The silence of the Spencer estate was easily shattered by the rhythmic weeping of the rain. Within the silk-draped shadows of his bedchamber, Aryan Spencer stood as a man caught between two worlds—one of corporate ledgers, and another of absolute authority. He closed his eyes, allowing his consciousness to slip through the cracks of reality until the smell of sandalwood was replaced by the scent of nothingness.
The transition was unfolding. One moment he was a ghost in a machine of wealth; the next, he was the center of a gothic nightmare carved from the very fabric of the void.
The Sefirah Castle stood before him. Its pillars, hewn from a stone that seemed to have been brooding since the dawn of time, stretched upward into a dome of swirling, subservient fog. It was a cathedral of the forgotten, a sanctuary where gravity was a polite suggestion and time was a captive beast.
Aryan walked across the mottled stone floor, his footsteps echoing like the ticking of a doomsday clock. He reached the head of the long table—a slab of ancient rock that looked as though it had witnessed the cooling of the earth—and he did what any master of a mystical dimension would do: he sat down.
The throne was remarkably uncomfortable. It was a seat of power. Carved from a dark mineral, it offered no quarter to the weary. It was a throne designed for a being who did not need to rest, for a ruler whose spine was as unyielding as the laws of physics. As he perched there, the grey fog outside the high, lancet windows swirled in a predatory dance. The castle seemed to hum—a low, vibrating purr that resonated in his marrow. It was the sound of a sentient architecture that recognized its architect.
Before he could invite the titans of this world into his sanctuary, Aryan had to understand the boundaries of his godhood. He performed a series of tests that were as clinical as they were surreal. He returned to the physical world, his fingers brushing the cool plastic of a digital alarm clock on his nightstand, and pulled it through the veil.
Beep.
The clock sat upon the ancient stone table, its red neon numbers pulsing with a modern light against the backdrop of eternal mystery. The seconds ticked by—14:02:01... 14:02:02. Time flowed here, but it was a captive stream. If he willed it, he could make a century pass in the Castle while the rain outside his Manhattan window hadn't even finished its fall.
He established the laws of the domain with the cold precision of a clockmaker. If he owned the essence of a thing, it could be summoned. If it possessed a soul or a divergent will, the complexity escalated. But the Castle was hungry; it was a vacuum waiting to be filled with the weight of "Importance."
Yet, the true challenge wasn't the logistics of his dimension—it was the creation of a Myth.
Standing back in the silent luxury of his bedroom, Aryan cleared his throat. He felt the weight of his MIT education, the logic of a coder, and the cynicism of a failed tycoon war with the necessity of the moment. To command the likes of Tony Stark, he could not be a man. He had to be a Concept. He had to be the answer to a question the world hadn't yet learned to ask.
He let his voice drop an octave, infusing it with the resonance of the ancient stone pillars he had just birthed. He spoke the honorifics to the very fabric of the universe, providing a "frequency" for the souls of the powerful to find him.
"The Fool who belongs not to this era."
"The Mysterious Ruler above the gray fog."
"The King of Yellow and Black who wields the scales of luck."
"The True Creator who embodies the trinity of luck, deception, and fate."
The world seemed to give a cosmic nod. When he stepped back into the castle, the atmosphere had thickened. The fog was no longer merely a backdrop; it was leaning inward like a hound awaiting a command. He had officially given the universe a name to fear, and the universe had whispered it back.
"Right," Aryan whispered, his voice rolling through the hall like distant thunder. "Now for the guests."
This was not a social gathering; it was a high-stakes hedge fund where the currency was destiny. He needed individuals whose lives were the fulcrums upon which the world turned.
Tony Stark was the first and most obvious choice. A man of shimmering brilliance and catastrophic ego, Stark was currently a comet heading for a collision. Within weeks, he would be in a cave in Afghanistan, his heart held together by a car battery and his world reduced to the smell of damp sand and iron. He would be desperate. And a desperate genius was the most profitable customer in existence.
Wanda Maximoff. A font of chaos, a girl whose grief could rewrite the stars. To invite her was to invite a storm into a glass house, but the potential for "Miracles" was too high to ignore. She was the raw material of reality, waiting for a sculptor.
Finally, he looked toward the hidden reaches of the globe. T'Challa, the Prince of Wakanda. He represented the "Old Money" of the world—vibranium, tradition, and a cold, measured responsibility. He would be the anchor, the 'adult in the room' who would provide the necessary gravity to Stark's volatile brilliance.
He consciously skipped the spies and the soldiers. SHIELD was a creature of bureaucracy and secrets; he wanted no part of their paper trails. Peter Parker was a child of the future, but for now, his stakes were too small. Aryan needed kings, gods, and monsters.
He looked at his own reflection in the mottled stone—a young man with the eyes of an orphan and the face of a CEO. It was too human. Too vulnerable.
With a flicker of his will, he conjured a puppet, hooded figure of gray mist that sat at the far end of the table. This would be the "Narrator," a proxy through which he could speak without the Master of the House having to move a muscle. He then turned the lights of the dimension down—metaphorically speaking.
He added a discordant thrum to the air—the sound of an ancient deity judging a soul. It was theater, but in a world of gods, theater was the only truth that survived.
When he finally ascended the throne, the power of the Sefirah Castle wrapped around him like a velvet cloak. He felt terrifying. He felt like something that lived in the dark, cold spaces between stars, a merchant waiting at the crossroads of history.
Time slowly passed over the next few months as he focused on office work while planning for Sefirah Castle.
Monday. 14:00.
"Tea time," Aryan whispered.
He raised a hand, and the grey fog screamed. The first invitations were out.
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