Time was still buzzing faintly from the aftershocks of what had transpired. The once-shattered battlefield was now bathed in an unnatural quiet, the only sounds being the distant wails of approaching sirens.
When Soren had explained what he had done with the time stone, he had horrified everyone.
The technique wasn't even mentioned in most of the sacred scrolls, and among the magicians of the three sanctums, only the Ancient One knew it was possible.
A fissure in time, trapped in eternity, a punishment that even the Ancient One had never dared use.
Now, a young man had wielded it without any regard for ethics.
"Who is he…?" whispered one of the wounded disciples of the Sanctum.
"Control time like that…"
Soren showed no reaction to the awe and fear around him.
He moved between the injured sorcerers, pulling out a dozen glowing healing vials.
He handed them to the Ancient One without flourish.
"These will heal their injuries."
The Ancient One took them in silence. She had heard of this formula before.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Soren summoned another time sigil and shook it at the Sanctum building itself.
A bright green ring of ancient glyphs unfolded across the structure, wrapping the broken foundation and shimmering walls in a protective time field.
The rubble floated for a moment… then rewound, like a video in reverse.
Stone repaired. Walls restabilized. Cracks vanished.
The London Sanctum was whole again, rebuilt, as if the destruction had never occurred.
Mouths fell open. Ancient One's gaze narrowed, not in hostility, but in quiet alarm.
Soren turned back, his tone devoid of pride.
"Ancient One, the rest is yours to manage. We'll speak of Dormammu… soon."
Before she could reply, he vanished in a place with a teleportation.
The sound of police sirens finally reached the inner chambers as officers began surrounding the block. But there was nothing left to investigate. No enemy.
No war zone. Just a restored building glowing faintly with residual time magic.
Ancient One turned toward the injured and began issuing silent orders.
But her thoughts were far from pleasant.
She hadn't foreseen Kaecilius, empowered by Dormammu, breaking through the Mirror Dimension she'd created. Worse still, he bent reality itself, folding space as if it were parchment.
This would be a nightmare to sweep under the rug.
Everlife Medical Center
Faint incense still lingered. The wards pulsed slowly with magical energy, adjusting to their master's return.
Soren reappeared beside his workbench and, with a motion, summoned a faded yellow parchment, taken from one of Kaecilius's zealots while sending him to eternity.
No one had noticed.
This wasn't any spell.
It was the Forbidden Circle, a complex, ancient ritual to summon Dormammu himself.
The edges of the parchment crackled with faint dark energy, and the ink shimmered as though resisting being read.
"So this is how they did it…"
The complexity of the glyphs gave even him pause. Each line seemed to fold in on itself, suggesting recursion across dimensional layers. This was a fracture in metaphysical law.
Soren's hand hovered above it, drawing the shapes in the air mentally. For a moment, he touched the pattern in its purest form… his mind reeled.
A screaming void surged through his thoughts, an echo of Dormammu's will, pressing against the veil.
No light.
No time.
No death.
Only... me...
Soren immediately pulled back, beads of sweat forming on his brow.
"Dormammu is more aware than I thought…"
He waved his hand again. From a sealed vault beside his arcane desk, a sphere of condensed shadow emerged, shimmering like oil in water.
This was the residual darkness he had extracted from the Ancient One's wounds, quietly collected and quarantined within the heart of his medical hall.
"I can't risk channeling the circle through my own power."
"Dormammu would seize the link…"
But this dark essence would suffice.
Gazing at the dark energy coiling in his palm. It writhed like a living thing, tendrils of smoky shadow flickering.
A slight smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Not long after his return, a familiar portal shimmered into existence.
Through it stepped the Ancient One, her usually composed expression carrying the faint trace of weariness.
"Ancient One, have the matters of the Sanctum been handled?" Soren asked, without turning.
The Ancient One nodded, a rare flicker of respect in her eyes.
"Kamar-Taj has stood for centuries. Restoring order is nothing new. Kaecilius has been dealt with thanks to you."
"Good. Now there's only Dormammu left."
At that name, the Ancient One's smile faltered.
Centuries of experience left her no illusions about what they were facing. Dormammu was not a mere being, he was a dimension.
"You are confident." She said quietly.
Soren gestured to the swirling mass of dark energy in his hand, the shadows briefly forming shapes before dissipating.
"After mastering the Time stone… I have reason to be. Dormammu can be banished. Sealed. Eliminated, whichever one takes your fancy."
For centuries, she had drawn cautiously from the dark dimension, balancing light and shadow, knowing full well the price. She had faced Dormammu's overwhelming will countless times, each encounter...
"You speak of banishing him as though it were simple."
"Even I… am not without fear of him."
"That's precisely the problem. Ancient One, you've been tethered to Dormammu for centuries. Do you truly believe he won't eventually tear through this world?"
"A beast is patient… until hunger consumes its patience."
"…"
Ancient One knew he was right.
She had been postponing the inevitable. Patching walls while termites gnawed at the foundation.
"You intend to summon him?"
Soren nodded.
"I've already begun. The connection was never severed, not while you and your predecessors kept drawing on his power."
"He's been waiting. And now, with Kaecilius gone, he's… furious… and hungry."
His gaze locked with hers.
"The Holy Sanctums' shields must fall. Temporarily. We need to sever Earth's last layer of dimensional defense to lure him fully here."
It was a terrifying idea.
The Sanctums were the Earth's last mystical barrier against beings like Dormammu.
But seeing Soren's resolute gaze, the Ancient One's heart steadied.
For the first time in centuries, she wasn't alone.
"Very well."
"I will see to it."
They spoke briefly of the arrangements, and then the Ancient One left, her figure vanishing into a spinning ring of light.
Within the sanctum of Everlife, Soren had much to prepare. He prepared a seal to store time energy so he wouldn't be overwhelmed.
He even set aside time to study the tesseract.
The summoning circle he constructed was a work of ugly beauty.
Interwoven glyphs of the dark dimension were fused with light-imbued sigils of Kamar-Taj and ancient scripts lost to this world.
A bridge of shadow. A baited hook.
Time passed.
As the circle's resonance grew stronger, so too did its connection to the distant realm of Dormammu. The fabric of space around the room began to hum and shimmer.
Soren could feel it.
Dormammu's attention.
In the fathomless darkness of his own dimension, Dormammu seethed.
The loss of Kaecilius and his followers stung like a dagger in a thousand-year wound.
For centuries, he had inched closer to Earth, his servants spreading influence, weakening the boundaries.
Now… lost everything
When he reached out, all he found was emptiness.
His loyal zealots dead or banished. His anchors cut.
"WHO DARES DEFY ME?"
But amidst that fury, he sensed something… a new tether.
A dark bridge calling to him, built from his own power, unfamiliar.
Someone was attempting to reach him.
Foolish mortals…
Or
It was a challenge.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
Fellow Phantoms and aspiring Phantoms to be, if you seek to access advanced parts of this story procced to my shadowy realm of p@treon.
PhantomDream