Kulan Gath smiled as he looked upon the child from the body of the woman Rosa, and heard it's screams.

The magic had worked, the prophecy had been fulfilled, but not in the way Doom had prophesised. In fact the Sorcerer Supreme had made a fatal error in his judgement in turning his mortal body in to a tree - it meant that he was able to cast his spirit out through time to the exact moment that the Harbinger would arise and he made merged his spirit with the power of Harbinger.

The Harbinger had chosen his vessel well, but as powerful as the Harbinger was he was not infallible and he had left himself vulnerable to the tools of Immortus, Immortus the manipulator, Immortus the gamesman. The instant that Kulan Gath had been defeated by Doom, as he knew he would be, he had triggered a device that had sent his mind out through time and space. The advantage of being at the end of time was that he was able to look back and pinpoint where his spirit would go.

The Harbinger had been unprepared for this and the power had been co-ercec by Kulan Gath, who's knowledge and power were drawn from the same source and such a betrayal was unheard of, but Gath wanted to make sure that whatever happened now, Doom, the X-Men and anyone else would not be able to interfere. In the body of Rosa Vasquez, he would be able to ensure that he would be safe and combined with the Harbinger he would survive the coming of the Sons, but first he had to prepare the world.

The Savage Land was the place of the rising. The battle betweens between the young Strange and Garokk and later Garokk and Doom had ensured that this place had become a place of mystic power, a place that would make the perfect birth place of the new world.

"Rosa," Shakti said and then she looked at him and for the first time in months she knew that her powers were truly back and she could see that Rosa was Rosa no longer. He could easily block her mind but the time for pretence was over. "Who are you?"

"The end of the beginning," said Gath and he brought the hand of Rosa down on to Shakti, stunning the young mother and he grabbed the child. "Come, little Charles. Let me show you this brave world." He made a gesture, casting a spell and went outside to see the X-Men and the Fantastic Four standing there, held in place and he smiled. The child started crying once more and this time he laughed as he sensed the Sorcerer Supreme's ambitions to regain the Darkhold and end this battle once and for all.

"Oh, Victor, the battle's not even started," he said.

"No," said Dust, horrified at what he was witnessing and Gath knew that he must be going through a personal torture that he had failed, and in failing he had almost betrayed the X-Men. "Not again..."

"Rosa?" Metalhead said and as he strained at the forces that held him, and the Harbinger laughed at the futility of it.

"Rosa is gone, mortal thing. I am Kulan Gath. I am the Harbinger," he announced, "and this is the end of everything!"

"RELEASE MY CHILD!" Xi'an demanded as he too struggled against the magic that held him. He had learnt to hate magic since the battle with Garokk and he knew that he was insignificant in it's wake.

"Your child?" said Garokk. "He was never your child, and now he never will be. We will meet again, Xi'an Chi Xan. You and your X-Men..." Rosa's eyes sparkled and they could all see the image of Kulan Gath behind her and then she was gone. Eddie's eyes never left the spot she had been in.

"NO!" cried Xi'an as the mystic barrier failed as quickly as the d they were all released. "SHAKTI!" he called out and ran in to the infirmary, as Dust and the Richards looked at each other. They knew Kulan Gath of old.

"Ben, we need you," Reed said in to his communicator.

"On my way, Stretch," came the voice of the Thing and Sue looked at Dust.

"Kulan Gath has my grandchild," she said. "We must do something."

"We will," said Dust. "Ah'm not gonna let this happen again."

"None of us are, Marcus," said Reed. "We were there as well."

"As was I."

"Who the hell are you?" said Tim as he looked at the man standing there and at the woman who was with him.

"That's Xina," said Reed, as he looked on her face. "Xina Kwan. You were one of Miguel's people..."

"I was," she said, a wistful tone to her voice and Reed remembered that she and Miguel O'Hara had been close.

"So who is that?" asked Eddie, looking at her.

"My name is Giuseppe Balsamo," he said. "I am a sorcerer and I have come to aid you."

"You know, for years we were told there was no such thing as magic," said Tim with some scepticism, "and yet now..."

Balsamo nodded. "The age of heroes allowed magic to be freely seen. When that age died and the era of technology and corporations took over, magic died. The wheel has turned once more."

"Yeah, right," said Tim.

"However what Balsamo fails to mention," said Reed, " is that he was also a villain. A villain named Cagliostro."

"A misnomer," said Cagliostro, "and even if it were true, if Victor Von Doom can reform, why not one such as me?"

"Because a leopard doesn't change it's spots," said Morphine. "Believe me, I know. Doom, does what Doom does because he's Doom. You're not."

"It does not matter," said Xi'an as he brought Shakti out, holding her hand and any of them had doubted the sheer force of Xi'an's personality before, it was intensified now, as his ability to convey his beliefs was pushed forwards to the group for other matters. "What matters is we find our son and rescue him from Kulan Gath. Whoever this Harbinger is, he will learn that it is not wise to tangle with the X-Men."

"Damn shocking right, brother," said Eddie and they went to the council chambers. A plan of action was needed if they were to defeat Kulan Gath.

---

Kulan Gath smiled as he stood at the spot where Strange had been defeated by Garokk, where he had become the Sorcerer Supreme. It was not as potent as the spot in Xavier City where Garokk eventually fallen at the hand of Doom, but Xavier City was not what he wanted, because there was always the possibility that the heroes could do something.

If he had learnt nothing else, he had learnt that heroes were at their strongest when attacked on their home ground.

He reached out and tapped the mystical energies, pulling the power as needed and he looked up to the sky where the sun shone down. Mephisto's doing, altering the rules of reality for the souls of Garokk and Exodus. However in this scheme, the devil was but a bit player and he had the resources of Set at his disposal and he reached out and the sun seemed to be in the palm of his hand and he closed it and the light died.

Now he needed seven souls, seven souls that would ensure that the Sons of Set would rise. He, as Harbinger would be able to use those souls to bring them forth, so that they were sated after their travelling. They were the sons of their father, but not their father themselves. Seven souls for the seven sons and he waited for the X-Men to come, as he knew they would.

Then when they were destroyed, the soul of the child would bind the power of this world to them in blood. This time, there would be nobody to stop him.

---

"In the first few years of the twenty first century, there was chaos," said Dust as he sat down with the gathered X-Men, Fantastic Four and their guests. Miguel O'Hara also joined them by vid-link. "The X-Men were fractured and broken by Apocalypse, the Avengers were not the force they once were and the Fantastic Four had the birth of their daughter Victoria. There were other teams as well, but they were the main ones, the core heroes and the rest of us took our lead from them. Perhaps if they'd not been distracted, it'd have been different…"

"What happened?" Xi'an asked.

"Kulan Gath was defeated by the heroine called the Undying, or so it appeared. In truth he transferred his essence back to the amulet that housed it and he realised that the battle with the Undying had given him a measure of freedom. He used that to gain a place of authority in the United Nations, the council of would governments."

"I remember stories of that," said Morphine.

"Gath was setting something up, to turn our world in to his domain for whatever reasons he had, but in doing so he drew attention to himself by the heroes that worked for the United Nations, especially Forge, the commander of SHIELD and he sent us in to investigate."

"Us?" asked Skullfire.

"X-Force and Excalibur," said Dust. "We took on Kulan Gath and we fought him back, but in doing so we lost half of Excalibur and Pete and Maverick…" The loss weighed on him now. "Gath killed them while we fought him on the astral plane, and it was more luck than judgement that we defeated him and exiled him outside of time itself, to do nothing more than look in."

"The problem was the battle on the astral plane meant did damage to the psyche of the world," said Reed. "It was such a battle that it was seen by everyone and humanity turned on the heroes because they realised that the world they saw was not one they could live in, and their jealousy became hatred at being forced to watch."

"Which was funny, because reality TV was all the rage," added Ben.

"Quite," said Reed. "The United Nations were appalled that they could have been manipulated so easily and they outlawed the Avengers. The team was disbanded and their members prohibited from coming together as Avengers. The Hulk was been hunted down and charged with crimes against the United States, and mutants… we all know the histories of the Purge."

"The problem was people didn't leave it alone and once they'd subjugated mutants, they went on to other heroes and soon there were no super-powered beings left and the Age of Wonders came to an end, and the mega-corporations started to rise," said Dust. "Money talked and those with money made the world what they thought it should be."

"What of the Fantastic Four?" asked Herni, looking at them.

"We died," said Sue, softly. "Trying to defend our children. Only Reed survived the attack, saved by Doom."

"Because Doom wanted that pleasure himself," Reed said. "I lost my family, then when I was broken, Doom killed me. Or the originals at least." The truth that known to them all was that these were trans-temporal duplicates, created by the Watcher to save humanity.

"Kulan Gath brought about our age, from a certain point of view," said Miguel, his hand on Mjolnir, wondering what happened to the Gods. "Now he means to end it. Can we stop him again?" asked the leader of the free world.

"Perhaps," said Cagliostro. "The threat though is not Kulan Gath, but the Harbinger. He should not be the creature, it should be an entity of it's own."

"That's no good to Rosa," said Eddie. "She's in the middle of all this."

"And there is a chance we won't get her back," said Balsamo. "But we will try."

"The Harbinger then," said Tim. "What's that?"

"The Harbinger is just that - the harbinger of the Sons of Set," said Cagliostro. "In all realities but one, Set was driven back but in that one he took over the Earth, and though he was defeated, he had seven sons." Sue shivered as she remembered, as she had almost been one of them. "They have since gone from one reality to another, conquering them and searching for the means to free their father, who is in eternal combat with the wielder of the Captain Universe powers."

"These sons are coming here?"

"When the Harbinger calls them," said Cagliostro. "He draws his power from them, and Kulan Gath has become one with the Harbinger."

"Doom believed he had defeated Gath," said Miguel.

"Doom under-estimated him," said Morphine. "The old man sometimes misses things. Ask Anthony Herod."

"So Gath has the opportunity to rebuild his world, using the powers of the sons of an elder god," said Reed.

"If we can set Gath against the Harbinger, then he may be distracted enough to rescue Charles," said Shakti.

"Then what of the Harbinger?" asked Tim. "Can we take on the emissary of the gods?"

"Victor will be with us," said Xina, and the X-Men looked at her, thinking that she meant Victor Ten Eagles, who had died at the hands of Brimstone Love.

"She means Doom," said Morphine, noting the care in her voice as well as the look on Miguel's face. Morphine knew jealousy when he saw it.

"Then we must do it," said Xi'an. "We will confront Kulan Gath on the physical and astral planes and we will ensure that he is weakened enough to the Harbinger can destroy the usurper, and then…"

"Then we'll leave it to Doom," said Morphine. He didn't like this plan, but there wasn't a better one and everyone else in the room felt the same way. It was the only choice they had left.

---

Kulan Gath waited for the heroes to come and wondered what was keeping them. The child had stopped crying and it had become unconcerned at the events that were going on around it. Then he sensed them, approaching in the darkness and he wondered if they realised that the dark was his ally, not theirs.

"Come to me, children of the atom, of the cosmic storm and the mystical. Come to me and meet your end…"

"Not likely," said Skullfire as he surged in and struck at Kulan Gath's body with his electrical power, but it was not enough to do anything because he held back out of respect for Rosa, and though Gath staggered he was not felled and he laughed.

"Pathetic," he said, "as is the attempts of the mother to shut down my nervous system, because it is the nervous system of the woman and not myself! However a feedback loop should ensure that Miss Haddad thinks twice about it."

"How's about this then?" said the Thing, charging forward. "It's clobberin' time!"

"Really?" said Gath as he cast his hand and Ben felt himself change and shift in to Benjamin Grimm, the rocky exterior falling away. "Care to try me now?"

Xi'an watched as the X-Men and Fantastic Four went on the attack, then he turned to those who were covered by an invisible wall created by Sue Richards, and looked at the people who had volunteered for this. Dust, Metalhead, Cagliostro, Morphine, Reed and himself would go to the astral plane and they would take on Kulan Gath, as the heroes had done years before.

"Remember, we are not to fight him directly," said Cagliostro. "We must distract him. Rosa will aid us if she can for her mind is being fought over by two other beings and if she sides with the Harbinger, then Gath may be dispelled."

"Do it," Xi'an said to Dust and Dust fired up his psionic energies, using the vast reserves of power he had to ascend to the astral plane, taking the avatars of the other heroes with him.

"Now what?" asked Morphine.

"Now you die," said Kulan Gath. "Foolish creatures, did you think I was not listening? Now I have exactly what I need!"

"Get us out of here!" said Xi'an but Dust looked at him in horror.

"Ah can't," he said. "We're trapped…"