Using his captives Sersi and Ute’s powers, Proctor starts collapsing alternate realities together; investigating the resultant energy vortex, the Avengers confront the Gatherers, as Proctor expected. Admitting he is an alternate-reality Black Knight, Proctor boasts that embracing the Gann Josin link instead of rejecting it transformed him into a superhuman, and that he used his reality’s Ebony Blade to kill Sersi in each reality he visited. As the Avengers and their Eternal allies Sprite and Thena battle the Gatherers, Proctor defeats the Black Knight and starts to “gather” him out of existence, but the injured Quicksilver hurls himself between them, saving the Knight. Before Proctor can slay Quicksilver, a combined lightning assault from Crystal and Thunderstrike fells him, the resulting biofeedback also stunning the remaining Gatherers through Proctor’s telepathic link to them. Sersi finally frees herself and Ute, then kills a defiant Proctor with his own Ebony Blade. Still dangerously insane as a result of Proctor’s mental manipulations, Sersi fears she must be destroyed. A dying, repentant Ute, however, uses the last of his life energy to repair all the damage done to New York by Proctor’s schemes, albeit replacing Avengers HQ with an alternate-reality version of the original Avengers Mansion, and opens a portal to another reality where Sersi can be free of her madness, though it is probably a one-way trip. The Black Knight decides to go with her despite protests from Crystal and Captain America, and Sersi and the Knight walk through the portal together, leaving Crystal to mourn the Knight’s departure.