MARVEL: I CAN ADAPT TO ANYTHING EVEN DEATH

*Chapter 10: "The City Beneath Ice"*

*Year: 4020 BC*

*Location: Southern Continent — Proto-Antarctica, beneath the Polar Plateau*

Before the world turned white, before the ice claimed this land, there was a city.

It had no name humans could pronounce. Its towers were smooth obsidian wrapped in bioluminescent vines. The streets were geometric webs of black stone, sunken deep into the polar crust. No sun ever touched it. It had been hidden long before memory, buried by design, sealed by betrayal.

And something down there was *still awake*.

Pluto stood at the edge of a glacier that didn't exist on any future map. His breath fogged, though his body didn't feel cold. Above him, stars spun slowly in silence. No life for thousands of miles.

Except… he wasn't alone.

The system pulsed.

*[WARNING: INFECTED CELESTIAL CODE DETECTED]*

*Designation: Kt'yx-Mor (Class 5 Hybrid Deviant)*

*Subtype: Relic-Guardian / Temporal Preserver Unit / Conscious Containment Vessel*

*Purpose: Final defense node of forbidden city "Orr'Vahra"*

*State: Dormant... but watching.*

He was being observed before he ever stepped foot underground.

That didn't stop him.

***

Pluto descended through a fissure carved by tectonic shift. The ice hissed at him, as though it resented being disturbed. Every step down was a thousand years in history peeled back. He walked for hours in silence—deeper into the cold, deeper into time.

Eventually, he found it.

The city revealed itself not suddenly, but like a memory resurfacing—buildings curved like bone, veins of purple light running through ancient alloys. Giant metallic rings floated midair, rotating in impossible symmetry.

Even Pluto slowed.

This place wasn't just Deviant—it was *part Celestial*.

The lines in the architecture were too perfect. This city had been designed by something with a mind of pure law. A god-engine.

And now, it was dying.

***

In the center of Orr'Vahra stood a sphere the size of a mountain, suspended in air by magnetic pressure. Orbiting it were thousands of smaller objects—floating sarcophagi, likely frozen Deviant experiments. Many were shattered. Some still *twitched*.

One moved.

It wasn't a Deviant.

It was *human-shaped*, tall and lean, skin of silver-black alloy, a long cloak trailing smoke behind it. Its head had no face, only mirrored plating.

It had been waiting.

"Designated: Unauthorized Interloper," it said in perfect, soulless voice.

Pluto stopped ten feet away. "You're not a Deviant."

"I am *Kt'yx-Mor*. Final function: delay total entropy. This city cannot fall."

"Entropy already won," Pluto said calmly. "You just haven't noticed yet."

The being blinked—its body fracturing into motion.

Faster than light. A weapon older than death.

Pluto's system screamed:

*[WARNING: TEMPORAL WEAPON STRIKE — ADAPTATION INITIATED]*

*[MOTION SENSE UNAVAILABLE — SHUNTING TO PREDICTIVE THREAD CALCULATION]*

The strike hit him across twelve timelines at once. It folded his movement, split his probability into splinters, tried to *overwrite his position with erasure*.

He didn't resist.

He let it hit.

Then he rewrote the hit.

He emerged from the temporal backlash mid-step, his body flickering between seconds, re-forming stronger.

Kt'yx-Mor lunged again—this time trying to collapse the quantum phase field between their atoms. A fusion kill.

Pluto inhaled.

And adapted.

The two moved now outside linear perception—plasma cracking space, magnetic fields crushing architecture. Around them, parts of the city activated in response—walls humming, gates unsealing. The city remembered war.

But the city didn't remember *Pluto*.

He didn't fight to destroy. He fought to *understand*.

And once he understood how Kt'yx-Mor existed, he *undid* him.

A single touch—through the temporal armor—rewrote the being's logic code.

Kt'yx-Mor staggered back.

"I… am…"

"You were a prison," Pluto said. "You're free now."

The guardian collapsed—not destroyed, but *liberated* from function. Its body dissolved into fine dust, absorbed by the walls around it.

And then, the city *spoke*.

Not in words.

In feeling.

It had waited millennia for that guardian to fall.

Now, it could open.

***

The sphere at the center of Orr'Vahra cracked.

Inside was not power.

It was *genetic memory*—streams of ancient Celestial-Deviant experiments, blueprints of failed species, timelines that never stabilized. The city had been hiding a *record of broken universes*—tests and failures abandoned by the first architects.

Pluto stepped into the core.

His system activated:

*[FORBIDDEN DATA SYNCED]*

*[GENOME INTERFACE: COMPATIBLE]*

*[ABILITY EVOLUTION: BIO-ARCHETYPE MIMICRY UNLOCKED]*

*[New Attribute: DEEP-GENE MIMESIS — Passive/Adaptive — Any direct exposure to ancient templates will allow limited replication and evolution]*

He had not just survived the city.

He had inherited it.

The lights dimmed. The rings above the city slowly stopped spinning.

Orr'Vahra was done.

Its final gift: knowledge… and a warning.

As Pluto turned to leave, he saw a glyph activate on the wall behind him—depicting a vast black star devouring multiple Earths.

Beneath it, a name he could now read.

*"Ekzadrion."*

Not a Deviant.

Not a Celestial.

Something else.

Something that had failed… and had never died.

The ice would soon reclaim the city.

But Pluto would remember.

He vanished into the fissure again, rising back to the surface beneath a white sky that had no memory of what slept beneath it.

But one day, it would wake.

And he would be waiting.

———

A/N: don't forget my power stone