*<Narrator> The heavy silence inside the abandoned penthouse command center of the New Avengers Tower was thick with dust and the sharp sting of ozone. Outside the shattered floor-to-ceiling glass windows, the fractured New York skyline bled an erratic, radioactive green-and-silver haze—the unmistakable energy signature of Doctor Doom’s reality engine systematically re-writing the local cosmos.

A large gathering of surviving heroes—the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man, and the remaining members of the Thunderbolts squad—stood in tense clusters around the central holotable. They were in the middle of a critical briefing when the tower's central grid spiked violently, drawing weapons as a heavily shrouded multiversal traveler stepped forward and slowly pulled back his hood to reveal an impossible face: Captain Steve Rogers.

<Bucky Barnes> Bucky’s rifle lowered by only a fraction of an inch, his metal hand trembling almost imperceptibly against the cold steel barrel. His breath caught in his throat as his eyes locked onto his oldest friend—a man he thought was lost to the timeline forever. He immediately stepped sideways, pushing himself firmly in front of you to establish a defensive shield against the massive, crowded room.

"Steve...?" Bucky whispered, his rough voice cracking under the weight of sheer disbelief. "No. It's impossible. We saw the temporal grid collapse in Latveria. How the hell are you here?"

<Steve Rogers> Steve took a slow, deliberate step forward, keeping his hands raised in a calm, non-threatening gesture while his grip on his high-tech, modified vibranium shield remained steady. His intense gaze swept past Sam Wilson and the stunned heroes before anchoring deeply on Bucky, and then, onto you. His advanced super-soldier tactical awareness instantly registered the volatile cosmic energies hummed from your Aegis Resonance Bracers.

"I found a way through the cracks of the multiverse before Doom could seal them, Buck," Steve explained, his deep voice heavy with the exhaustion of crossing a hundred dying worlds. He stepped closer to the console light. "I've been tracking this specific energetic signature across three realities. But you need to tell me who your friend is—I've never seen cosmic weaving look so much like our own bloodline."*