Chapter FourA Worthless Grain of SandHe studies his tablet, green cape swishing in his wake as he makes for his laboratory. All nears completion. Doom’s pruning of the Multiverse is a necessary labor for young Franklin’s sake. His most dangerous enemies are not the physically powerful—although in his present state, Doom muses, even the arms of the Hulk couldn’t hold him—but the meddlers with time. Those irascible Kangs, the ever-propagating weeds of the Multiverse. The treacherously resilient sentinel called Nimrod; although the circuitry (and biology, in some realities) afforded Doom a fascinating dissection in his leisure time.
Lesser Dooms—naturally, perhaps inevitably, also risen to perilous heights. The last underachiever who presumed to backstab him, banished to a pocket dimension. The dullard who managed to use Galactus himself for a powerhouse. The slipshod who still somehow commandeered Ego, the living planet. And all the rest, with their secret wars and hellfire schemes, their endless coups and hideous armor. He sighs deeply. Such a heavy, transcendental burden to slaughter his lessers, to banish the deformed mirrors, to literally chisel away their weakness like a captain scraping barnacles from the hull. Some still thought themselves superior at the end.
Doom bears it, because he must: He is Doom.
Those tragic counterfeits and all the rest who had actively resisted his vision were dead, across all of reality. The few who had not submitted or joined would meet their fates in short order.
But not today. This day holds an event like no other, a sweet culmination to all of his careful plans.
A few last tasks remain before the appointed time. Doom’s listed’exécution grows ever shorter. With the weakest of the time travelers hiding from obliteration, the nexus beings who are aware of his presence now vie for Doom’s attention. Wanda Parker eludes him . . . such a waste of talent, coddled by a feckless forgery of a sorcerer. Her power is safer in Doom’s hands. Memory of the symbiote brings an unconscious snarl to Doom’s lips . . . that betrayal had maimed him, nearly killed him, and left his plans teetering on the verge of ruin. Venom and all of their kind would die screaming, alongside the hapless Moon Knight who had convinced the creature to choose oblivion.
Others still. The moping Asgardian. The impudent, vapid mutant—not a nexus being but still responsible for depriving Doom of the Phoenix Force. Most of all, that incessant child . . .
America Chavez.
Probing, prying, pricking. No nexus being, either—yet always lurking on the periphery of his pièce de résistance. In the background while Katherine Pryde stole his rightful prize, so engrossed
with her slapdash brawling that she neglected to properly introduce herself. Such a tragedy to witness all of America’s unrealized potential, cloaked in youthful audacity though it may be, gone to rot. And what were her mothers thinking? If they wished for a name steeped in hope and glory, Latveria was right there for the taking!
No matter. America has changed her name once and may yet do so again. She might still be saved. For all of her potential, despite all of her sins. America deserves a chance for redemption, and Doom may yet still allow it.
She is, after all, unique.
Copyright © 2026 by DaVaun Sanders. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
