Chapter Text
The first thing Penny noticed was the noise.
It wasn’t loud exactly, at least not in the way thunder was loud, but it was everywhere. A buzzing, crackling sound that felt like it was inside her ears and behind her eyes at the same time. Like when the TV lost signal and Ben hadn’t fixed it yet, except this buzz didn’t stop no matter how hard she covered her ears.
“Ben?”
Her voice came out too small. Too thin.
The room, her room, was wrong.
Her bed was still there. The little blue blanket Aunt May had bought her with the stars on it was still wrapped around her legs. Her nightlight was still shaped like a spider, glowing soft red on the shelf.
But the walls were… bending.
Not moving like they were falling. Moving like they couldn’t decide where they were supposed to be.
Penny squeezed her eyes shut.
This is a dream, she told herself. Ben said bad dreams felt real sometimes. He said the trick was to wake up before they got worse.
So she counted.
One.
Two.
Three
The floor lurched.
Penny screamed as the bed tipped sideways, gravity suddenly forgetting what it was supposed to do. Her stomach flipped like when she’d gone on that ride at Coney Island, except this didn’t stop. The stars on her blanket stretched, pulling long and thin like they were being dragged away from her.
The noise got louder.
Cracks of light split the air.
Not cracks like broken glass, more like the world was tearing open and someone was shining a flashlight through the holes. White and gold and something darker underneath, like purple bruises in the sky.
“Ben!” she cried, reaching out.
Her hand passed through the edge of the bedframe.
Penny stared at her fingers.
They were still there. She could wiggle them. But the bed wasn’t solid anymore. Neither was the wall. Or the floor. Or anything.
Her chest hurt. Breathing felt wrong, like the air was thinner, slipping away faster than she could grab it.
Something pulled.
Not her arm. Not her leg.
Her.
The feeling wrapped around her middle, tight and sharp, like invisible strings yanking her all at once. Penny tumbled forward, the room exploding into light behind her as she fell through...
Everything.
There was no up. No down.
Just color and sound and movement smashing together.
She spun through blinding white, then red, then blue so dark it felt heavy. Shapes flickered past, buildings, faces, hands reaching out, but none of them stayed long enough for her to understand.
She cried, but she couldn’t hear herself anymore.
The buzzing turned into roaring.
The roaring turned into screaming.
And underneath it all, something was breaking.
Penny didn’t have words for it, not really. She just knew that whatever held things together, whatever made her room her room and her world her world, was coming apart.
She caught flashes of things she knew.
Daddy’s face, tired and scared, shouting at someone she couldn’t see. Red and blue light. A man in a cape holding his hands out like he was trying to stop the sky from falling. Lines (webs) stretching and snapping, one by one.
Each snap hurt.
Not like a scraped knee. More like losing something and not knowing what it was.
She felt herself slipping.
“Please,” she sobbed, clutching herself as the noise and light swallowed her whole. “I wanna go home.”
The falling slowed.
Not stopped, just… gentler.
Like someone had grabbed her at the last second.
The colors faded into something darker, warmer. The roaring dulled into a low hum, steady and deep, like a heartbeat.
And then
A voice.
Not loud.
Not soft.
Everywhere.
Penny Parker.
She gasped, spinning in the nothingness. “Who...who’s there?”
There was no face. No body. Just the voice, calm and ancient and kind in a way that made her cry harder.
Your universe cannot hold.
She didn’t know what universe meant, but she understood cannot.
“It’s breaking,” she whispered. “I want Ben.”
The hum deepened, sadder somehow.
Your world was saved where it could be. Others were not so lucky.
Images flashed again, this time slower. Threads of light woven together like a giant glowing spiderweb. Some threads were strong, shining bright. Others were frayed, snapping apart and dissolving into sparks.
One thread, hers, was unraveling fast.
Penny clutched at it instinctively, tiny hands grasping at glowing strands that burned but didn’t hurt.
“Am I gonna die?” she asked.
The voice didn’t answer right away.
Then
No.
Relief hit her so hard she hiccupped.
You are being carried.
The web around her tightened, wrapping her gently, like being tucked into bed. The cold fear in her chest eased just a little.
“Where am I going?” Penny asked.
Somewhere new.
She frowned. “I don’t wanna be new. I wanna be me.”
The web shimmered, as if amused.
You will still be you.
Light bloomed ahead of her, soft this time, golden instead of blinding. Penny felt herself drifting toward it, the noise finally fading into quiet.
Just before she reached it, the voice spoke again.
On the eve of your seventh birthday…
The words echoed, wrapping around her like a promise.
…you will gain the powers of your destiny.
Penny’s eyes widened. “Powers?”
But the light was already swallowing her up.
She tried to ask more questions. Tried to hold onto the voice.
Instead, the web released her.
Gravity returned all at once.
She fell