After carefully examining the unconscious professor, Soren let out a slow, steady breath.
"It's not exhaustion" He said gravely.
"Poisoning. A toxin designed to infiltrate and ravage the mind itself."
Even someone of Professor X's level, the greatest telepath alive, had fallen. The X-Men exchanged grim looks.
A spiritual toxin, something no one had even imagined.
"You have a way to help him, don't you?" Storm asked, her voice carrying a rare note of pleading.
Soren gave a small, reassuring smile. "Of course. There's no wound I can't mend , though this will take time."
He insisted on bringing Charles to the Everlife Medical Center, his personal domain, where his powers could be fully utilized. Jean went with him, determined to stay by both their sides.
After they vanished, Wolverine grunted, folding his arms.
"That guy's the genius doctor you've been talking about? He's a Mutant, right?"
It was a fair question, Soren's abilities weren't normal. The way he manipulated energy, healed wounds, and even seemed to bend space itself… it was beyond anything Logan had seen.
The other X-Men had speculated too, even Professor X once wondering if Soren was some anomaly like Apocalypse, a being of many gifts.
But there were no answers. And right now, the professor's survival came first.
Everlife
Soren laid Professor X in a specially prepared chamber. Glimmering white walls hummed with energy.
"Let's begin."
Channeling vast reserves of power, Soren constructed a psychic barrier to protect the professor's mind, then delicately began stripping away the invasive toxin.
But this substance was tenacious, far tougher than expected. Like barbed roots, it had tangled itself into every corner of Charles' consciousness.
Even Soren, for all his knowledge and strength, had never seen a toxin of this nature.
It was a testament to Magneto's ingenuity… and ruthlessness.
Yet the poison was a dead thing, and no match for Soren's steady, patient assault. Bit by bit, it peeled away, coalescing into a dark blue mist, suspended in the air. Soren studied it intently. Even in this form, it radiated a disturbing pressure.
"Clever old man, Erik." Soren thought grimly. "You planned this for years."
The soft hum filled the room as Soren Macaluso, the renowned healer known in quiet circles as "The Doctor of the Impossible," worked tirelessly.
Professor Charles Xavier lay unconscious on the treatment bed, his brow furrowed even in sleep. His mind, once a fortress of strength, had been subdued.
After hours of careful extraction, Soren spoke, breaking the heavy silence.
"Jean, it will take a long time to fully purge these toxins from the professor's mind." He said with a gentle smile.
"You don't have to stay here the whole time. Take a break, rest a little."
Jean Grey, standing vigil beside him, shook her head at first.
She was as gifted in telepathy as she was stubborn, but after a moment, she softened. Watching Soren pull more of the dark toxin from the professor's mind, sensing the gradual easing of its oppressive weight, she finally nodded.
"Alright… but call me the moment something changes."
"I promise."
This toxin wasn't made to kill.
It was something worse, a spiritual shackle.
A powerful suppressor of the mind, it targeted Mutants with psychic abilities, locking them within their own consciousness, stripping away their ability to resist.
The stronger the mind, the stronger the suppression.
For a man like Charles Xavier, this was a prison tailored for him.
And Soren understood Magneto's cruel brilliance.
"He didn't want Charles dead, he just wanted him out of the way."
Even in his unconscious state, the professor had likely perceived fragments of what happened around him. And now, slowly but steadily, Soren was pulling him back.
Time passed.
Strand by strand, the dark blue toxin was drawn out of Charles Xavier's mind. The process, once painstakingly slow, became easier as the toxin's grip weakened.
The final strands came away cleanly, and in that moment, Charles stirred.
His eyelids fluttered, his expression easing as the heavy fog lifted from his mind.
Jean, sensing the shift before her eyes could confirm it, rushed to his side.
"Professor…!"
The older man sat up carefully, his strength returning like the warmth of the sun after a long winter night. Despite the trauma, his mind was still sharp, and he knew what had happened.
"Thank you, Dr. Macaluso… you've saved my life again." Professor X said quietly, his gratitude deep and sincere.
Soren helped him sit upright, sealing the last of the extracted toxin inside a glass vial. The liquid shimmered with a strange, otherworldly gleam. He held it up to the light, curious.
"I won't destroy this." Soren muttered. "It's too unique… too dangerous to be ignored."
He carefully stored the vial. There was knowledge in it , dangerous, but valuable.
Handing the professor a small vial of shimmering liquid, Soren urged him to drink.
"This will speed up the recovery of your mental strength. It won't make you ready for Cerebro again, but it'll help you stabilize."
Charles drank it in a single gulp, already feeling its soothing, mending warmth seeping into his spirit.
"Erik's gone to great lengths." Charles murmured darkly.
"He's made sure I couldn't reach him. Even though my consciousness has returned, my strength won't be enough to safely use Cerebro for now."
Hearing those words, Jean's relief was mixed with growing anger. She'd always seen Professor Xavier as more than a mentor, he was family.
"While you were unconscious." Jean began, her voice tense, "We've been keeping things together at the school. But things are bad. Erik… he's moving fast."
She recounted everything, the escalating conflict, the attack on Rogue, the senator's transformation.
"Erik is mad." The professor's voice low.
"If we don't stop him now, this reckless plan of his will lead to catastrophe. If that machine turns countless humans into unstable Mutants, it'll doom both our people. The divide between Mutants and humans will only grow… and peace will become impossible."
He turned to Soren, strength returning to his voice.
"We have no time to waste. We must go back, we must stop him."
꧁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