Some people have anxiety dreams about showing up to class naked, or their teeth falling out, or realizing they forgot an essay that was due three weeks ago.
Dormammu's anxiety dream is apparently Earth, and he never shuts up about it.
I didn't see the start of the confrontation with my own eyes, not at first. I felt it the way you feel thunder before you hear it, like the air itself got heavier and the world's skin went tight. Magic pressure rolled across the village in slow pulses, every one of them making my wand hum in my hand like it wanted to either fight or run away—no middle option.
Later, I'd piece together what happened at the crack, because the Ancient One wasn't the kind of person who panicked or hid the truth. She treated cosmic horror like it was a stubborn door that needed the right key. Calm. Surgical. Almost insulting, considering what she was facing.
In the heart of Latveria's village, where the Dark Church had built its ritual site like a splinter embedded in reality, a dimensional crack hung in the air.
Calling it a "crack" felt dishonest. It wasn't a hairline fracture. It was a vertical wound, a massive slit like an eye that hadn't decided whether it was opening or devouring. The edges shimmered with heatless flame, and inside was not darkness so much as presence—an endless awareness that made you feel small in ways that had nothing to do with height.
The Ancient One stood before it like she was waiting for a late student.
Her posture was relaxed, hands poised, face unreadable. If there was fear in her, it didn't make it to the surface. She gazed into the enormous pupil-shaped tear, and her voice carried steady and clear.
"Dormammu," she said, like she was addressing a rival scholar instead of a dimensional tyrant. "Are you still not giving up?"
Something answered from the other side, and the sound didn't travel through air the way voices should. It echoed through bone and thought, low and vast and hungry, like a planet speaking.
"Ancient One…" Dormammu's voice oozed satisfaction. "Sooner or later, Earth will be mine."
"At least not today."
She formed seals with both hands, every motion crisp, practiced, and unhurried. A magical circle bloomed into being—countless threads of fire weaving together like incandescent stitching. The fiery lines extended toward the crack and began to lace through reality, pulling the tear's edges together the way a healer closes a wound.
Slowly—slow enough that even an ordinary human could see it—the crack began shrinking.
Healing.
Sealing.
Dormammu's amusement rumbled, thick as thunder. "Perhaps I cannot stop you from sealing this crack. But I can make the people you brought die before your eyes."
The air around the crack darkened, like the dimension itself leaned closer.
"I'm very curious," Dormammu continued, "will you choose to save their lives… or sit back and watch them perish while you continue your work?"
Six crystal mirrors materialized in front of the Ancient One, floating at chest height in a neat arc like a twisted gallery exhibit. Each mirror showed a different scene, each one framed like a cruel little window.
Agatha, moving like a knife through robed bodies, eyes cold and amused.
Jericho Drumm, surrounded, warding off strikes with disciplined desperation.
Daniel and Mordo fighting back-to-back, their teamwork tight but their margins thin.
Victor—alone, shoulders squared, baton in hand, firelight reflecting in his eyes.
And then the final mirror…
Me.
Four Dark Church believers closing in from all directions.
The Ancient One didn't even glance away from her work. Her hands kept drawing fire into pattern and purpose, stitching shut the tear while a god tried to distract her with human lives like they were poker chips.
"I brought them here," she said calmly. "I have confidence in them. Your believers—empowered temporarily by stolen strength—cannot harm them."
Dormammu's voice deepened with something like delight. "Then wait and see, Ancient One."
I didn't know about the mirrors at the time, but I did know the feeling of being watched.
It's a specific sensation, like someone's gaze is a physical weight on the back of your neck. Only this time, it wasn't a person watching me.
It was a dimension.
One second Victor and I were pushing deeper toward the core, tension rising with every step, reality thinning like paper held over a flame. The next second a shadow unfurled across the ground—fast, wrong, swallowing the alley like a black tide—and I got yanked sideways out of the world.
No clean portal. No elegant sling ring circle. Just an ugly, forceful rip.
Then—
Stone beneath my boots.
Dim light.
A distorted sense of space, like the corridor was longer than it had any right to be.
Victor was gone.
The alley was gone.
The village was gone.
I stood in a narrow stretch of ground that looked like it had been cut from the church and reassembled incorrectly. Pillars lined the sides, half-crumbled, as if the place couldn't decide whether it was indoors or outdoors. Above, instead of a ceiling, there was a shifting smear of color—cosmic bruising bleeding through the sky. It reminded me of the Dark Dimension's "hall" I'd glimpsed earlier, except this felt closer to the surface, like a pocket stitched between worlds.
And I wasn't alone.
Four Dark Church believers circled me, spacing themselves like they'd practiced this exact formation. Each of them had that same charred, cracked look around the eyes, and faintly glowing runes on their foreheads—dark red symbols that pulsed in time with the wrongness in the air.
Ambush. Isolation. Separate-and-kill tactics.
I exhaled slowly and tried not to grin, because that would've been unhinged, and I was making a strong effort to remain the kind of person who didn't smile during murder.
But honestly?
This was exactly what I'd wanted.
A clean test.
No friendly fire. No "oops I hit Victor." No Ancient One observing from three feet away with that quiet disappointment she could conjure without even moving her eyebrows. Just me, four cultists, and a battlefield that didn't belong to any sane reality.
I'd never had a proper estimate of how much my magical power had grown recently. Wand, recovery, unfamiliar combat rules, this world's magic system trying to mesh with mine—it was a mess of variables.
But four empowered believers?
Perfect test subjects.
One of them raised his hands, and dark energy gathered, crystallizing into a translucent spear. The others did the same, forming weapons that looked beautiful in a poisonous way—like icicles dipped in ink.
No warning. No speech. No villain monologue.
They attacked.
Two from the front, two from behind, spears thrusting in with enough force to pin me to the floor if they landed.
I didn't hesitate either.
"Impedimenta!"
I snapped my wand toward the two charging from the front. Forked blue-white light burst from the tip like magical fireworks, striking both cultists simultaneously.
They tried to block.
I watched them swing their crystal spears in front of themselves like they were batting away arrows, and for a second I almost felt bad for them. Almost.
Wrong approach, guys.
You can't physically parry a curse.
The Impediment Jinx slammed into them anyway, and both cultists flew backward like they'd run face-first into invisible walls. They tumbled across stone, robes tearing, skin bruising, their spears skittering away with a hollow scrape.
At the same time, I spun, pressing my wand against my back like I was drawing a blade.
"Protego!"
An invisible barrier snapped into existence just as the two behind me thrust their spears forward. The weapons slammed into my shield and rebounded. The recoil was so violent it threw both attackers backward, their arms jerking like they'd punched a steel plate.
They stumbled, exposed—
"Stupefy!"
"Stupefy!"
Two quick red bolts.
Two bodies dropped.
For half a heartbeat, everything paused.
Four cultists down.
I could've ended it right there with more stunners and binding spells, but I was learning something important: their Dark Dimension power wasn't constant. It flared, surged, responded. These weren't just upgraded humans; they were batteries that something on the other side could pour energy into.
Which meant if Dormammu wanted to make a point, he could.
And I had a feeling he did.
Before the first two cultists could fully recover, I raised my wand again.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
One cultist lifted into the air, limbs flailing, his face twisting in panic. He tried to grab the air like he could hold onto gravity if he clenched hard enough.
I didn't give him time to adjust.
I swung my wand like a conductor leading an orchestra, and his body slammed into his companion once—twice—three times. Each impact produced a sickening thud, the sound of flesh meeting stone and bone meeting bone.
On the fourth hit, I heard a crack that wasn't stone.
Bone.
The cultist in my telekinetic grip went limp.
Dead weight.
I released the spell and he dropped to the ground with an ugly finality.
A colder feeling slid into my chest right then. Killing wasn't new to me—this world wasn't gentle, and I'd fought plenty of monsters that didn't qualify as "people" anymore—but there's always a moment where your mind tries to check your humanity like an ID badge.
Still you? it asks.
Still the same Abel?
I didn't have time to answer.
Because the three remaining cultists—two of them still downed by my stunners—suddenly changed.
The dark red runes on their foreheads flared like someone had turned a dial. Their eyes blackened further, charred cracks spiderwebbing outward. Blue-purple discoloration spread across their faces like bruises blooming in fast-forward.
All three roared at once.
And the two who should've been unconscious exploded with violent black aura, shattering my Stupefy hold like it was cheap glass.
They rose.
Faster.
Stronger.
Their movements snapped from human to predatory, like puppets whose strings had been yanked tighter.
The Dark Dimension power just amplified.
Dormammu was lending them more strength, right now, in real time.
Somewhere far away the Ancient One was sealing a crack, and a god was trying to punish her confidence by turning my fight into a spectacle.
Okay.
If this was a show—
Let's cut loose.
I cast the Levitation Charm on myself and jumped, using a nearby stone pillar as a launching point. My body went light, my feet barely touching the surface before I propelled upward. The cultists followed, climbing the walls with inhuman speed, black aura trailing behind them in ropes that looked like smoke trying to become limbs.
I pointed my wand downward.
"Diffindo!"
The Severing Charm doesn't usually explode. It cuts—clean, efficient. But overcharge it with enough magic and it stops being a blade and starts being a bomb.
BOOM.
A violent blast erupted in front of the lead cultist. Stone fragments and concussive force tore through him like shrapnel. Blood sprayed against the wall in an arc that would've been dramatic if it wasn't so gross. His body jerked, shredded, and then dropped like a stone, slamming into the ground below with a wet finality.
Not as powerful as Confringo could be if I really poured myself into it—Confringo could level a street with enough juice—but this was efficient.
The other two cultists didn't even look at the corpse.
They just kept coming.
Black aura surged around them, forming writhing tentacles that snapped toward me. Not metaphorical tentacles. Actual, physical-looking tendrils of darkness that moved like living things, reaching for my legs, my arms, my wand hand.
Lovely.
I released the Levitation Charm.
Dropped into freefall.
Wind screamed past my ears. The ground rushed up, stone coming at my face with the kind of speed that makes you appreciate the invention of not dying.
"Arresto Momentum!"
The spell caught me around thirty feet from impact, slowing my descent from "mortal mistake" to "dramatic superhero landing." I hit the ground lightly and rolled, coming up already moving.
The two cultists dove after me, tentacles lashing, their bodies angled like gravity was just a rumor.
Rubble from my Diffindo blast littered the ground—chunks of stone, broken pillar fragments, jagged edges.
Perfect.
I swept my wand in a violent arc.
The debris lifted into the air, spinning, and I pushed transfiguration into it—not full transformation, just refinement. Edges sharpened. Points narrowed. Stone became ammunition, dozens of rough spikes trembling in suspension like a swarm of angry teeth.
"Depulso!"
The Banishing Charm launched them upward in a shotgun burst—stone nails firing at brutal speed.
The cultists tried to defend, black energy folding around them into partial shields. Tentacles whipped, batting spikes aside. But there were too many projectiles and not enough time. The first spike punched into a shoulder. Another tore through a thigh. A third slammed into the side of a neck, and blood erupted in a hot line.
Their defense collapsed under sheer volume.
Stone spikes shredded through flesh.
Painted the air red.
Both cultists slammed into the ground, rolling, twitching, bleeding from a dozen wounds each. Not dead—Dark Dimension energy still tried to knit them together, still pulsed and crawled—but they were broken enough that they couldn't stand.
Good.
Now finish it.
I stepped back, putting distance between us, wand raised high. My chest rose and fell, and I felt the heat of exertion under my skin. Magic gathered at my wand tip, not wild, not sloppy—focused and deliberate.
Flame erupted upward and pooled above my head, forming a roiling cloud of fire that churned like a storm system made of combustion.
Then I shattered it with a sharp flick.
The cloud broke into hundreds of flaming shapes.
Crows.
Not real birds—constructs of pure fire shaped by intent and spellwork—but they moved like crows, wingbeats snapping, beaks pointed, eyes like embers. Their cries were the sound of burning wind.
Oppugno and Incendio—combined casting.
It wasn't elegant in the Ancient One way. It was the kind of magic you used when you wanted something to stop existing in the most final way possible.
The flame-crows dove.
They descended like divine judgment, a screaming inferno flocking over two half-dead cultists who suddenly remembered fear. One tried to raise a hand, black aura flickering weakly, tentacles twitching like dying worms.
It didn't matter.
The crows hit them and tore in. Fire didn't just burn their flesh; it burned the dark energy clinging to them, forcing it to retreat or evaporate. The cultists screamed, but the sound was brief—very brief—because lungs don't do well when they're being introduced to the concept of becoming charcoal.
The screams cut off.
The flames settled.
Silence rushed in, heavy and sudden, like the world realized it had been holding its breath.
I stood there for a moment, wand still raised, my heartbeat loud in my ears. The smell hit next—burnt cloth, burnt flesh, scorched stone, and that underlying sweet-rot incense that the church loved so much. My stomach tried to revolt, but I swallowed it down, because nausea is a luxury in a war zone.