.

He remembered how every world ended. He remembered the boy with round glasses saying on a rooftop, "With great power comes great responsibility"; the blonde girl looking back for the last time; the purple-skinned Titan snapping his fingers and turning half of all life to ash; and the last Iron Man on that blue planet raising his...