From Something, Nothing

[Cailleach]

Cailleach had followed the submarine through the tear with no specific intention to interfere, though her abandoning the X-Men to deal with Li Ban and the Titans certainly didn't help. Had she known the ramifications she may even have allied herself with the ancient fragment of a Morrigan. Removing the Splinter that had festered in this world teetering on the edge of possibility and existence had swung the pendulum away from approximating a physical reality.

The Abyss, by it's very nature, was not a palace that existed. Not in any physical way. There were small spaces where, like whale falls or hydrothermal vents, things almost were. What she'd called Sparks from her limited perspective. They weren't mutant minds expanding into this endless space but rather a point where the Abyss bled into reality. Even her and Samantha's power only skimmed across the surface, she now realized. Like a splinter, Li Ban had irritated this space with her existence, forcing Nothing to always teeter on the edge of Being, easily plied into Becoming. But now the Abyss was healing this ancient wound and Cailleach, for all her splendor, could not stop it. The force of reality collapsing back into pure potential too much for her to continue existing lest she be swept up into nothing. And so, with the vast ocean draining into Nothing she swam, clutching in her claws a gossamer tangle she'd plucked from the growth of her own Spark. And this little piece lead her back home, even as she herself began unspooling she pulled herself along and tumbled free, back into the world.

Later, miles away, Ashlie would notice that, aside from mutations and anything that touched on their physical, real world, the Spark Dimension had, for all intents and purposes, ceased to be according to her instruments. MGH in it's isolated form lost any ability to draw on this well, only functioning within the biology of humans or a close enough approximation. Much of her burgeoning research into manipulating these forces would become useless overnight. Genetics, mutant signature scanners, anything firmly rooted in their reality still worked but anything attempting to grasp beyond found nothing at all.

But out in the ocean Cailleach clutches a tiny piece of her Spark that she dragged with her into the world. A small crystallized piece of Impossibility that shimmers and shifts and sings with potential like a gossamer fractal.

[Narrator]

They say down by the cove in Scranend-on-Sea lives a monster. They say if you bring it food and catch it in the right mood you can lure it up from the depths. They say if you can convince the monster not to devour you that it will grant you a wish. They say a lot of things down in Scranend-on-Sea. They say the town's luck has turned, that the fish are back and the nets fuller than ever. That the ocean provides once again. There's fewer people now than the year before but when has that not been the case? People leave all the time, especially the young ones. Off to the large cities never to be seen again, swallowed up by a monster that has never once given the town anything in return.

They say down by the cove in Scranend-on-Sea lives a monster. They say it has blessed their town...