"Dormammu! I've come to bargain!"
The words echoed, a maddeningly persistent splinter in the timeless void of the Dark Dimension. For an entity who had consumed entire realities, who measured existence in eons, the infinite loop was a novel form of torture. No matter how many times he annihilated the insignificant mortal, Stephen Strange would simply reappear, his body whole, his resolve unbroken, his voice ringing with the same infuriating declaration.
"STOP!" Dormammu's cosmic form convulsed, his rage churning the very fabric of his dimension. Dark energy flared like dying stars around him, and he unleashed a wave of pure destructive force.
And still, the loop held. Strange was a ghost he couldn't exorcise, an inescapable testament to a limitation he never knew he had. The mortal was a parasite on the flesh of infinity.
"Dormammu!" The shout was a constant, piercing needle against his consciousness.
Driven to the brink of a madness he hadn't felt in millennia, the Lord of the Dark Dimension restrained his power. This time, he only swatted Strange from the air, letting the mage crash to the fractured ground. He loomed over the broken figure, his eyes burning with the fury of a thousand consumed suns. "You will never win."
Strange pulled himself to his feet, his body aching but his spirit a fortress of defiance. "No," he agreed, spitting out a mouthful of dust. "But I can lose. Again, and again, and again. Forever. And that makes you my prisoner."
"NO! STOP! LET ME OUT!" Dormammu's roar was no longer that of a conqueror, but of a caged animal. He obliterated Strange once more, the sound of his own desperation echoing in the silence that followed.
It was no use. Seconds later, Strange materialized before him again, watching the cosmic being's unraveling with a grim satisfaction. He knew that countless versions of himself had already paved the way for this moment.
"I told you," Strange said, his voice steady. "I've come to bargain."
Finally, something in the ancient entity broke. "What... bargain?" Dormammu hissed, the words tasting like ash and defeat.
"Take your zealots and leave Earth," Strange commanded, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. "End your assault on my world. And never, ever return. Agree to these terms, and I will break the loop."
Dormammu stared at the mortal, his pride warring with the encroaching insanity. At last, with a final, shuddering tremor, he conceded.
Time snapped back into place.
The oppressive weight of the Dark Dimension receded from the skies above New York. Pietro, moving in a blur, snatched the steel bar from the ground and plunged it through Kaecilius's chest before scooping Wanda into his arms and speeding to the safety of a nearby rooftop. Wanda gathered her chaos magic, ready to repel the darkness, but paused as she watched the celestial wound begin to seal itself.
Kaecilius, bleeding out on the street below, felt the power that had been gifted to him turning traitorous. A cold dread washed over him as he looked up to see Strange floating down, the Eye of Agamotto pulsing with green light.
"What did you do?" he rasped, his voice choked with blood and disbelief.
"He agreed to my terms," Strange answered coolly.
A horrifying sensation crawled over Kaecilius's skin. He stared in terror at his hands as they began to flake away, turning to brittle, weathered dust. "What is this? What's happening?"
"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" Strange's voice was devoid of pity. "To become one with the Dark Dimension. To gain eternal life in Dormammu's embrace. You just might not like the process."
Kaecilius tried to scream, but only a gurgle of blood escaped his lips. The dark brand on his forehead flared with an ominous purple light. A tremendous force seized him, tearing his body apart as it was dragged, piece by piece, into the shrinking rift in the sky. His silent scream was swallowed by the void. Dormammu was a being of his word. He was recalling his followers, collecting the debts they had willingly incurred. Across the city, unconscious zealots trapped within the Mirror Dimension were similarly ripped from reality, their forms disintegrating as they were pulled back to their master.
The rift shrank until it was no larger than a doorway, but two long, dark tentacles still lingered, writhing as if reluctant to leave. An unsettling feeling pricked at Strange. This was too easy.
In the next second, the two tentacles were cleanly severed from the rift. They dissolved into two clouds of pure black energy that shot off in opposite directions—one northeast, the other northwest. The dimensional tear then snapped shut with a sound like tearing silk, and silence fell over the city. The New York Sanctum, fully restored, stood as if nothing had happened.
Deep within his own realm, a faint, cruel smile touched Dormammu's cosmic features. He had kept his promise to the letter. He would leave Earth and never return. But the bargain never said he couldn't leave a parting gift. When he had first breached the dimensional walls, his senses had detected two other strange, powerful presences on the planet. He hadn't cared then, confident that once Earth was his, no mere monster could challenge him. But now, they were the perfect vessels for his cosmic spite.
Strange's face hardened. He didn't know what Dormammu had done, but he knew it was a perversion of their agreement. "Where did those tentacles go?" he shouted, levitating higher into the sky.
"They split!" Wanda called down from the rooftop, her expression grim. "Two clouds of black energy. One went northeast, the other northwest!"
"Damn it, Dormammu! What did you do?" Strange seethed, realizing too late that the entity had exploited a loophole in their pact.
"Whatever it is," Wanda said, her hands glowing with scarlet power, "it can't be good."
Just then, Wang and Mordo, freed from the time reversal, appeared in the Sanctum's courtyard. "Stephen!" Mordo yelled. "Where is the Ancient One?"
Strange's blood ran cold. He had forgotten all about her. He immediately flew toward the last place he had seen her.
The Ancient One stood on a high balcony, watching the last vestiges of the Dark Dimension fade. She let out a soft sigh. Her plan had been for Kaecilius to strike her down, allowing her to pass on the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme as destiny intended. But Stephen, in his desperate bid to save the world, had accidentally saved her, too. Her long-awaited retirement was now indefinitely postponed.
As she watched the twin clouds of dark energy streak across the horizon, her brow furrowed. She knew what they were. She knew where they were going. Her vast knowledge allowed her to see Dormammu's final, spiteful gambit with perfect clarity.
This world had such a tragic fate. Even in victory, the seeds of the next crisis were already sown.
She couldn't stop it. Without the Sanctums to anchor her power, she couldn't fight a dimensional demon like Dormammu across the veil. By the time the New York temple was whole again, the dark energy was already gone, racing toward two targets of immense power: the wind elemental in the sky, and the fire elemental still absorbing magma deep within a volcano.
At that very moment, Thor was hurling bolts of divine lightning at the colossal wind elemental. Time had been rewound to before he'd discovered its immunity. The creature, unbothered, swung a massive arm and swatted the God of Thunder from the sky like an insect. As Thor tumbled helplessly, Rhodes swooped in, unleashing a volley of repulsor blasts that stitched lines of energy across the elemental's form, doing no damage.
The creature ignored him, turning its attention to the civilian, Max, below. But just as it prepared to strike, Dormammu's power arrived.
A vile, inky darkness washed over the elemental's pure white form. A glowing purple mark—Dormammu's brand—burned itself into the creature's core. Its once-glowing eyes now blazed with a terrifying, cosmic malice.
The wind elemental was gone. In its place was something new, something far worse: an unholy fusion of elemental fury and dimensional darkness, a monster empowered by one of the most malevolent forces in the multiverse.