The observatory no longer echoed with dust and silence.

Though the machines slept, the walls no longer felt hollow.

Luthar stood alone in the central chamber, before a crude altar of riveted steel and repurposed diagnostic coils. He lit a line of incense along the altar's spine. The scent mixed synthetic oils with something older—burnt resin and machine ash. Not prayer, not worship. A ritual of calibration.

Liliruca watched from a distance, arms crossed. Her datapad rested on a crate beside her, its black screen reflecting nothing.

"I've finished reading the compiled history," she said. "The wars. The governments."

Luthar did not look at her. "And?"

She took a slow breath. "It's not a peaceful world."

A small flicker of approval passed through his optics. "You're adapting."

Liliruca stepped closer, her voice quieter. "There are no gods here. No adventures. Just frightened people and power in the hands of cowards."

"Then you are wrong," Luthar said calmly. "This world does have gods. Some of them are so powerful, we must remain cautious."

She sat beside him, picking up one of the copper ritual pins. "Can't we ask the Machine God for help?"

"No," he replied without hesitation. "We cannot ask for His aid. All we can do is study and work hard."

Outside, the wind howled briefly against the dome. Above them, the servo-skull pulsed once with a low beep—no intrusions, no surveillance. Yet its perch near the roof made clear Luthar had ordered it to monitor the skies closely.

Liliruca set the copper pin down. "What was your childhood like?"

Luthar turned slightly toward her, faint static whispering through his mask.

"I was not born. I was constructed, educated, augmented. Childhood, as you understand it, never existed."

He stepped toward the eastern wall, where a small transmitter array had been embedded. Its lights flickered red, then green. The uplink was active—low-powered but precise.

"We need to prepare," he said.

With a gloved hand, Luthar keyed in a short-code—brief instructions encoded in Mechanicus data-can't. The signal shot upward, invisible to most, but not all.

Far above, a satellite caught the signal.

---

At a SHIELD substation buried deep beneath the Rockies, one of the monitoring technicians stiffened as her terminal emitted a soft but persistent alert.

"Director," she called out, eyes glued to the data stream. "We just caught something unusual."

Nick Fury entered the room, flanked by Coulson.

"Talk."

"Localized pulse. Tight-band emission, encrypted. No linguistic content. Origin: the observatory Stark donated outside Los Angeles."

Coulson frowned. "Same location as the unidentified technologist—Luthar."

"Exactly," the technician continued. "But here's the strange part—the signals not directed at any known satellite or station. It shot straight through upper orbit, like it was aiming at empty space."

Fury folded his arms. "So, what are we looking at?"

"We don't know yet. It could be a systems test. Could be ambient code. Or it could be... something else."

Fury's voice turned cold. "Get more eyes on that site. I don't care if it's a diagnostics ping or a Message to some alien god—if he's waking something up, I want to know before it lands."

Back at the observatory, the transmitter's pulse faded into silence.

Liliruca tilted her head, watching the flickering indicator light.

"So… what is this thing for?"

Luthar didn't turn. He stood before the transmitter like a priest before a shrine.

"A beacon," he replied. "It will help us locate this place if we are ever traveling beyond the galaxy. A spatial anchor, so we are not lost."

Liliruca furrowed her brow. "But we haven't even left."

"That is precisely why we need it," he said. "When the time comes, we may not have a chance to prepare. This will also aid future teleportation alignments."

He stepped back from the machine. The signal had been sent, recorded and relayed—now silent once more.

"This beacon marks our place in this reality. It ensures we have a fixed point when folding space. I plan to install others—on Mars, perhaps the Moon."

Her voice lowered."So you weren't kidding about going to Mars. I looked it up on the internet—it's completely barren."

Luthar looked at her then—truly looked, not as an instructor, but something colder. Distant.

"Because it is barren," he said, "we can shape it as we see fit."

He gestured around the lab's main chamber. Machines whirred softly. The observatory pulsed with cold potential.

"We are not guests in this world. We have objectives and We have enough time to complete complete them."

Liliruca folded her arms, eyes drifting up toward the dome and the starry night beyond.

"And what about our old world?"

Luthar's voice dropped to a low murmur.

"You needn't worry," he said. "The method of travel is... superior. During transit, time becomes irrelevant. When we return, it can be to the exact day we left. For caution's sake, I've adjusted the offset to twenty-four hours."

She narrowed her eyes. "So that's how you could promise Freya you'd return tomorrow and show her this world." She clicked her tongue. "And here I was, silly enough to think you'd forgotten her."

Luthar's optics glinted, unreadable.

He wasn't thinking of Freya for sentiment—but thinking about Hephaestus who would be needed. Transforming a planet was not something he could do alone.

Authors thoughts : I'm thrilled because I've finally reached 100 chapters! This is a huge milestone for me, and I have a lot of thoughts I want to share. I'll be dedicating a separate post to those reflections. For now, the next 50 chapters will focus on covering the storylines of Iron Man 1 & 2 and Thor 1. I'm also planning to get the goddesses as we have already establish time doesn't work getting them would not be a problem. Plus, some beautiful goddesses will definitely spice things up, and a blacksmith character should help ground the narrative as he can't be doing everything the other thing I want to say I want a second novel which can make money as my current goal is 500 a month unfortunate ly at current rate I would get only around 70 so if you can support I would be happy and if you can't even the ideas would be good

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