The oppressive darkness around Soren felt suffocating, endless, like standing within the belly of a god.
Dormammu's massive head loomed in the void, a grotesque, shifting shape that existed both as matter and will. His immense form seemed unchanged, but his voice echoed violently inside Soren's mind.
"Ant! Release me! I will show you suffering beyond imagination!"
But there was a tinge to the booming threat now desperation.
Dormammu, the ageless Lord of the Dark Dimension, who devoured countless worlds and enslaved innumerable souls, was afraid.
Soren's lips curled into a satisfied smile.
His gaze flicked down to the faintly glowing vial in his palm.
Inside it, the Dark Soul Thread, stripped from Dormammu with the scalpel, swirled like liquid shadow dense with power, radiating corrosive intent.
It was a small piece, yes, but essential.
No matter how vast Dormammu's form, this fragment contained his deepest essence, and the loss of it had already begun causing chaos for him from within.
Soren exhaled, sweat slick on his brow.
Maintaining the time-stop state with the Time Gem was no easy feat. His mental power was like water being poured into an endless abyss. He could feel it tugging, resisting his hold.
He didn't want to stay here much longer.
"Dormammu."
"Let me help you… dissolve this problem."
With a sharp flick of his hand, the magic circle beneath him rearranged, arcs of light danced through the void.
His spiritual power surged, heedless of the strain, pouring into the reconfiguring spell structure.
The Time Gem's glow shifted from steady green to a radiant, blinding gold green.
The runes spun wildly.
"Time Eternal Exile!"
At that instant, the magic circle exploded with light.
Bolts of radiant time-energy shot out from the magic circle, racing through the dark space like living lightning.
Wherever they touched, reality itself vanished… it was simply erased.
Void replaced Dormammu's body, and an unplaceable, incomprehensible emptiness expanded.
This was a space without time.
A void where neither light, nor thought, nor even Dormammu's will could exist in sequence.
"What did you do?! NO! You… you fool! This place… it's!"
For the first time, genuine terror filled Dormammu's voice. He could feel his essence bleeding into the timeless rift, his vast form rapidly erasing.
The spell was complete.
All that remained was to let the Time Gem carry out its final function.
Soren's expression eased, the tension leaving his face as Dormammu's enraged roars echoed uselessly in his mind. He didn't care.
The trap had been perfectly set.
A rift beyond reality itself.
A space where the concept of time did not exist.
Dormammu was now exiled to this temporal void, locked in his current state for all eternity.
As long as he remained within that fracture, the Dark Lord could neither move nor act. And in the real world, a realm without a timeline would collapse and fade into nonexistence.
Unless Dormammu could somehow shatter the laws of time itself, he would never return.
Light from the Time Gem surged outward, wrapping the rift in a divine emerald glow.
Dormammu's nagging voice faded… first to a whisper… then to silence.
At last, the space became truly dark.
The battle was over.
Only the broken space portal remained, held open by the temporal freeze, but even it had begun to crack, spreading along its frame like ice fractals.
"Dormammu… goodbye. Now, you've truly become something beyond time and space."
"Don't thank me."
"It was my pleasure."
His almost amused, as he passed through the suspended portal.
Soren deactivated Time Stasis.
The rules of reality surged back into motion.
Behind him, the portal shattered like glass under pressure, the fracture sealing itself shut in an instant, erasing all trace of the rift and the being trapped within it.
As he passed the world barrier, a fleeting shimmer of strange light flickered in the corner of his vision.
It wasn't Dormammu's dimension, it was something else...
A hazy realm. Indistinct, like a fragile mirage seen through rippling water.
It looked like… a strange world, unfamiliar.
But it disappeared, leaving only a mystery.
"What… was that?"
Soren filed the vision away, his mind too drained to contemplate it now.
Back in his Everlife, Soren's gaze fell to the vial in his hand, the Demon Soul thread still pulsing, radiating sinister power.
"A good harvest."
Though not a genetic material in the conventional sense, this essence was akin to a metaphysical gene, the very blueprint of Dormammu's nature.
Soren planned to study it in his genetic laboratory, see if it could be grafted, refined, or broken down into something usable.
After returning from the formless dark void, Soren didn't linger long in his private medical hall.
A simple restorative potion was enough to replenish his drained mental energy, the shimmering liquid instantly calming the throbbing ache behind his eyes.
With a pulse of magic and the faint shimmer, Soren teleported straight to Kamar-Taj.
The wards of Kamar-Taj responded to his presence with a cautious hum, ancient spells flickering faintly in recognition.
The Ancient One was waiting.
She stood beneath the old Bodhi tree, the faint orange glow of lanterns brushing against her ageless features.
As Soren materialized, her expression subtly changed, a flicker of tension, wariness…
Awe.
"Soren Macaluso." She greeted unusually cautious, "How is it? Has Dormammu… been resolved?"
The question wasn't casual.
Ancient One had sensed it the moment Dormammu's presence was summoned.
For centuries, she had carefully drawn on controlled fragments of the Dark Dimension's power to extend her life and protect Earth.
When Dormammu was pulled into this realm, she felt an overwhelming, suffocating darkness that burnt her ancient heart.
And…
Nothing.
Dormammu's power vanished.
The connection severed, abruptly ceased mid-howl.
And now, standing before the man who caused it, who returned unscathed.
She had lived lifetimes, fought gods, and peered into countless futures. An existence capable of banishing Dormammu? She could scarcely fathom it.
If Soren knew what the Ancient One was thinking, he would have laughed outright.
Yes, he'd won. But it was no act of personal might.
He had leaned heavily on the Time Gem, a borrowed power from the cosmic tapestry.
Without it, Dormammu could have obliterated him a hundred times over.
But appearances…
They were everything.
"Ancient One, can't you feel it?"
"Dormammu… is gone. Forever."
He left it at that, neither boasting nor explaining.
He made no claim of killing Dormammu outright.
Ancient One's breath caught for a moment.
Her sharp mind filled in the gaps, and what she imagined only heightened her reverence.
The burden she had carried for centuries, the threat of Dormammu's return, was gone.
And the feeling… was intoxicating.
Her face softened. The guarded tension that rarely left her eased.
"Doctor Soren, on behalf of Kamar-Taj… and all life on this Earth, I thank you."
She placed a hand over her heart and bowed a mark of rare, genuine gratitude.
He waved a hand lightly, offering a polite smile.
"Ancient One, you're being too formal."
"I told you before, this was a transaction. I was fulfilling my promise, nothing more."
"There's no need for such a ceremony."
He wasn't lying, though there was more to it than that.
Yes, it was a deal…
But he understood what this meant to her.
He wasn't cruel enough to dismiss it entirely.
Ancient One studied him quietly, then gave a knowing smile. "Sometimes… even a transaction can reshape the world."
꧁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