While one young hero was in an extradimensional space, finally revealing the few of his own powers that he actively hated, Earth was undergoing the largest change it had ever undergone. All over the planet events, some good, some bad, and some more strange than either good or evil were occurring. 

In the most primal parts of ancient jungles, portals to other worlds and dimensions were opening up spontaneously and beginning to unleash potent hordes upon unsuspecting and unprepared travelers. In the deepest parts of the eldest caves of the world, primordial spirits were reawakening. And in the skies above modern cities, otherworldly goings-on was occurring. In fact in the late-morning skies above the ancient city of Marseille, high above the cloud line, a potent ruby portal abruptly opened up and began to radiate potent, unholy energies. 

The portal was nearly a quarter of a kilometer tall and about that wide, and had anyone been there to lay their eyes on it they'd have been astonished to note that to peer into the portal allowed someone to see what was on the other side. On the other side of the portal laid the remains of a simple campfire situated at the foot of an impossibly massive tree, one that stretched taller than the portal itself did, and three women. Each of the women had linen wraps around their eyes and were standing as close to the edge of the portal as they could. 

All three of the women wore truly ancient robes and had soft smiles on their faces. They didn't look alike, but between the wraps on their eyes and their similar robes, it was all too easy for someone to detect that they had some sort of relation to each other. As one they stepped through the portal and into the open air in the skies high above Marseille. And instead of falling all three of the women simply floated on the other side of the arcane portal. 

Behind them, the massive tree that had sustained them and their potent personal dimension began to visibly age, its ancient and eternal bark growing darker even to the untrained eye. As the unbelievably ancient tree began to wilt, the seemingly long-dead corpse who sat atop a throne inside of a palace near the top of the tree, ceased his haunting laughter and with slow, deliberate movements began to painfully pull his chthonic form off of the throne on which he had sat for longer than humans had inhabited the Americas. 

As their primeval lord began to truly move for the first time in ages, the witches began a long journey to the surface of a world that was nothing like any of them could have ever imagined. And as they began a jaunt toward the surface, their minds filled with questions, they inadvertently began an odyssey that would forever change the world.

Meanwhile, at that precise moment, other events that would go down in history books were occurring.

In Honduras, a young woman awoke in the middle of the night and attempted to send a message to the woman who had helped her live out her dream of using magic. When she failed the young adult pouted and wondered what happened to the woman she affectionately referred to as "her mistress". A second later she fearfully attempted to conjure a small fireball that would illuminate her small bedroom. She was delighted when she was still able to do so. She had no idea as to the change of the circumstances of "her mistress", nor was she aware of the astral body invisibly watching her even at that very moment.

In a medium-sized town in Colombia, Plato in the department of Magdalena, a monstrous fusion of man and alligator clumsily chased after a gun that was floating through the air and leading the creature on a frightening goose chase away from the more inhabited part of the town.

The terrifying creature snarled at the floating gun and glared at it while leaping at the thing, only for the gun to swiftly float out of reach and nimbly dodge the monstrous being. A second after the man-monster crashed onto the cobblestone road the gun was floating over, the gun would almost seem to be hurled at the beast's face, smacking it hard and infuriating it once more before the armament again danced out of reach. This game would continue until the morning, with the gun never once getting caught by the monster. 

In Iran, a young girl would be hit by her mother but instead of crying the young girl gritted her teeth, and it was the mother who would end up breaking down in tears. Her fist broke upon making contact with her daughter's proudly uncovered face and the older woman immediately let out a piercing, pained howl.

Her daughter glared at her with eerie, glowing red eyes, and for the first time in her life, Farah felt a twinge of pride in her heart. It felt good. 

One of the most historic moments of the day that Nathan received his first clues as to the identity of his parents would not happen in Honduras, in The Sanctuary, or even in Marseille. It actually happened in a small city in the portion of Ukraine that was not so covertly occupied by Russia.

In the city of Ialopol, situated not far from the edge of the Ukraine side of the Ukrainian-Russian border, a number of armed men wearing Ukrainian military fatigues and wielding AK-74s stood outside of an eldritch portal that radiated bright green energy into the otherwise dark basement the portal was in. The men wore uniforms that were visually identical to those worn by the brave men of Ukraine's military, but their posture was noticeably different from those of the men of Ukraine's armed services. 

All twenty-five of the men who were assigned with the unenviable task of guarding the portal were something other than mundane humans. Some would have said that they were something more than human. Others might have warned that they were something less than human. None of the men would have cared. In their eyes, the opinions of those they protected could only matter so long as they continued to be protected, which in turn suggested, to them anyway, that their opinions mattered very little. 

All twenty-five men looked human, at the moment, though those of them who were more monstrous than some of their peers had the ability to shift out of their human-looking forms faster than someone might blink. Only a few of the men possessed any visual cues that they were anything but human, such as the first two men who had reported the portal's presence to the few Spetsnaz unlucky enough to be stationed in Ialopol. 

One of the unlucky bastards who had first heard rumors of the portal, and who as a consequence for his due diligence now possesses incandescent green eyes, turned to one of his peers. He began to speak, speaking in his native Russian. 

"When is our shift going to end? We've been here for what... three, four days now?" He asked, annoyed by all of this. His comrade turned to reply, a snarky reply speeding to mind, only as the portal they had been told to guard with their lives began to change color, causing both men to draw their guns and point them at the magical wormhole. They were not alone, and indeed every single one of the men in the massive basement turned, almost as one, on the otherworldly mode of transportation, guns in hand and ready to fire. 

The portal had shifted from being bright green to being a cool shade of blue. All twenty-five of the guards tasked with vigilantly keeping the portal under lockdown wondered if they should put down their arms when a few seconds passed after the portal changed colors and nothing else happened. Or at least nothing happened that was visible to the untrained eye.

In truth, the portal was only moments away from changing the world forever, and to do that it had needed to shift from being an inert portal to being an active one, an action that required an infusion of psychic energy from the other side of the portal. Unlike many other portals that were active on Earth at this time, portals that linked Earth to various personal dimensions where monsters, heroes, and gods fled to in the wake of the seeming death of magic on Earth, this portal was not the sort of arcanely transparent thing it would have needed to be to let someone on the side of the portal that the soldiers were on see through to the other side of the thing. 

This portal was the first of its kind to connect Earth with the various worlds where superheroes and supervillains were commonplace. This portal was the very first portal that linked Earth and an alternate Earth that had opened up in the days since Nathan inadvertently reawakened Earth's magic. And the convoy that was about to step through from their Earth to ours could see them. 

On the other side of the portal two white-haired people, one an older gentlemen with a fierce beard and elegant mustache, the other a blue-eyed, short-haired, pixie-like beauty, turned to each other and nodded. They didn't need words to communicate. Not after how long they had been working together.

Behind them, a convoy made up of men with laser shields and robots with guns for arms let out a collective yell, and the two leaders stepped forward, stepping first into the portal, and then through the thing. They instantly appeared on the other side of the portal, and studied the men who had been tasked with guarding the thing. 

The men, most of whom were somewhat psychic themselves, saw the strangers and hissed as they felt the two superpowered beings attempting to read their minds. Anastasia Voss glared at them, no sympathy visible in her cold eyes, while her comrade in arms Sebastian Romanov gazed at the men a touch more kindly.

Both supers were psychics, though Anastasia was a far more potent one due to her being someone who almost exclusively used her psychic abilities and attempted to hide her much rarer gift; her strange "Type-Orange" abilities. That said, Sebastian was no slouch when it came to psionic capabilities and his kinder heart made him stop scanning the minds of the Russian soldiers the second he was sure that they spoke this Earth's version of Russian. 

"Good men of proud Russian stock, put down your arms!" He roared in thickly accented Russian. He himself was not Russian, but his words were intelligible, and many of the figures glaring at him and his comrade seemed to relax a touch. Though, impressively, none of them did what he said to do. This annoyed Anastasia, who possessed a cold, ice-like beauty. She stepped forward and with a wave of her hand unleashed a mighty wave of anomalous energy that amplified the effects of gravity itself on the men. They groaned as they abruptly felt the mighty power of even a casual usage of a tier-three superpower afflicting them and literally weighing them down. 

"Listen you fools! My comrade told you to lower. Your. Arms." She uttered in Russian, carefully annunciating every syllable. The men attempted to cling to their arms, but several dropped them as the weapons began to weigh as much as a medium-sized refrigerator might. Sebastian turned to the outcast and put a hand up as a signal that she was being too fierce. She saw this and sighed, immediately relenting, which made Sebastian smile proudly at his adopted ward.

The soldiers glared at her, but made no move to try and fire upon her or her comrade. They knew that given their unique status as superpowered beings they would be needed alive in the days to come. None of them sought to die at the hands of this superpowered woman before they understood the nature of the strange portal in front of them. Sebastian rose his hand up, giving the signal for the convoy behind him to march forward. As he did, Anastasia stepped forward to give her comrades room to enter the spacious basement. 

The basement had once served as a nightclub that specialized in playing English house music. It was enormous and that was why it had been chosen by Sebastian's expansionist superiors who sought to connect the world they referred to as "Alpha Earth" with every other "Earth" they could. Robots and man alike began to step through the portal, and as they did so the Russian soldiers began to look at them fearfully. 

Not only did the humans wield technology beyond anything the Russians had ever seen, they had seemingly fully independent, unmanned machines with them as well. That was surefire a signal that these people meant business, a level of business that the Russians knew they wouldn't have been able to counter without revealing the full extent of their own very recently superpowered military. 

And so began the dealings of Russia and Eastern Europe with a power unlike any they had encountered in modern history; a force that had superpowers. 

Lucianowrites

The world is bigger than any single figure knows at the moment. Monsters in South America, magic in Central America, ancient terrors in France, superpowered beings in Iran, and of course psychics in Eastern Europe.