The air in Kamar-Taj was thick with incense, but the Ancient One found no peace in its familiar scent.
For weeks, an unsettling mist had clouded the future—not just obscuring her visions, but veiling even the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto. The timeline 'should' have been clear: Stephen Strange's path, the Sanctums, the delicate balance of reality. Yet now, shadows crept at the edges of destiny.
She stood in her meditation chamber, the Eye's green light pulsing in her palm as she sifted through possibilities.
"Why is everything so hazy?" she mused, her usually serene voice edged with rare frustration. The timelines branched before her—some unchanged, others twisted in ways that made her stomach clench.
Most deviations were minor. A politician's death here. A delayed disaster there. But then—
—there were the nightmares.
Futures where cities burned to ash. Where the sky cracked open like an egg. Where the dead walked, not as mindless husks, but as an army.
And at the center of it all: him.
A figure draped in shadow, his presence warping reality itself.
The Ancient One's breath hitched as the Eye's light flared. "There you are."
The wasteland stretched endlessly, a graveyard of corpses beneath a blood-red sky. The stench of iron and charred flesh clung to the air.
And there he stood—the Shadow Overlord—his back to her, shoulders rigid beneath a tattered cloak.
"You should not be here, Ancient One."
His voice was ice. Dead. Devoid of anything resembling humanity.
She stepped forward, her golden robes untouched by the gore at her feet. "What have you done?"
The answer lay before her.
The world was gone.
Not ruined. Not conquered. Just Erased.
Mountains had been flattened into plains of glass. Oceans boiled into steam. And where cities once stood, only skeletons of blackened steel remained.
The Shadow Overlord didn't turn. "I cleansed it. The filth. The corruption. All of it."
Then she saw it—the Eye of Agamotto, wrapped around his wrist, its light dimmed to an ember.
Her blood turned to frost.
"What did you do to Strange?"
"Killed him." A shrug. "After you… After Kamar-Taj…. You had the power to save millions. You chose not to."
The Ancient One's hands trembled—not from fear, but fury. He knew. Knew she could not strike him here, in this vision. Knew she was powerless to stop this future from unfolding.
"Why?" she demanded. "What could we have done to deserve this?"
For the first time, he turned.
His eyes were hollow.
"Your war with Kaecilius. Your pride." His voice cracked like thunder. "Your secret quarrel, let Dormammu in. so, he consumed everything. Everyone. Even her."
The raw, guttural pain in that last word told her everything.
This wasn't just vengeance.
It was grief.
The wind howled across the wasteland, carrying ashes of the dead. The Shadow Overlord's voice cut through it like a blade.
"You called yourselves the protectors of this world," he said, his words laced with venom. "Yet you hid the truth until it was too late. Two-thirds of humanity died. My daughters died." His gloved fingers twitched, as if aching to crush something. "My family—the only light in my life—was taken from me. And your precious Stephen Strange? Instead of stopping Dormammu, he came for me. Called me 'too dangerous' while the world burned."
The Ancient One remained silent, her golden robes fluttering in the acrid breeze. She had seen this pattern before—the arrogance of power, the fatal miscalculations. The burden of being Sorcerer Supreme had led to many such choices.
"Have you ever given him a chance to reconsider?" she asked quietly.
The Shadow Overlord let out a hollow laugh. "I hid... I didn't interfere with anything... I let your precious timeline unfold. And what did Kamar-Taj do? They convinced the world I needed to be erased."
"Yet you struck first," the Ancient One observed, her voice heavy with sorrow.
"No." His head tilted, the glow of his eyes sharpening. "I struck the last…I did nothing and simply went on with my life…I harm nobody..." He stepped closer, the ground cracking under his boots. "I ripped out Strange's heart... I slaughtered every last sorcerer in Kamar-Taj. And when Odin came at your request?" A grotesque smirk twisted his lips. "His head rots on a pike outside what's left of New York."
The Ancient One closed her eyes. The All-Father, butchered. The Sanctums, reduced to rubble. This was the cost of fear, of misjudgment.
"I prepared for Thanos; I want the world to be ready for the danger he brought with him…" she murmured. "Yet, it was our own war that destroyed us."
"Thanos?" The Shadow Overlord scoffed. "He died by my sword before he could snap his fingers." Then, with deliberate cruelty, he added: "Yao..." with a smirk on his face.
Her true name—spoken so casually—sent a ripple through her. Few alive knew it. Fewer still would dare use it.
"Is there no other future?" she asked, not as a sorceress, but as someone who saw the regret festering beneath his rage. "No path where this is averted?"
For a long moment, he was silent. Then, with a hiss of hydraulics, his helmet retracted, revealing a face that startled her—sharp-featured, handsome, with jet-black hair and eyes that held too much pain for someone so young.
"Do not cage me," he said, his voice raw. "I will know if you tamper with my fate... I want the freedom promised to me by The Living Tribunal and The One Above All... Take that from me…" He gestured to the burning skyline. "And I'll let the universe burn...."
He sat on a jagged rock, watching New York collapse in pillars of flame. The Ancient One finally understood.
This wasn't a villain.
This was a cornered man who had been pushed too far.
"I've done terrible things," he said softly. "But never to the innocent... I would never jeopardize Earth. I just wanted… to live."
And there it was—the truth.
He didn't fear her because he had already won.
Every choice she made now would determine whether this future came to pass.