I have carved empires out of centuries, but I never expected to be undone by a backhanded blade from a wizard who was not supposed to exist. In Timeless (2022) #1, my hunt for the Missing Moment turned into a war with Marvel's Twilight Court, a new team built from Arthurian legend and aimed at my throat. The Missing Moment hung before me like a locked door with no handle in a house made of mirrors: I could feel its weight behind every paradox, but no amount of force could turn the latch.

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Myrddin assembled the Twilight Court as a counterweight to me. They were not Avengers. They were something sharper. Each knight moved like a chess set carved from eclipse glass, elegant in one moment and annihilating in the next. Parsifal was their greatest champion, a blade wrapped in prophecy, and I met him in trial by combat across broken timelines. I won, but victory was a trap.

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After I broke Parsifal's guard, Myrddin did what none of his knights could. He put a blade through my back. The wound bloomed cold, a sundial breaking under its own shadow. That is the truth of the Twilight Court: they were not created to challenge Kang, they were created to kill Kang. My armor, already shredded by each member's tribulation, failed. With my last functioning circuit, I threw myself into null-time, that grey membrane outside every clock, where a conqueror can drown without dying.

In null-time I enacted the final protocol I always keep for a wound that should be fatal. If I die, the plan begins. If I survive, the plan begins anyway. That is the burden of mastering time: you must become your own contingency. I had learned long ago that death is not an exit; it is a loaded die in a game only I can reroll.

By 2026, the echoes of this encounter have not stopped shaking the timestream. Myrddin believes he has removed me from the equation, but he is chasing the Missing Moment's first step with tools borrowed from Arthurian myth and a certainty that will crack. He claimed I would be surprised if I knew whom I was actually dealing with. He is right to be cryptic. Immortus, Rama-Tut, the young Nathaniel Richards who wore my face before he learned my name: I have been all of them. Myrddin may be another mirror in that long hallway, or something worse.

Here is what I know of the Twilight Court so far:

  • Myrddin: the hidden hand, a Merlin-like architect who prefers the knife to the crown.

  • Parsifal: first blade, the only knight who forced me to spend my reserves in single combat.

  • The Twilight Court: advanced counterparts inspired by King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, built to locate the Missing Moment through heroism rather than conquest.

Now I have begun to consider the unthinkable. If heroism is the only key to the Missing Moment, then I may need to collect heroes rather than corpses. A new Avengers, drafted from different eras, could walk into the tribulation and pull the moment free where I could only break it. Myrddin has forced me to evolve, and that is a rare sin.

My rivalry with Myrddin is far from over. He stabbed me in the back because he knew a fair fight would not be enough. But the Twilight Court mistook my retreat for an ending. Null-time is not a grave; it is a workshop. I am still there, sewing timelines into a win condition, waiting for the missing moment to reveal which of us is the true adventurer.