Belasco finally had what he wanted. Well, half of it, anyway.
His grotesque collection of X-Men finally included his very first Magik, even if the twelve-year-old girl's mutant abilities had not yet awakened.
Illyana Rasputin sat shivering on the cracked, brimstone earth. The hellscape around her was littered with the corpses of her own adult counterparts. Older versions of herself lay everywhere. Some had bled to death, their pale skin turning translucent. Others were actively being devoured by multi-legged Limbo maggots. Many were nothing but bleached bones and tangles of long blonde hair.
It was an absolute death-trap.
"Illyana Rasputin," Belasco purred, stepping into her line of sight. "You have exceptional potential."
The young girl barely registered him. She stared past the demon lord toward her brother, Piotr, and the other X-Men. They were frozen in mid-air, entirely suspended in time, holding their desperate attack postures. Piotr's metallic skin caught the dull red light of Limbo. As far as Illyana knew, her brother and his friends were the greatest heroes in the world.
Now, they were nothing but living statues.
"Your soul is delicious, little girl," Belasco grinned, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth. "But luckily for you, I am not currently hungry. I am even willing to offer you a chance to save your family."
He reached down and casually ruffled her blonde hair. Illyana flinched away, her breath hitching.
"Give me half of your soul, and I will let you walk away," Belasco offered, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "There are rebels in this dimension who oppose my rule. You can try seeking their help." He leaned in closer. "Or, you can simply give up. If you do, your family will become exactly like them."
Belasco stepped aside with a theatrical sweep of his arm. Behind him stood an endless horde of corrupted X-Men. Illyana gasped. She saw dozens of different versions of Colossus, their organic steel twisted into jagged, demonic spikes, actively tearing into the limbs of lesser demons.
"Have you made your choice, poor Illyana?"
The twelve-year-old girl knelt in the dirt, surrounded by the rotting remains of her own alternate-universe variants.
Belasco watched her face. He felt a familiar mix of satisfaction and utter boredom. She scrambled to her feet, turned, and sprinted blindly into the rocky wasteland.
She always made the exact same choice. Every single time. Without exception.
"Then, according to the terms of our little game," Belasco sneered, "your soul belongs to me."
He reached out a clawed hand and closed his fist. Illyana's knees buckled. She slammed into the dirt. A spectral, glowing phantom of the young girl was violently ripped from her physical body and dragged across the distance into Belasco's waiting palm.
Illyana gritted her teeth. She forced herself back up. Hot blood seeped from the corners of her eyes, dripping down her cheeks. Her head swam with agonizing vertigo. A massive, hollow void ached in her chest, as if she had suddenly forgotten something fundamental about who she was. She stumbled forward and kept running.
Belasco watched her flee. He recited the exact same lines he had spoken a thousand times before.
"Once again, poor Illyana chooses to fight back. She arrogantly believes she can save her family, completely ignorant of the fact that across the entire multiverse, no Illyana has ever succeeded."
"Your theatrics are tedious."
Immortus stepped out from the shadows. The Master of Time glared at the demon lord with profound displeasure. Belasco truly lived up to his demonic nature—he betrayed his agreements the moment they were made.
Immortus had deliberately weakened the dimensional barrier, providing Belasco the exact breach needed to drag a specific target from Earth-616 into Limbo. Finding a viable target capable of tearing a stable rift between Earth-616 and Limbo was incredibly difficult. The Sorcerer Supreme was entirely out of the question. Doctor Strange might technically be a rookie—having practiced the mystic arts for only a few years—but the man had literally taken an axe and chopped Dormammu back into the Dark Dimension.
Belasco knew exactly where he stood in the cosmic hierarchy. He was nowhere near Dormammu's weight class. While Belasco wasn't the weakest dimensional lord in existence, he was far from the top tier. Dimensional lords were fundamentally just powerful magicians who merged their spirits with an unclaimed realm. By anchoring themselves to a masterless dimension, they transformed the reality into an extension of their own inner will, drawing near-infinite energy from it.
But that didn't automatically make them invincible brawlers. Entities like Chthon and Oshtur were literal Old Gods. Belasco was just an arrogant mortal sorcerer whom Chthon had mutated centuries ago. If Belasco ever stepped out of Limbo and fought on neutral ground, Strange would chop him into kindling without breaking a sweat.
That was why Immortus had facilitated this arrangement. Belasco needed Illyana Rasputin. She was the future Magik. In the predetermined timeline, the Earth-616 variant of Magik was fated to dethrone Belasco and become Limbo's new ruler. The current constant interference by Spider-Man threatened to derail that established destiny. Immortus could not allow the timeline to fracture.
But Belasco had altered the deal. Unable to step onto Earth-616 himself, he had hijacked the rift Immortus opened. Instead of just grabbing the mutant girl, he had widened the breach and dispatched his demonic strike team to abduct Spider-Man.
Belasco's logic was simple: If I have a Spider-Man who can tear holes through the multiverse at will, why would I ever need Magik? He had slaughtered countless variants of Illyana across a hundred different realities. He was exhausted by the repetitive cycle of letting the cub grow into a tiger just to kill her again.
"You had best work quickly," Immortus warned, his tone icy. "The Avengers and the Sorcerer Supreme will not give you much time to play your games."
"The Sorcerer Supreme of Earth-616 is an annoyance, certainly, but hardly enough to defeat me," Belasco sneered, delivering a profoundly cowardly statement with absolute arrogance. "Regardless, I have no intention of leaving Limbo. So long as I remain inside my own dimension, Stephen Strange is no threat to me here."
He raised his clawed hand. The stolen spectral fragment of Illyana's soul compressed, glowing fiercely until it solidified into a jagged, blood-red gem. A Bloodstone. It pulsed with pure dark magic.
"The void I just carved into her soul will naturally act as a vacuum," Belasco chuckled, clicking his tongue. "It will gradually fill itself with the ambient dark magic of Limbo. She will become a pitiful, corrupted little wretch. Such a tragedy. Tsk, tsk."
He cast a sideways glance at Immortus. "And as for your concerns regarding time, you worry too much. Time does not flow linearly in Limbo. A few minutes in your precious Earth-616 equates to several years here. I have run this gauntlet countless times, Immortus. I never lose."
Immortus simply stared at him, his face an unreadable mask. He had frozen the X-Men in temporal stasis specifically to stall for the Avengers' arrival, maintaining the structural integrity of the timeline. But Belasco's deviation forced a recalculation.
It wasn't just Spider-Man, the Avengers and the X-Men recklessly fighting destiny. Belasco was actively trying to rewrite his own fate, too. Immortus exhaled slowly. If the Avengers breached Limbo, the Master of Time might actually have to assist them just to protect the sacred timeline.
Miles away, deep within the craggy wasteland of Limbo, Illyana Rasputin kept running.
Her lungs burned. She had no idea how long she had been sprinting, but the shadows around her were shifting. More and more demons were picking up her scent, closing in from the ridges above.
A hulking brute lunged from a jagged outcropping, claws extended.
Before it could strike her, a silver longsword whistled through the air, burying itself to the hilt in the demon's chest. The creature dissolved into ash. Illyana hit the dirt and looked up, her breath catching in her throat.
Standing over her was an older, battle-scarred woman. The woman possessed Illyana's exact facial features, but her skin was weathered. Her right arm was entirely demonic, plated in jagged, crimson scales.
"Get up, Magik," the older Illyana commanded, pulling the glowing sword from the dirt. "Whatever you think you're going to do here, first and foremost, you have to survive."
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