‘What If… The Multiverse Was Doomed?’ by DaVaun Sanders Exclusive Book Excerpt
The much anticipated Marvel novel What if… The Multiverse Was Doomed? by DaVaun Sanders was released this week. The Cosmic Circus has been granted permission to share the exclusive excerpt below with our readers. Thank you to Penguin Random House and Random House Worlds.
Exclusive excerpt from What if… the Multiverse Was Doomed?
Venom and America Chavez, bonded together, crash land on a world where the Avengers fight against reality itself and they witness firsthand the devastation Doom leaves in his wake. With America’s powers on the fritz, their only hope arrives in a flash of magic as chaotic as the world around them—Wanda Parker, the Scarlet Witch.
WANDA PARKER STREAKS TOWARD US, PROPELLED BY A SPIRAL OF chaos magic. Her wake bleeds, stark against the muted colors and oppressive gray sky. The red trail quickly dissipates as if this reality is eager to absorb any semblance of life.
Are we saved? We do not feel saved.
Wanda descends. She ignores the Quinjet, stares past the three Avengers as if they don’t exist. She is not happy. “America Chavez. I’ve been looking for you.”
We swallow at the red glow in her gaze. The Avengers creep into defensive positions. As they should. She is nothing like we remember. Gone is the Halloween cosplay. A simple diadem holds back her curls. We smell Uru—weird god-metal, long story, ask later—woven through her blood-red battle dress, which is divided for practicality. Wanda wields her chaos magic with a clarity of focus that makes us slightly jealous. Her brothers spoke true. Pain lingers in her expression, deep beneath the scowl. We do not trust her.
“Steve?” Alarm fills Rhodes’s voice. “You’re ignoring comms. Harkness says to cut bait and run.” Yes. We agree with the other witch.
Rogers plants himself between us, tense, a rusty spring com-pressed too far. Ragged desperation undercuts his voice. “If you’re with them—”
“They’re with me.” Wanda’s fingers curl and contract at im-possible angles. Hexes rip agreement from the air. A web of energy contorts into existence at her sudden gesture, cordoning off the Avengers behind a sphere of magic that encompasses half the block, buildings and all. The conjuring edge sheers off the Quin-jet’s starboard wing. Steve Rogers gasps as his shield slides apart, neatly sliced in two. More chaos energy licks away the adamantium net that paralyzes us and reduces Hawkeye’s arrow to cindered motes. We wobble to our knees, panting.
Wanda sails for us as the Quinjet veers into a building. A star-board turbine explodes.
Destruction rains down behind the barrier. Oh, we will abso-lutely love working with this one. She is scary-sharp. But where’s the murder? Such wasted opportunities abound. Wreathed in bil-lowing flames and black smoke, Wanda examines us. She extends a hand.
We take it, rising.
Was that the move? Shouldn’t we discuss this?
We need her, you say, at the same time Wanda says, “I have need of you.”
Probabilities, chaos magic, weird synchronicity of nexus powers? Do. Not. Like. “What about them?” our voice asks. We agreed you would speak for us, but who cares about these hollowed beings?
“I’ve seen this before.” Wanda drags out the words. “Too many times before. Their reality is metastasizing, without an anchor. Pieces of them are merging into the Multiverse. They feel it but don’t understand it . . . like organs still trying to cleanse toxins from a body with no brain function. They only understand the feeling. The dying.” She regards the Avengers gesticulating at one another behind her shield. “There’s nothing permanent I can do for them unless I remain in this place. And that means trading their reality for mine.” She bites her lip, but the barrier falls. Wanda winces as the heroes’ voices reach them.
“Heads up!” The turrets on Rhodes’s shoulders swivel around. “Barricade’s down!”
A hiss warns us in time—our tendril slashes away another arrow. Barton will be our first shared victim, America. They will need to rename him Hawk-eye-socket. Get it?
Because we will—
Gross, please stop.
“Do not engage!” Rogers shouts.
Wanda blinks, reassessing us. “You manipulate your . . . skin?
Like Reed Richards?”
We are not skin! We are Venom! We—“It’s complicated,” our voice replies.
“She cut the shield in half !” Barton shouts. “Fury’s digging himself out from under the Quinjet! Everything’s falling . . . apart, and I hear myself saying things, but they’re not my words. None of this makes sense!”
Our Watcher memories stir dimly from the gray. We remember. They’ve each repeated words an Avenger would say, might say, has said. But not here in this reality. We cannot recall exactly, but this is wrong. Frayed. Echoes of another world folding itself over this one. One river swallowing another.
We cannot imagine a more horrible way to die. Their eyes, growing glassy already. Wanda is right: You must embrace this, America. We must end Doom. Show him the mercy he has shown these frayed Avengers.
“You see now?” Wanda says quietly. “Their problems will be over soon enough. But I have to cut out the cancer. This doesn’t end until we end him.”
See? Accept what must be.
Rhodes retracts his helmet to face us, eyes accusing. “Unless I’m wrong about you, you’re no killer,” he says to Wanda. “Turn-ing away from us won’t make this any easier. Help us! We’d do it for you!”
Wanda doesn’t even bother responding. An absolute savage. Our collaboration will be a thing of beauty. No, you insist. It’s because she cares. This hurts her as much as us, seeing them like this. More, even. They were a team in her reality.
She cares too much, just like you. Give us time to work our magic.
What? you ask. Nothing! Nothing at all.
Wanda peers at us strangely, waiting.
“Wait,” we say aloud to the witch. Why did we say that? We’re not agreeing to that. “Try. Please. They are fraying, Wanda.”
“Fraying. So that’s what it’s called.” She shudders. “Every word they speak feels like
déjà vu eventually. Like the last bounce of an echo.”
“So give them a chance.”
Wanda fumes, on the verge of boiling over. But she turns to James Rhodes. “Tell your
witch, your Harkness,” she says, “to look for a page in her Darkhold with a folded
corner. The spell she finds there will give you more time.” Her eyes flick back to us. “Happy? Come on. We have much to discuss.”
“Thank you,” Steve Rogers calls, but again Wanda doesn’t answer.
Brilliance explodes around us, vibrant refractions that cast bleak shadows on the
shattered sidewalk, this ruined world and its fractured Avengers. We cascade upward
through the light, leaving them behind. Like they were nothing. Wanda pulls us through this Neverspace between the fabric of realities.
Guilt reverberates through us like waves from a struck gong.
Another universe fallen to Doom that we failed to prevent.
[From the book MARVEL: WHAT IF… THE MULTIVERSE WAS DOOMED? by DaVaun Sanders. Copyright © 2026 by Marvel. Reprinted by
