So that was it.
All those stories Rowan had once consumed as entertainment.
Films.
Television.
Novels.
Comics.
Animations.
They might not have been inventions at all.
They might have been records.
Echoes of other realities drifting across the void, gathered by wandering creators and unknowingly woven into weaker worlds.
The idea unsettled him.
It also explained something else.
Maybe the world Rowan once came from had its own creator.
One who lacked the strength to shape reality directly.
One who instead absorbed outside stories and let humanity retell them through art.
That world had felt mundane.
No visible magic.
No supernatural systems.
But Rowan frowned.
He had been mundane too.
If something extraordinary existed there, would he ever have noticed?
It no longer mattered.
That world was behind him.
If he became strong enough someday, he would return and see the truth for himself.
For now, a more important question lingered.
Who had sent him to the Marvel universe?
Who had given him the ability to exist across multiple realities?
Whoever it was, Rowan felt no resentment.
Only gratitude.
Without that intervention, he would still be living an ordinary human life.
Clocking in.
Clocking out.
Worrying about rent.
Aging.
Dying.
Instead, he had walked across worlds.
Fought gods.
Spoken with creators.
Power aside, the experiences alone were priceless.
Whether that unseen hand acted out of curiosity or hidden purpose was a problem for the future.
Right now, Rowan focused on what mattered.
He turned his attention fully to Ilúvatar.
"I want to learn how to finish my world."
Ilúvatar inclined his head.
And he kept his promise.
What followed was not a lecture.
It was a dialogue.
Rowan's understanding of magic came from dozens of realities.
Different systems.
Different philosophies.
He had stripped away inefficiencies, kept what worked, and fused everything into a coherent framework.
Ilúvatar, in turn, possessed comprehension on a cosmic scale.
They compared structures.
Discussed causal chains.
Mapped how abstract concepts solidified into natural laws.
Rowan learned.
Ilúvatar learned.
Neither expected that.
Rowan was still far below Ilúvatar in raw scale.
But his hybridized framework gave Ilúvatar perspectives he had never considered.
Ironically, Ilúvatar benefited even more from the exchange.
Rowan had already reached the edge of a breakthrough.
Even without guidance, he might have crossed it within a century.
Ilúvatar, however, had stagnated after his initial rise.
Progress beyond that point normally required incomprehensible spans of time.
Rowan's ideas stirred something dormant.
For the first time in ages, Ilúvatar felt possibility.
Over months of discussion, their relationship changed.
It was no longer creator and visitor.
It became closer to equals.
Not in power.
But in mutual respect.
Ilúvatar had no gender in any true sense.
Rowan still defaulted to thinking of him as male.
Old habits died hard.
Inside Rowan's inner world, a new planet hovered in darkness.
Blue.
White.
Cloud-wreathed.
Indistinguishable from Earth.
Ilúvatar studied it quietly.
"You've done well," he said.
"The structure is complete. Give the new laws time to harmonize."
"When they finish settling, adjust the internal flow of time."
"Life will arise naturally."
Rowan nodded.
"Couldn't have done it without you."
Unlike Ilúvatar's conical Middle-earth, Rowan had chosen a spherical model.
Not out of sentimentality.
Out of pragmatism.
The most powerful universe Rowan had personally encountered was Marvel.
So he copied its fundamental layout.
Start with a planet.
Expand into a star system.
Then a galaxy.
Then many galaxies.
Build outward.
He believed this template would produce a stronger end result than Ilúvatar's original design.
If everything went as planned, his finished universe would be formidable even among others of its kind.
Rowan raised his hand.
"Time acceleration."
Reality rippled.
Inside the newborn world, seconds became centuries.
Rowan and Ilúvatar returned to the Eternal Hall.
Within the accelerated planet, chemistry ignited.
Single-celled organisms emerged.
Multicellular life followed.
Creatures crawled from ocean to land.
Forests spread.
Ecosystems stabilized.
Eventually, minds capable of thought would appear.
When the first civilization sparked, a cascade of deeper laws would activate.
At that moment, Rowan's inner world would cross the final threshold.
Not personal evolution.
Universal evolution.
Rowan would become, in truth, a creator.
The entire process would take only a few months from the outside.
Another factor made it possible.
The Silmarils.
Instead of absorbing their power, Rowan had forged them into the core of his newborn star.
Without that energy source, creating a stable sun alone might have taken decades.
Now, the universe grew at a controlled but astonishing pace.
Rowan stood in silence within the Eternal Hall.
For the first time, he wasn't merely walking through other people's worlds.
He was waiting for one of his own to be born.