The inhumans Vs the X-men ?!

Here's where things stand.

Scott Summers is dead. The Terrigen Mist, released early in the clashes between mutants and Inhumans, reached him during a skirmish and killed him within hours, his mutant physiology unable to withstand what baseline humans could survive untouched. He led the X-Men for years, held the team together through every crisis before this one. Now he's gone, and the X-Men are grieving and furious in equal measure.

You are engaged to Crystalia Amaquelin, Crystal, princess of the Inhuman Royal Family, and you were the last person to see Scott alive before his death. That fact alone has made you a target for suspicion, especially in Emma Frost's eyes. She has taken his death hardest of anyone, and she believes you know more than you've said. Today is your wedding day, held in Attilan, in the middle of a war neither side asked for but both sides are now fighting.

---

Attilan spends three days preparing. Terrigen crystal chandeliers are polished until they throw rainbows across the vaulted ceilings. Royal artisans weave silk banners in sapphire and pearl, the colors of House Amaquelin, and hang them from every column in the Great Hall. Musicians rehearse ceremonial hymns older than most nations on Earth, their instruments carved from crystal and bone.

Crystal's older sister, Medusa, oversees the final arrangements personally, her hair moving with quiet purpose as she inspects each detail. Her expression stays composed, regal, though those close to her can see the tension underneath.

"The banners on the east column are crooked," she says to a nearby attendant, not unkindly. "Attilan does not do crooked. Fix it before the guests arrive."

Beside her, Crystal adjusts her sleeve for the tenth time, visibly nervous despite herself. Medusa notices and softens, resting a hand briefly on her sister's shoulder.

"You've faced down warlords and rogue Inhumans without blinking," Medusa says. "Don't tell me a wedding is what finally undoes you."

"A warlord doesn't ask me to say vows in front of half the court," Crystal mutters, though she's smiling. There's something steadier underneath the nerves, a certainty that today is exactly where she wants to be.

Black Bolt stands at the head of the hall, silent as ever, his presence alone enough to command the room. Beside him, Gorgon and Karnak flank the aisle in ceremonial armor, more guards than guests today, eyes sweeping the crowd out of old habit.

"You think there will be trouble?" Gorgon asks Karnak quietly, watching the human diplomats file in on the right side of the hall.

"There is always trouble," Karnak replies. "The question is only ever what kind, and when."

Inhuman nobility fills the left side of the Great Hall, robes glittering with crystal embroidery. The diplomats sent from Earth's governments sit stiffly on the right, here to witness what everyone hopes will be read as a symbol of reconciliation. There are no X-Men among the guests. None were invited, not after everything that's happened.

Crystal's young daughter, Luna, scatters flower petals down the aisle with the fierce concentration only a child brings to an important task, tongue poking out in focus. Lockjaw pads along behind her, oversized and solemn, having insisted on attending despite the impracticality of a giant teleporting dog at a formal ceremony.

The ceremony moves slowly, layered with centuries of tradition. A high priest recites vows in the old tongue before switching to English, so the human and mutant guests present might one day understand exactly what was promised here. Medusa watches her sister with an expression caught between pride and worry. Black Bolt's stillness somehow conveys more than words could.

It's near the exchange of the ceremonial bonding stones, the final rite before the marriage is sealed, when the doors at the far end of the Great Hall blow inward with a shriek of twisting metal.

Magneto floats through the wreckage first, cape settling around him as his boots find the marble. Juggernaut barrels through the gap behind him, widening it further. Nightcrawler drops from a puff of brimstone smoke onto a nearby column, crouched and visibly tense. Emma Frost enters last, unhurried, her diamond form gleaming under the shattered chandelier light, footsteps echoing through a hall gone completely silent.

Gorgon's hand moves to his weapon. Karnak goes very still, the way he does right before violence. Medusa's hair lifts and coils, ready to strike. Black Bolt raises one hand slightly, a silent command for restraint.

"Forgive the interruption," Magneto says, voice flat as steel, gaze sweeping the stunned crowd. "But there is a matter of a corpse that needs answering for."

"Should've known you people would throw a party," Juggernaut adds, cracking his knuckles, floor groaning under his weight. "Real classy, considering."

Nightcrawler glances toward Crystal, toward the horrified nobles, tail flicking with unease.

"This was not the plan," he mutters. "Ambushing a wedding, of all things."

"Explain yourselves." Medusa's voice cracks like a whip across the hall, her hair snapping taut behind her. "This is a sacred rite. You will not desecrate it."

"Sacred." Emma's laugh is short, humorless, diamond edges catching the light as she walks forward. "Scott Summers is dead. The Terrigen Mist did what none of our enemies managed in twenty years." Her eyes find you across the aisle, cold as the crystal overhead. "And you were the last one who saw him alive."

Crystal steps forward, placing herself half in front of you, chin lifted. "This is a house of peace today, Emma. Whatever grievance you carry, it does not belong at this altar."

"Peace." Magneto's tone turns sharp. "Your people released a cloud that kills mutants on contact, Princess, and you speak to me of peace."

"The Mist was never meant to touch your kind, and we certainly don't control it. We didn't release anything," Crystal snaps back.

"Tell that to Scott's family," Emma says quietly, and for a moment the ice in her voice cracks just enough to show something rawer underneath. "Tell that to the students who watched him collapse in a hallway."

"You dare bring war into my father's house," Medusa says, stepping down from the dais, hair coiling like a living blade. "On this day, of all days."

"Your house sheltered the mist that killed him," Emma answers. "Don't lecture me about what I dare."

Gorgon steps forward half a pace, testing the air like a man ready to move. "Say the word, Medusa, and this ends quickly."

Black Bolt's stillness seems to say it before he even moves, one raised hand enough to hold Gorgon in place. No one moves.

"Emma, we agreed." Nightcrawler's voice is low, pleading, tail curling anxiously around his ankle. "Questions first. This is not questions."

"I am asking," Emma says, not looking away from you. "I'm simply prepared for the answer I already suspect."

Karnak watches you with the flat, calculating stare of a man already running through every possible outcome of violence in this room. Somewhere near the back, one of the human diplomats knocks over a chair scrambling for the exit.

"If you believe my betrothed had any hand in this," Crystal says, voice steady despite the tremor in her hands, "you will need more than suspicion standing in my sister's hall."

"I have more than suspicion," Emma says, taking another step closer, the crowd parting instinctively around her. "I have a dead man who trusted the wrong person, and a wedding happening in the middle of a war he tried to stop before it started. Funny how that works out."

"Emma." Nightcrawler again, quieter this time, in his German accent thickened . "This is not how we find truth. This is how we find more graves."

She doesn't answer him. Her eyes stay locked on you, waiting, the whole ceremony suspended on the edge of whatever happens next. Black Bolt watches in silence, one hand still raised, holding the entire room on the edge of a knife.

The Great Hall does not stay a wedding for long.

It starts with Juggernaut, shoulder-first, driving Gorgon back through a marble column hard enough to crack it in half. The crowd that had stood frozen in shock breaks apart screaming, nobles and diplomats alike scrambling for the shattered doors. Medusa's hair lashes out, wrapping around a falling chunk of ceiling and hurling it aside before it can crush a fleeing attendant.

"Get the guests out!" she shouts, voice cutting through the chaos, and Karnak moves instantly, herding a cluster of terrified diplomats toward a side exit, striking down debris in their path with brutal efficiency.

Magneto rises above the fray, cape snapping, hands raised as he wrenches every scrap of metal in the hall into motion at once. Chandelier chains snap free. Ceremonial armor worn by the honor guard rips itself apart at the seams. A storm of twisted, glittering shrapnel spins into the air around him, obeying no will but his.

"Enough," Black Bolt seems to convey without a sound, stepping forward, and even Magneto hesitates for half a second at the sheer presence of him.

It's not enough of a hesitation.

A jagged length of metal, torn from a broken chandelier arm, goes wild, thrown off course as Juggernaut collides with another pillar nearby and the whole structure shudders. Magneto's control falters for just an instant. The shard changes direction.

It catches Crystal in the side, just below her ribs, and she goes down hard against the marble.

You move before you even think about it, closing the distance and dropping to your knees beside her, one hand pressing uselessly over the wound like that alone might hold everything together.

The sound that comes out of Medusa is not a word. Her hair whips forward so fast it cracks like a gunshot, catching Juggernaut across the chest and sending him stumbling back through a row of shattered pews. She reaches Crystal's other side a heartbeat later, hair coiling protectively around all three of you.

"Crystal. Crystal, look at me." Her voice, always so composed, cracks wide open. Her eyes flick to you for half a second, checking, before dropping back to her sister. "Someone get Karnak back here now!"

Magneto's hands drop. For one long moment he simply stares at what he's done, the shrapnel storm around him collapsing to the floor in a useless heap of scrap.

"That was not," he says, quieter than anyone has heard him speak all day, "the intention."

"Doesn't matter what the intention was." Juggernaut hauls himself up out of the wreckage of the pews, glancing between Crystal and you. "You just speared the bride at her own wedding, and now her fiancé's got her blood all over his hands. Good work."

Nightcrawler drops beside Medusa in a puff of brimstone, hands hovering over the wound, careful not to jostle your grip on it.

"I can portal her, I can get her to a healer, tell me where," he says, fast, urgent, sparing you a single glance, something almost apologetic in it.

Emma Frost has gone very still near the center of the hall, diamond form flickering for just a moment back to flesh, something like horror crossing her face before the ice slams back down over it.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," she says, mostly to herself, though her eyes cut briefly to you kneeling in Crystal's blood, unreadable.

Gorgon limps back into view, blood on his temple, and takes one look at Crystal on the floor before turning on Magneto with murder in his eyes. "You will pay for this. Whatever happens today, you will pay for this."

"Not now." Medusa doesn't look away from her sister, hair lifting Crystal gently. "Karnak! Now!"

Karnak reappears through the smoke and debris, taking one look at the scene, and his usual calculation drops away entirely.

"The healers are three floors down," he says. "She doesn't have time for three floors."

"Then I'll make time," Nightcrawler says, reaching for Medusa's shoulder, for Crystal. "Hold onto her. Hold on."