Smith had no interest in the Sorcerer Supreme title. The role had a rightful owner somewhere in this timeline's future — a brilliant, arrogant surgeon who would arrive at Kamar-Taj broken and leave as something else entirely. Strange had done the job well. There was no reason to displace that.
"Ancient One. I need a favor."
She looked at him with the expression of someone who had just been turned down for something and found the pivot amusing. "You decline my offer and then immediately ask for one. You have a talent for efficiency, if nothing else." A pause. "What is it?"
"Thena. One of the Eternals. She's been suffering from Mahd Wy'ry for centuries — past memories breaking through the seal that was placed on them, crossing with her current awareness. Progressive, violent episodes. Her own people can't resolve it."
The Ancient One's expression shifted — thoughtful, moving inward. The Eternals. She had known of them for a long time, recognized them as the quiet maintenance crew behind humanity's long climb from scattered settlements to civilization. They had always stayed within their mission parameters. The Dragon Balls had been the first thing to pull them into direct contact with the wider world.
"Memory intrusion," she said slowly. "If that's the mechanism, sealing it is manageable. Reinforce what's breaking down, isolate the corrupted overlap." She looked at him. "Bring her."
"I'll contact Ajak now."
"And what do I get in return?"
Smith met her eyes. She was smiling slightly — not asking seriously, just acknowledging the form of the exchange.
"Keep growing," she said, before he could answer. "That's sufficient. The future has complications coming that will require people who are capable of handling them."
Smith thanked her and opened a portal back to the Brotherhood.
Ajak received the message and moved fast. Makkari retrieved Thena personally — the fastest available option, given the distances involved — and within the hour, Ajak arrived at the Brotherhood with Sersi, Makkari, and Thena at her side.
Smith met them at the entrance. He looked at Thena directly.
She was composed in the manner of someone who had learned to be composed because the alternative was dangerous — controlled, watchful, carrying the weight of centuries of episodes she hadn't been able to prevent and couldn't fully account for afterward. She looked at him with clear eyes.
"We're going to see the Ancient One," Smith said. "Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. The most powerful living practitioner of magic on this planet — comparable in scale to Odin or Zeus."
Ajak didn't visibly react. She already knew. The others absorbed it differently — Makkari's expression registered the claim as significant, Sersi straightened slightly. They had lived alongside legends. Being told someone existed at that tier still landed with weight.
"The rest of you wait here," Smith said. "Staff will show you around." He looked at Thena. "With me."
He opened the portal.
The Ancient One was at her desk when they came through. She stood as they entered, moving around the desk with the quiet attention of someone conducting an assessment before the formal examination begins. Her gaze went to Thena and stayed there — not with the intensity of confrontation, but with the specific quality of someone reading depth.
Thena looked around the office once, then back at the bald woman in front of her. She'd met gods. She'd fought alongside figures that mythology had turned into legends. She had not expected the person Smith Doyle brought her to meet to look like this.
She inclined her head. "Ancient One. Mr. Smith says you can help."
"Let me see what we're working with." The Ancient One moved to stand in front of her. "Mahd Wy'ry — the eternal madness. Yes. Sit."
Thena sat.
The Ancient One placed her hands gently on either side of Thena's head, and the magic moved — not visible in any dramatic way, more a shift in the quality of the air, a deepening stillness. The Ancient One closed her eyes.
She entered Thena's consciousness like a reader opening a very old book.
The Earth memories came first — clear, intact, well-formed. Thousands of years of a single planet, civilizations rising and falling beneath Thena's hands, faces that had lived and died and been replaced by other faces. The texture of it was beautiful and terrible in the way that long lives always were.
Then the disruption. The places where the seal had cracked, where older memories pushed through the barrier like water finding fault lines in stone. Memories of other planets. Other deployments. Other civilizations that had been guided to the same threshold — and then the same outcome, the same planetary unraveling, the same Celestial emergence, the same aftermath.
The Ancient One followed the thread backward.
She saw the Celestials. She saw the full scope of the mission the Eternals had been carrying, but the raw operational reality of it. Guide the civilization. Sustain the population. Maximize the energy available to the gestating entity below.
She saw Earth's core. She saw what was growing there.
She saw how long it had been growing, and how much longer it had until emergence.
The Ancient One spent a long time in the architecture of Thena's memories, distinguishing the structures that belonged to Earth from the structures that needed to be isolated. When she had a clear map of what to seal and what to preserve, she worked with careful precision — reinforcing the barrier, layering new containment over the fractures, building something more durable than what the Celestials had originally installed.
She withdrew slowly, letting the connection close behind her.
"Thena." She opened her eyes. "The Mahd Wy'ry has been addressed. Under normal conditions it won't resurface — barring a failure of the seal, or someone deliberately removing it."
Thena blinked, orienting. Something in her posture had changed — a tension she'd been carrying so long she'd stopped noticing it had gone. "Can't you eliminate it entirely?"
The Ancient One looked at her steadily. "Do you understand the true cause?"
"Not fully. We know it as a condition that affects Eternals. A kind of affliction."
"Then my advice is to leave it that way." Her voice was gentle but final. "Think of it as a part of you that I've put behind a stronger door. The door will hold. What's behind it doesn't need to be examined."
Thena absorbed this. There was something the Ancient One wasn't saying — she was perceptive enough to recognize the shape of it — but the woman's expression was not unkind, and whatever the unsaid thing was, it had clearly been judged better left alone for now. She could discuss it with Ajak.
"Thank you," Thena said.
The Ancient One turned toward Smith. "You really should thank him. I wouldn't have seen her without the introduction."
Thena looked at Smith. He'd brought her here without making it a transaction, without attaching conditions. She recognized that.
"Thank you, Mr. Smith."
He accepted the thanks without deflecting it, which was unusual enough that she noticed.