Arthur tumbled through the violet portal and hit ground that shouldn't exist.
Purple-black energy swirled around him like living smoke. The "ground" beneath his feet pulsed with its own heartbeat. In the distance, impossible structures rotated through space, defying every law of physics he'd ever learned.
"Welcome to the Dark Dimension," the Ancient One said, appearing beside him.
Arthur's skin crawled. Arthur recognized it immediately from his foreknowledge. But seeing it in person was vastly different from memory. Everything here felt wrong—like reality had been fed through a blender and reassembled by a madman.
"The beings here exist beyond time as we understand it," she continued. "They see our dimension as limited. Imperfect."
As if summoned by her words, shapes emerged from the swirling darkness. Some were vaguely humanoid but stretched and distorted. Others defied description entirely—geometries that hurt to perceive directly.
Arthur felt his frustration from the Mephisto realm boiling over. The helplessness. The fear. The crushing weight of realizing how small he truly was in the cosmic scheme.
He needed to hit something.
"May I?" he asked, gesturing toward the approaching entities.
The Ancient One nodded slightly. "Channel your emotions productively, Mr. Hayes."
That was all the permission Arthur needed.
Golden energy flowed from his fingers, forming a shimmering blade of pure light. The first creature lunged—a writhing mass of shadow and too many teeth.
Arthur's blade carved through it like sunlight through mist. The thing shrieked and dissolved into smoke.
More came.
Arthur replaced his blade with twin shields that blazed around his forearms. A spider-like entity with human hands for legs scuttled forward, striking with impossible speed.
Its claws scraped against golden barriers. The sound was like nails on glass multiplied by a thousand.
Arthur pushed back hard. His shield expanded outward, catching the creature center-mass and hurling it into the void.
"Focus," the Ancient One called. "Control your power. Don't let it control you."
Arthur took a breath. Steadied himself.
The next wave approached more cautiously. He formed a dozen energy darts between his fingers and launched them with surgical precision. Each one found its mark.
A massive creature charged him—living shadow wrapped around human bones like armor. Arthur constructed a spear of solid light and gripped it with both hands.
They met head-on.
The impact jarred his arms to the shoulder. But the spear held. Golden energy spread from the point of contact, unmaking the creature from the inside out.
Arthur fought harder, channeling months of training and a lifetime of combat experience. His constructs flowed from one form to another—blades to shields to whips of crackling energy.
But something was wrong.
Each second here drained him. Not just his strength, but his will. His sense of who he was.
"Enough," the Ancient One said.
Arthur lowered his hands, gasping. His golden constructs faded to nothing. The remaining entities melted back into the darkness, apparently deciding he wasn't worth the trouble.
"How do you stand it?" Arthur asked. "This place feels like it's trying to eat my soul."
"Practice. And necessity."
That's when Arthur felt it.
Something vast beyond comprehension. Power that made Mephisto's realm feel like a gentle spring breeze.
Arthur's knees buckled.
His vision blurred. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his body refused to obey. It was like being crushed beneath a collapsing star.
In the distance, something moved toward them.
Massive. Ancient. Terrible.
Arthur caught a glimpse—burning eyes larger than skyscrapers, a form that seemed made of darkness itself—and knew he was about to die.
"So," a voice spoke.
Each word made Arthur's bones vibrate. His teeth ached. His soul cringed.
"The Sorcerer Supreme returns to my domain."
The figure emerged fully from the swirling energies. Dormammu in all his cosmic horror—a being of pure dark magic whose very presence made reality scream in protest.
Arthur might as well have been a dust mote for all the attention the entity paid him.
"I did not expect you so soon," Dormammu continued. His voice was thunder made of shadows. "Have you come to borrow power again?"
The Ancient One stepped between Arthur and the cosmic being. "A brief visit. Nothing more."
"Brief?" Dormammu's laughter shook the dimension. "Time has no meaning here. You know this."
Arthur remained frozen. He couldn't even breathe properly under the crushing weight of Dormammu's presence.
"Yet you continue to steal from my realm," Dormammu said, genuine amusement in his terrible voice. "Prolonging your pitiful existence. How much longer can you cling to life? How many more years will you buy with fragments of my power?"
"Long enough," she replied calmly.
"We shall see."
Dormammu attacked without warning.
Dark energy erupted from him—not golden light like the mystic arts, but pure force that sought to unmake everything it touched. The Ancient One moved faster than Arthur had ever seen her move.
Her hands wove patterns that deflected the assault.
She didn't try to match Dormammu's raw power. She redirected it. Used it against itself. Turned overwhelming force into manageable streams.
Arthur recognized some techniques from his memories—moves Strange had used against Thanos. But this was different. Dormammu was stronger than Thanos. More than just physically powerful.
He was a fundamental force of the universe itself.
And the Ancient One wasn't using the Time Stone.
The battle—if you could call it that—was basically the Ancient One buying time. She wove shields and barriers. Opened portals to redirect attacks. Created mirror dimensions to confuse Dormammu's targeting.
Arthur found himself defending against mere aftershocks of their conflict. Each stray bolt of dark energy that came his way required him to quickly form golden shields, the constructs straining against power that could have atomized mountains.
"Clever as always," Dormammu admitted, pausing his assault. "But you cannot evade forever."
"I don't need forever," the Ancient One replied. "Only long enough."
Arthur saw her opportunity the moment she took it. A gap in Dormammu's attention, a split second when the cosmic entity's focus shifted. Her hands moved with desperate precision, tearing open a gateway that shouldn't have been possible.
"Now!" she commanded.
Arthur didn't hesitate. He lunged toward the portal just as the Ancient One grabbed his arm. They tumbled through together as reality folded around them.
Behind them, Dormammu's roar of rage shook the very foundations of his dimension. The sound followed them through the closing gateway—a promise of future retribution.
They collapsed onto the familiar rooftop in New York. Arthur's legs gave out entirely, and he found himself sitting on cold concrete, staring up at mundane stars.
"That was—" he began, then stopped. There were no words.
The Ancient One sat beside him, looking more tired than he'd ever seen her. For several minutes, neither spoke.
"I don't understand," Arthur finally said. "How can something be that powerful? How can anyone stand against it?"
"Dormammu is a fundamental force," she replied quietly. "Like gravity or entropy. You don't defeat such things—you work around them."
Arthur stared at his hands, remembering how utterly helpless he'd felt. "Can I ever be strong enough to face something like that?"
"Perhaps. In time." The Ancient One's voice carried exhaustion. "But you needn't worry. As long as the Sanctums stand, as long as the barriers hold, Dormammu cannot enter our dimension."
Arthur nodded slowly, processing this. He did not ask about what Dormammu had said—about borrowing power, about prolonging her life. He didn't care. To him, it was no different from using dark magic for good purposes. As long as magic served good ends, the source mattered less than the result.
"The barriers are strong?" he asked instead.
"Stronger than you know." She stood, brushing off her robes. "The Ancient One before me, and the one before her, all the way back to Agamotto himself—we've all contributed to those defenses."
Arthur got to his feet, his legs still shaky. The city below went about its business, completely unaware that three dimensions away, a cosmic entity had just tried to unmake reality.
"What now?" he asked.
"Rest," the Ancient One advised, noting his exhaustion. "What you've experienced today would overwhelm most practitioners entirely. You've done remarkably well to maintain your composure."
Arthur nodded gratefully and made his way back to his quarters. Once alone, he collapsed onto his meditation mat, not even attempting to reach his bed.
The experiences had changed him, he realized. Not physically, but in his fundamental understanding of reality. The cosmos was vaster, more dangerous, and more complex than even his previous knowledge had suggested.
Movies and comics never showed the true extent of power some beings in the Marvel world possessed.
As exhaustion claimed him, one thought persisted: he needed to accelerate his preparations. He was nowhere near strong enough to face what was to come.
But now, at least, he understood the scale of what he was preparing for.
The real question was whether any amount of preparation would ever be enough.