Things… did not go according to plan.
The original strategy had been simple enough: send The Watcher—our master spy, our ghost—into the Sanctum network to negotiate with the sorcerers. His ability to nullify all magical energy in his vicinity made him the ideal diplomat. After all, if the situation soured, none of them would be capable of casting a spell anywhere near him.
Unfortunately, the situation soured immediately.
According to the reports, the sorcerers insisted that they should take control of the anomalies we secured. They declared that our facilities, our containment procedures, and our staff were "dangerous" and "irresponsible." Apparently, their brilliant plan was to simply destroy anything anomalous they found dangerous.
We disagreed.
They insisted.
We disagreed louder.
Then someone—still unknown—fired the first shot.
After that, diplomacy died in the first thirty seconds.
From what my agents described, the fight was chaos: magical shields collapsing the moment they approached The Watcher, sorcerers screaming as their mystical weapons turned to useless metal, spells evaporating mid-cast. Without magic, they were merely martial artists in fancy robes—and our strike teams outnumbered and outgunned them.
The Watcher walked through them like a void of silence. A dead zone of power. Every sorcerer who stepped close enough fell immediately into a panic as their connection to the mystic arts vanished.
The Sorceress Supreme herself confronted him, wielding ancient relics and powerful enchantments.
None of it mattered.
The Watcher simply approached her, nullification aura humming around him like a pressure wave, and with no magic left to protect her, she was reduced to flesh and blood. He killed her cleanly.
Just like that.
The battle ended shortly after. Without leadership, the remaining sorcerers broke their formation. Some died fighting. Some fled. Some surrendered.
We didn't slaughter them—no, that would be sloppy and wasteful. And besides, we had a far better tool for handling witnesses:
Neuralyzers.
Waves upon waves of neuralyzers.
Dozens of our field agents moved through the Sanctums wiping memories, altering narratives, reconstructing events. Every civilian who saw flashes of the battle had their thoughts rewritten. Every sorcerer who survived had their memories fragmented, reorganized, and rebuilt from the ground up. We erased their knowledge of us, of the battle, of the Time Stone, of everything.
By the time our teams vanished into the shadows, there was no evidence left behind.
And the best part?
We secured everything.
The Eye of Agamotto—and the Time Stone within it.Dozens of relics of immeasurable power.Rare magical artifacts that entire civilizations would wage wars over.Recovered grimoires.Forbidden scrolls.Even the bodies of several powerful sorcerers—useful for necromantic study and biological analysis.
Losses were heavy on both sides, but the gains were astronomical.
And with The Watcher leading the operation, the Sanctums never stood a chance.
Now, the world has no Sorceress Supreme. The mantle is empty, the chain of succession broken. It's only a matter of time until a new one rises—someone more stable, more diplomatic.
Maybe next time, negotiations will go better.
Or maybe they won't.
But either way… the Time Stone is in our hands now.
And that makes everything worth it.