Chapter Text
They hadn’t slept in a week.
Not properly. Not all at once.
The chamber rejected stillness. Time didn’t pass here — it dripped. Slow, irregular, poisonous.
The fire flickered blue now. Not heat. Not light. Just a warning.
On the ninth night, the Spiral gave them another gift.
The fourth ring didn’t fall.
It rose.
Straight out of the pit, hovering like a spider on an invisible thread, spinning just slightly in the air.
Hel caught it before it drifted too far.
No one spoke. Not until she said, “Halfway.”
Thor stepped forward. “Give it to me.”
Hel looked at him. “You already wear one.”
“I’ll bear two.”
“No, you won’t,” Loki said, eyes narrow.
Thor didn’t turn. “Do you doubt my strength, brother?”
“I doubt your math,” Loki said. “Eight rings. Eight hosts. Carrying more than one breaks the lock.”
“It might also break the Spiral,” Tony muttered, arms folded. “Worth testing.”
“No.” Hel slipped the fourth ring into the fold of her cloak. “The gate does not test. It waits.”
“And what exactly is it waiting for?” Steve said, voice low. “Because the more rings we get, the worse this place gets. We need to finish the ritual. Fast.”
Hel gave him a look that made the fire dim.
“Finish it?” she echoed. “You’re not even sure who you are yet.”
Steve stepped forward. “I know exactly—”
“No, you don’t,” Loki cut in, amused. “You think you’re still the man from 1945. But this place — the Spiral — it only cares about what you’ll do next.”
Natasha stood, blade in hand. “We’re wasting time.”
Clint stayed seated. Quiet.
Bruce paced the edge of the firelight. “We need to talk about the imitations.”
They all looked at him.
Bruce kept his voice calm, but his fingers twitched.
“They’re getting better. More accurate. One of them looked like me last night.”
Tony raised a brow. “Yeah? Did it argue about particle decay and mutter in Latin while pacing the pit?”
“No,” Bruce said. “It smiled.”
Everyone went still.
“Big deal,” Clint muttered. “They smile. That’s the trick.”
“No,” Bruce said. “It smiled like I used to. Before the lab. Before the accident. Before…”
He didn’t finish.
Natasha met his eyes. “What did it say?”
Bruce hesitated. “It asked if I missed it.”
“Missed what?” Steve asked.
“Myself.”
The fire hissed.
“That’s the Spiral,” Hel said, voice quiet. “It doesn’t lie. It remembers. Every version of you. Every choice you never made.”
Clint finally stood.
“Well then I hope it enjoys silence. Because I’m not giving it a damn thing.”
Steve turned toward him. “You haven’t said much. Not since the third ring. Something wrong?”
Clint met his eyes. Calm. Cold.
“You keep treating this like a mission.”
“It is a mission.”
“No,” Clint said. “It’s a selection. And I think you already made your pick.”
Steve frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at the rings. You’re already planning who gets what. You’ve got your eight lined up in that soldier head of yours.”
Natasha stepped between them. “Enough.”
Clint didn’t back down.
“You’re protecting him?” he said, voice sharp. “After what you saw last night?”
Steve blinked. “What’s he talking about?”
Natasha didn’t answer.
Tony stepped in. “Okay, new rule: no secrets, no side-eyes, no dramatic pauses. If something happened—”
“I saw someone take a ring,” Clint said.
Hel’s eyes narrowed.
“When?”
“Last night. During second watch. Someone walked to the pit and pulled the third ring from Hel’s satchel.”
“Who?” Steve demanded.
Clint’s jaw tightened. “I thought it was you.”
Steve stepped back, stunned. “That’s not—”
“—but it wasn’t,” Clint finished. “I followed them into the dark. But they were already gone.”
Loki smirked. “Perhaps the Spiral picked early.”
“Or perhaps,” Natasha said slowly, “someone is lying.”
Bruce stood slowly, cracking his knuckles. “Then we do a count. Right now. Show the rings.”
One by one, they complied.
Thor, Steve, Loki, and Hel revealed theirs. Four.
Tony didn’t move.
“Tony,” Steve said.
“I don’t have it.”
“You sure?”
Tony stepped back. “Don’t turn this on me.”
“I saw you tinkering with something last night,” Bruce said, suddenly sharp.
“Diagnostics.”
“You’ve been muttering to yourself every night,” Natasha added. “Coordinates. Calibrations.”
Tony threw up his hands, eyes bloodshot and jaw tight.
“Because I’m trying to get us out of here!” he snapped. “Unlike some of you, I don’t have a magic hammer, a pit-born sister, or a government pay check. I have science. And science needs data.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Funny. For someone who worships data, you sure pick and choose your truths.”
Tony’s gaze sharpened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you talk like the underdog,” Bruce said, stepping closer, “but you’re not. You’re a billionaire in a battle suit whining about how unfair the universe is.”
Tony laughed once — brittle, humourless. “Right, because I built my suit in a palace, not a cave while dying.”
Clint finally looked up. “You’re a hypocrite, Stark.”
Tony’s head snapped toward him.
“Excuse me?”
“You keep playing the genius martyr card like we don’t all know who you were before the suit,” Clint said. “You sold death for a living. Back then, you didn’t need magic or gods. Just a fat check and no conscience.”
“That was a long time ago,” Tony said coldly.
“Not long enough,” Clint said. “You think this Spiral cares how many charity galas you hosted after? It remembers the man who profited off war. The man who built weapons that made monsters.”
Tony stepped forward. “You want to talk monsters, Barton? How many ghosts do you have from Budapest?”
Clint didn’t flinch. “Fewer than you.”
Steve held up a hand. “Enough—”
“No,” Natasha cut in, eyes sharp. “Let them finish.”
Tony turned to her. “Really? You’re siding with him?”
“I’m not siding with anyone. I just know what it looks like when someone’s trying too hard to outrun their past.” She paused. “And what it looks like when someone’s circling the idea of sacrifice.”
Steve took a step forward. “What are you saying?”
Natasha’s voice was low, deliberate. “I think Stark already made a deal.”
Tony’s jaw clenched. “What deal?”
“The Spiral’s offering something,” she said. “I’ve heard the voices too. Promises. Bargains. Maybe it’s whispering something to you. Maybe you already said yes.”
Tony’s voice cracked with heat. “You really think I’d sell the rest of you out?”
“You’ve done it before,” Bruce said quietly.
Tony blinked. “What?”
“In your own way,” Bruce continued. “Lying to us about your suit count. Poking at the Tesseract without telling anyone. You always justify it in hindsight. But here? The Spiral doesn’t wait for hindsight. It acts on intent.”
Loki smirked from the edge of the firelight. “Delicious, isn’t it? Watching your precious alliance rot from the inside.”
“Shut up,” Steve snapped.
But the damage was done.
Loki spread his arms. “I haven’t had to lift a finger. Your mistrust does the work for me.”
Hel said nothing. Just stood watching, the fourth ring turning slowly in her fingers.
Steve turned back to Tony, voice low. “If you’re hiding something—”
“I’m not,” Tony said. “And if I was? I wouldn’t be the only one.”
He glanced around.
“Everyone’s got blood here. Steve, you’re not just a soldier — you’re a symbol no one consented to. Banner, you made a goddamn bomb out of your own DNA. Natasha? You killed for sport before S.H.I.E.L.D. taught you how to do it for policy.”
“And you?” Clint asked. “What’s your excuse?”
Tony’s voice dropped to a razor’s edge.
“I built things. Things that killed people. And I stopped. Then I started building things to protect them. And now I’m here — trying to build something that’ll keep all of you from getting vaporized by an ancient time-eating nightmare worm." He exhaled. “Forgive me if I get snippy.”
Bruce didn’t blink. “You’re not building to protect us. You’re building to control the outcome.”
“And you’re not angry because you’re suspicious,” Tony shot back. “You’re angry because you know I might actually be right.”
A long silence followed. The fire hummed low.
Finally, Steve spoke.
“We need to be better than this.”
Loki laughed softly. “No, Rogers. You need to stop pretending you’re better.”
Hel looked toward the pit. “The Spiral doesn’t judge your past. It doesn’t care who you were. Only who you are now.”
“And who we’ll become,” Natasha added, almost too quietly.
Clint crossed his arms. “That’s what scares me.”
Loki was watching the pit.
The fire flickered.
Behind them, a new shadow emerged.
It wasn’t a false-face. Not this time.
It was something new.
Taller than any of them. Vaguely humanoid. Covered in veils of shifting bone and ember-red light. No face — just impressions of features.
It didn’t speak.
It hummed.
The sound came from inside their skulls. Like memory dragging its nails across thought.
Natasha gritted her teeth. “Kill it.”
“No,” Hel said. “Watch.”
The thing held up a hand.
And from within that hand—
The fifth ring bloomed.
Made of nothing they recognized.
Tony gasped. “It’s artificial.”
Steve stepped forward. “A trap.”
“No,” Hel said again. “A challenge.”
The Spiral had evolved.
It no longer waited for them to fight each other.
It was choosing contenders of its own.
And worse — they were winning.
The figure stepped back toward the pit.
Still holding the artificial ring.
Then, in silence, it dropped it in.
Gone. Like it had never been.
Steve looked at Hel. “What happens if it completes the ritual before we do?”
Hel’s face was pale. Her voice, flat.
“Then it won’t need a vessel.”
Everyone went silent.
Because that meant the Spiral wouldn’t need to choose anymore.
It would simply arrive.
And that night, for the first time—
Tony double-checked the diagnostics nobody else cared about.
The suit held. The math didn’t lie—
Still, his mind ran darker calculations.
Not just who’d fall before night eight.
But who’d stab him in the back first.
And whether, just maybe—
He’d beat them to it.
Because trust was the deadliest weapon he carried, and the merchant of death never forgets who sold him out.