The shrill blare of a truck horn slapped Ian's ears like an open-handed smack.
"Damn it! You cursed truck god!" He instinctively jumped backward, only for his back to slam into a street-corner fire hydrant with a loud bang. The cold metal pressed through his thin T-shirt, denting under the force.
Luckily, the hydrant did not burst open and start spraying water.
"Are you trying to die, asshole?! Do you know you were blocking the road?!" The truck driver leaned half his body out the window and roared, a Santa Claus doll dangling from the rearview mirror and swaying wildly.
"First of all, I was standing on the crosswalk. Second..." Ian stepped forward and kicked the stopped truck twice. "I really hope you remembered to buy insurance."
With those two kicks, he sent two of the truck's wheels flying off on the spot.
Before the driver could even react, Ian ripped the fuel tank off with his bare hands and tossed it into the bed of a passing pickup truck. The driver of that truck had clearly realized he had just been blessed by nature itself.
Vroom.
He slammed on the gas and sped off with his windfall, disappearing around the street corner in the blink of an eye. He did not get far, though. Ian could run much faster than the thief could drive.
"Hello? Is this 911? I've been robbed by a little kid! Yes... he stole my fuel tank! He had an accomplice too! This was obviously a premeditated crime!"
"He didn't use any tools! He tore my fuel tank off with his hands and kicked all six of my truck wheels away! Now I have to replace everything with spare tires!"
"What? You think I'm joking? I'm not joking!"
"What do you mean I need to provide my identity information first? Damn it! Don't think I don't know this is racial discrimination! You white people only protect your own kind!"
"My whole family worked so hard to sneak here from India, and you still won't give them legal status! This is the failure of freedom and democracy!"
"It's the moral deca... hello? Hello?!"
The Indian driver raged uselessly into the dead line.
Cops come whenever called?
Yeah, right.
Real calls and fake calls had to be sorted, and American dispatchers had more than enough authority to decide which was which.
...
After running two blocks, Ian finally stopped. Not because he was tired, but because his shoes had already exploded from the strain. He did not want to keep putting on a barefoot sprinting show for strangers.
"So this world can affect me now? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Ian could not quite make sense of it. No one knew what exactly the so-called Creator really meant.
It had not bothered giving him a floating title above his head like Saint of Merit or some other special privilege.
And instead, that damn Creator had apparently encouraged the will of the universe to scare a little boy with a truck.
His uncle could endure it, his aunt could endure it, and Ian... after weighing the pros and cons, Ian decided he could endure it too.
After all, thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of it.
He still needed time to grow.
When you were operating on someone else's turf, you had to swallow at least a little humiliation.
"Damn it! Why couldn't this new Marvel world be a world where trucks were never invented?!" Ian was not actually afraid of trucks.
Throw as many planes and trucks at him as you wanted, and his heart would not waver.
The only thing that still made him uneasy was a truck with all four wheels on the ground and clearly in motion.
No one could quite explain why.
Maybe trauma from transmigration was just that hard to erase.
"I can feel the Creator's malice." Ian glared at his ruined left shoe. The front had split open like a mocking grin, as if it were laughing at his heroic attempt to kick a truck.
"Should've just used my fists if I'd known this place could really affect me." Ian muttered and rubbed his hands together, only to notice a warmly lit tent set up across the street.
Winter Relief. Free Shoes and Clothes for Everyone.
Another classic piece of American scenery.
Rich people and churches loved doing charity drives for votes and interests. Since free was free, Ian naturally went over to gratefully accept their generosity.
"Merry Christmas! Stay warm this winter!"
A volunteer girl handed him a thick pair of work boots.
"I'm not especially merry, but... thanks." Ian took the new boots, squeezed the sole, and found the quality pretty solid. So he quickly grabbed a second pair from the pile too.
The volunteer girl did not stop him. After all, Ian had smiled at her. Being handsome was like that. Even if you were a homeless-looking kid, it still gave you advantages.
"Are those colored contacts? Your eyes are so pretty."
She was already looking at him with heart eyes.
"Thanks."
Ian thanked her again and left politely. He pulled on the new boots, then tied the laces of the other pair together and hung them around his neck like sausages.
The street was crowded.
Cars flowed endlessly.
It had a kind of vitality Ian had never felt in the frozen world from before.
As he looked around, something tugged at his sleeve.
"Mister, do you want to buy some? Help a poor little boy raise enough money to buy a PSP." There was actually a kid selling cookies by the roadside.
And somehow, he had latched onto Ian.
"They're only five bucks, and I'll pray to Jesus for you too." The boy in the knit cap lifted a tin box full of weirdly shaped cookies.
"Then tell Him to just send you the game console directly." Ian was not falling for it. In his opinion, the kid's baking skill did not deserve a PSP Ian himself did not own.
"Please help me. Please help a kid."
The boy's eyes reddened, looking as pitiful as could be.
"Who says I'm not a kid too? If you keep bothering me, I'll tell your mom and grandma that the two of them sexually harassed me together. Trust me, I'll win."
Ian's low voice thoroughly intimidated the boy.
"..."
The kid could only put away the exact same trick Ian had already used up years ago, staring fearfully as Ian disappeared around the corner. His tiny heart had probably just received a very large shock.
"Having to build social connections from scratch in this world is so annoying." Ian felt a little gloomy as he wandered down the street. The shops on both sides were a dizzying blur.
Snow began to fall.
The weather had changed without warning.
A cold wind slipped down Ian's collar with the snowflakes, making him hunch his neck. It did feel a little like some apocalyptic winter, though it was still nowhere near that cold.
Greenwich Village, Bleecker Street.
Ian passed the street sign. On either side, Christmas decorations flashed too brightly, while bundled-up pedestrians hurried by, their breath forming little clouds that vanished almost immediately.
In front of a three-story Victorian brownstone,
a small table covered in purple velvet stood out clearly.
On it sat a crystal ball, a stack of tarot cards, and a crooked sign.
Tarot Readings.
Behind the table sat a horse-faced man in a cheap red cloak. His beard was trimmed neatly enough, but his hair looked like a tornado had hit it.
"Young man! I can see worry all over your face. Clearly you've been having bad luck lately. Your star is dimming. How about trying a tarot reading?" He had been dramatically shuffling a deck of tarot cards, but the moment Ian passed by, he flashed a mysterious smile.
He looked exactly like a con artist.
"No thanks."
Ian did not even slow down. He politely declined and kept walking. Behind him, the fortune teller sighed in regret and muttered about how bad business had gotten.
Ian did not hear him.
His attention had already been seized by the televisions in the window of an electronics store up ahead.
"What the hell!"
The golden pupils in Ian's eyes shrank violently.
His weary expression vanished.
In its place came a shocked trembling.
On the screen, a figure in a very familiar costume had just stepped onto a stage, and the audience reacted like it was the finale of a talent show.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" the host shouted through the booming speakers, "Please welcome tonight's final superstar... Spider-Whirlwind!"
That single line instantly drew a crowd to the window.
"It's Spider-Whirlwind!"
"Oh my God! I love him so much!"
"His Whirlwind Spray is still the all-time classic!"
...
The people around the TV all talked excitedly at once.
Ian heard none of it.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. That really was the costume he knew, but the young man wearing it was now standing on a stage.
Peter Parker.
The subtitle on the screen gave the name.
"Holy shit."
Ian stumbled backward a few steps.
Spider-Man Peter Parker, the superhero himself, was standing on a stage in a modified glitter version of the suit. The mask had been cut around the mouth to show off his smile. He went from a split straight into a backflip.
"People of New York! Here comes your boy! Where's the applause? Where are the screams?" Peter grabbed a rope onstage and swung himself into a spinning human top. His red-and-blue skintight suit was covered in glowing LED bulbs, and the spider emblem on his back had been changed into a giant fluorescent pink dot pattern.
Music.
Rhythm.
Spinning.
Dancing.
"!!!!"
Ian was genuinely dumbstruck.
What was he even looking at?
He was watching Spider-Man dance wildly on a stage.
The background music blasted through the speakers.
The crowd around the window was cheering just as loudly as the crowd inside the TV.
"It's coming! It's coming!"
"Whirlwind Spray!"
Two kids nearby were practically shaking with excitement.
Then,
"Let's get crazy!"
Peter shouted into the mic, then dropped into a perfect knee slide, braced himself with both hands, and thrust his hips upward. At that moment, Ian, frozen in disbelief, finally understood what Whirlwind Spray meant.
Pfft!
Spider-Man's butt shot out webbing.
A huge burst of white web sprayed in a fan shape and landed perfectly across the judges' faces.
At that exact moment, both the crowd in front of the TV and the crowd inside it exploded into frenzied screams.
The atmosphere was boiling.
One young man with a mohawk waving a glowing sign reading Spider Silk Boy, I Love You fainted on the spot. Even a few girls in front of the store window looked like they were about to collapse.
"??????"
Ian had not worn that many question marks on his face in ages.
His eyes had gone wide enough to be kettlebells.
"My eyes! My new eyes are going blind!" Ian clamped his eyes shut and touched his jaw, making sure it had not actually fallen onto the snowy sidewalk.
It was too horrifying.
Was this even real?
It was scarier than the horror stories Jonathan liked to watch.
"It has to be an impersonator. Or some kind of fake!"
Ian refused to accept what he had seen, though a very bad feeling had already begun to creep in.
Then he turned and saw the clothing store next to it.
That man.
That man from Marvel who always insisted he had never cheated in life was standing inside the front display window, shield in hand.
It was not a mannequin.
Ian's excellent vision caught the tiny motion of him adjusting his neck.
The boy's breathing stopped again.
Maybe sensing Ian's stare, the man in the display, dressed in nothing but tiny shorts and showing off an absurdly perfect upper body, flashed him a bright white smile.
Yes.
Captain America himself, Marvel's original leader, was currently working as a live model in a storefront display, posing one flex after another while his abs gleamed under the spotlight with a sheen of olive oil.
Knock, knock, knock.
Ian rushed over.
He slapped his face flat against the cold glass of the display window, the fog from his breath spreading across it. The model suddenly came alive and gestured at him not to tap the glass.
"I must be caught in one of Tony's mirror illusions!" Ian's eyes locked on the shield in the model's hand. Steve casually lifted it like it was a dumbbell.
"Are you really Steve Rogers?"
Ian yanked open the store door and stormed in. The little bell overhead chimed cheerfully. Cold wind followed him inside, leaving wet marks on the polished wood floor.
"Yep. It's me. Your beloved Captain America." The model flashed a perfect eight-tooth smile, his abs rising and falling with his breath. His physique practically radiated science.
"Kid, I know what you want."
Steve struck a pose that made his biceps bulge. "Want to touch? A timeless classic modern science could never recreate. Just one dollar for a full minute."
Good Lord.
He was charging by the minute.
"..."
Ian went silent again.
"How did you end up doing this?" he finally asked. Inwardly, an entire herd of invisible grass-mud horses was stampeding through his soul.
Steve paused, then let out a resigned sigh.
"What choice did I have? A guy's gotta eat." His smile faded, and his expression turned bitter. "Can you believe those politicians are paying my retirement according to 1945 standards?"
He put away the theatrical posing and looked genuinely gloomy.
"Retirement pay based on 1945? What kind of person even thinks of pulling something like that on me? Fuck. I spent decades frozen in ice and never had a nightmare this bad."
Because Ian was a kid, Steve's swearing was actually pretty restrained.
"..."
Ian's silence thundered just as loudly as his thoughts.
"Sorry, but this has nothing to do with me. It was Tony. It had to be him. His mental state is a disaster. He refuses to see a doctor and wants to make me do it instead."
Ian's expression was complicated. If he still had not realized by now that something had gone very wrong with this rebuilt world, then his so-called super wisdom would have been a complete joke.
"You mean the door guy?" Steve blinked.
"No! Tony Stark!"
Ian nearly yelled.
Steve stared at him in confusion. "Never heard of him. Is he some up-and-coming guy from Queens?"
That response hit Ian like a freight train.
"You have got to be kidding me..."
He stared at Steve's face, trying to detect even a hint of a lie.
There was none.
Steve just looked baffled.
"Whatever. Forget it." Ian exhaled sharply and looked around the store window again. "You're really just doing this for money?"
Steve gave him a look that said what else would it be for.
Ian stood there frozen for a few seconds, then suddenly turned and sprinted out the door.
The snowy street swallowed him up again.
This world was wrong.
It was wrong in a way that made his skin crawl.
Spider-Man dancing on television.
Captain America posing in a store window.
And if both of them had become this kind of person, then the tarot scammer he had just passed...
Ian stopped dead.
Then he whipped around and ran back toward Bleecker Street.
Greenwich Village, Bleecker Street.
As he passed by again, he caught one final glimpse of Steve through the window, carefully tucking a rebellious tuft of hair back into his tiny shorts.
When Ian reached the brownstone again, the folding table was gone. So was the man.
Even the front door was now tightly shut.
Snow spun through the air in the wind.
Ian stood before the carved oak door, staring up at the grand Victorian townhouse. If he had guessed correctly, this was the Sanctum Sanctorum.
The New York Sanctum of Kamar-Taj.
From the outside, it was not much more impressive than the houses around it. Just prettier, with French Baroque accents and a distinctive mansard roof.
Long before buildings had stood here, an indigenous shaman had used this place to seal away demons. Later it became a burial site and then the scene of cult murders.
Eventually it became Kamar-Taj's territory.
The New York stronghold of the mystics.
Doctor Strange's residence.
And if Captain America and Spider-Man had both turned into those bizarre versions of themselves, then the identity of the street scammer he had just met no longer needed much guesswork.
"I cannot accept this. This is not the Marvel trip I wanted."
Ian felt deeply miserable. One of the gargoyles on the roof seemed to tilt its head at him, as if mocking his hesitation.
After more than ten seconds of serious internal struggle,
the boy took a deep breath and knocked.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Loudly.
No answer.
"This is way too weird."
Ian muttered as he withdrew his hand. His fingertips had picked up a fine layer of copper rust.
Could it be that Kamar-Taj's mystics did not even maintain the door ring of the Sanctum?
He was not nitpicking.
The Sanctum was supposed to be a vital structure, a major node in the defenses protecting Earth and the universe.
It should have been maintained regularly.
Why did it now look
like one of America's air force jets after years of neglect?
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Still confused, Ian knocked again.
This time, the door seemed to loosen slightly, and a faint scent of herbs drifted from within.
"Is that an invitation? Or was the door just left unlocked?"
Ian pushed on it gently.
The heavy oak door opened soundlessly, revealing a magnificent hall drenched in golden light. Floating candelabras cast warm halos over the grand staircase, its railing buried under a visible layer of dust.
Months' worth, at least.
"Anyone home?"
Ian leaned his head in politely. His voice echoed through the hall, startling several pigeons perched atop the chandelier.
As they flapped away, Ian's eyes followed them to the corner where they settled.
There,
a folding table covered in purple velvet had been stashed away. Beside it, a rocking chair swayed slightly on its own, and the horse-faced man Ian had seen outside lay sprawled in it lazily.
His outfit was even sloppier now. The hem of a deep blue pajama pant leg stuck out beneath his wizard robe. His left slipper was missing, and there was a hole in the sock on his right foot.
He was flipping through a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Someone had highlighted Holmes's pipe in fluorescent marker so that it looked suspiciously like a magic staff.
"Sir, why'd you stop doing tarot readings?"
Ian stepped onto the old Persian rug, his boots sinking slightly into it. His naturally familiar personality led him to ask the question.
"Because once I make two hundred bucks in a day, I stop."
The man answered without thinking.
Then suddenly froze and snapped the book shut.
"Wait!"
He bolted upright, knocking over the hot tea beside him. It splashed all over his pajama pants, but he paid no attention to it.
He stared at Ian with growing disbelief.
A red cloak flew over and settled behind his shoulders.
Identity confirmed.
"How did you get in here?!"
Doctor Strange looked absolutely shocked.
"Maybe because the door wasn't locked?"
Ian pointed behind himself, looking a little embarrassed.
"That has nothing to do with the lock. What about the Sanctum's protective wards?" Strange rushed to the door and checked it. That only made his expression more stunned.
"The wards are perfectly intact. Only people I've personally allowed can approach this place. And you, you don't have my permission."
He spun back around dramatically.
"That means the Sanctum itself invited you. Which means you're naturally one of those rare prodigies who were born to become a sorcerer!"
Doctor Strange made what he considered an entirely rational deduction.
"At least from his point of view."
"..."
Ian stared at him for a moment.
"Have you been studying Sherlock Holmes to improve your deduction?"
He was increasingly convinced that he really could not understand the superheroes in this world anymore.
They simply did not fit.
"What?"
Strange blinked.
"You could tell?"
He suddenly looked oddly bashful and let his cloak scratch the back of his head for him.
The man had clearly become so lazy that he had outsourced even scratching.
"Do yourself a favor and stop."
Ian let out a deep sigh.
"You don't resemble Holmes at all. Even so, you still made me almost start thinking I was stuck inside a Sherlock story."
His words left Strange looking more lost than ever.
He stood there for a while before finally giving up on figuring out whether he had just been praised or roasted.
"Stephen Strange? Former neurosurgeon?"
Ian had had enough aimless chatter. He wanted to confirm the man's identity properly.
Doctor Strange blinked again.
"You even know that?"
Then he smacked his forehead like he had reached some brilliant conclusion.
"So you've got talent for precognition too!"
"That's fantastic! At least you'll never starve!"
He was suddenly all excitement again.
"Are your parents nearby? Actually, never mind, I can deal with them. The real point is, are you interested in changing careers and becoming a magnificently powerful sorcerer?"
"Really, I'm not lying. You have the potential to become the Sorcerer Supreme!"
"I'm the Sorcerer Supreme, and look how cool this cloak is. I don't even need to die first. The moment you've learned enough, I'll give it to you and go hang myself immediately!"
"Seamless promotion. Wouldn't that be perfect?"
Doctor Strange clearly wanted to scam Ian into joining. He spoke in a rapid stream, but that did not mean his brain was moving all that quickly.
"..."
Ian looked around.
He found no trace of any other sorcerers.
And suddenly, he understood.
"So Kamar-Taj only has you left now?"
Ian's tone turned probing.
Doctor Strange's excited expression froze on the spot.
"Well, not just me. It's just that the others... the others don't have as much talent, you know?" He was clearly forcing the subject elsewhere. "Looks like you already know a bit about the mystical world."
"Are you from some sorcerer family?"
He tried to drag the conversation sideways.
But Ian had no interest in playing tug-of-war with Doctor Strange.
"No. I'm not from a sorcerer family. I'm from a positive-energy family... damn it, can this world just act normal for once? Learning magic isn't even the most important thing anymore."
Ian cut him off. He stared Strange straight in the eye.
"I want to know what happened to this world."
He locked onto the so-called Sorcerer Supreme.
"What do you mean, what happened to this world?"
Strange looked completely lost.
"You're out there hustling tarot readings, Captain America's working as a store model, and Spider-Man's performing strip teases on stage... actually, I wish it were only a strip tease!"
Ian covered his face.
Even he found this version of reality hard to handle.
"Oh, them." Strange sank back into his chair. "That's normal. Everyone's just trying to survive."
That statement sounded far too natural.
"I'm talking about superheroes!"
Ian almost shouted.
"Can't I just see the Ancient One? Or Eternity? Just tell Eternity I've done a lot for Marvel, I've bled for Marvel, and I deserve an answer."
He could accept a bizarre Marvel.
What he could not easily accept was the idea that the world born from his one moment as a hero had turned into something this absurd and twisted.
"If I knew how to get in good with someone like Eternity, do you really think I'd still be here reading detective novels?" Doctor Strange looked at him like Ian had asked a very stupid question.
And that was when Ian noticed something else.
"Wait. You've never seen demons? Never fought dimensional lords? Dormammu? Cyttorak?"
He latched onto the key inconsistency with his usual sharpness.
He asked the question so abruptly that he even snatched The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes out of Strange's hands.
"What are Dormammu and Cyttorak?"
Strange looked baffled. He did not even try to get the book back.
"I mean dimensional overlords. Or dimensional gods."
Ian swallowed hard.
He was beginning to understand what machine-god Tony had truly done.
As expected,
"I have no idea what dimensional gods are."
Doctor Strange shook his head.
Then looked at Ian as though Ian were the strange one.
"And nobody's seen demons either. Demons are just bedtime stories for scaring children. Maybe they show up in movies, but at most they're only fictional things people imagine."
Doctor Strange answered as if that were the most obvious truth in the world.
Dead silence filled the hall.
"Oh..."
Ian's face kept changing.
"Tony, you said you hadn't been affected... oh right, no, you just stayed quiet."
His brain felt jammed.
"No, wait. Then where does your magic come from? That cloak should be empowered by the Vishanti, shouldn't it?"
Ian felt like he had found the hole in this world's logic.
Except,
"Vishanti? What are those?" Strange looked more confused than ever. "I get the feeling you know a little about sorcery, but your knowledge is weirdly mixed with fantasy."
He stood up again and took the cloak down from its hook. The cloth had a cheap, flimsy quality that looked all wrong.
"This is my Levitation Cloak. It's not a gift from some Vishanti. It's an enchanted artifact I made myself."
"Do you have any idea how much effort it took to create this thing?"
He sounded almost proud.
"That's what learning magic is like. Everything depends on your own hard work."
That actually explained a lot.
No patrons.
No cosmic sponsors.
Magic in this Marvel universe relied entirely on your own training.
And if that was true, then the reason had to lie in the information Tony had programmed into the Infinity Gauntlet.
Tony had slipped in his own private modifications.
"So there are no magical patrons handing out power? No shortcuts for sorcerers?"
Ian was still trying to process it all.
"No."
Doctor Strange shook his head.
Then looked at Ian with open curiosity.
"So there are really people even lazier than me."
He sounded genuinely impressed.
"Where'd you get that artifact? Did you steal it from your parents?"
His attention returned to the book Ian had taken out. In his heart, he was already estimating whether he could defeat Ian's parents and kidnap the boy back to Kamar-Taj for proper training.
Then,
knock knock knock.
Someone was at the door.
"My delivery."
Doctor Strange's attention instantly shifted.
He hurried toward the door.
"When I knocked earlier, you didn't move nearly this fast. Why couldn't I have just been a delivery boy?"
Ian felt pretty wronged.
"You never knocked. If you had, I definitely would have heard it."
As he spoke, Strange pulled open the door. A blast of cold wind swept in carrying the smell of cheese.
It was a pizza delivery.
And the person holding the boxes was a beautiful girl.
Ian recognized her immediately.
"Hey, Gwen! So you're finally not wearing leather pants. Remember the bond between us? You still owe me more than a hundred and eighty favors, and I won't let you weasel out of that."
Ian greeted her while probing to see whether she retained any memory from before.
Yes.
Standing outside was Gwen Stacy in a rabbit-ear knit cap, holding several pizza boxes, the tip of her nose red from the cold.
"Huh?"
Gwen stared into the house blankly.
"Who are you?"
She thought he looked a little familiar, but nothing came back.
"It's me. Magical Boy Ian. The one you begged to become the new Spider-Man and I turned down."
Ian immediately caught the flicker of confusion in her eyes.
"I knew it! The power of friendship really can cross time and space!"
Ian was ecstatic.
He shoved Doctor Strange aside, rushed out the door, hoisted Gwen over his shoulder, and ran.
"Put me down! This is kidnapping! Kidnapping!"
Gwen instantly went pale.
"We have to find Tony! If you still remember me, even just a little, then Tony definitely will too!"
Ian always had a plan.
"My God! What are you even saying?! What magical boy? You're more like a psycho boy! Damn it! Why does that sentence sound so familiar?!"
Gwen pounded on Ian's back,
only to discover it felt hard as steel.
"This is great!"
Ian was overjoyed.
"That's exactly how it should be! The power of bonds is still working!"
He tore down the street at full speed.
Behind him,
Doctor Strange, who had been shoved to the floor, wore the expression of a discarded ex.
"Damn brat! I was literally about to invite you to pizza! This is how you treat me? Fine! If this is how you want to treat me, then fine... are you coming back to be Sorcerer Supreme or not?!"
He stood up, picked the pizza boxes off the floor, and shouted after Ian while eating a slice.
But only Ian's figure carrying Gwen ever answered him,
disappearing into the distance at impossible speed.
Ian was in a hurry.
Because he knew his time here was nearly up.
"How is he running that fast... wait, what? He's bouncing? He's in the air?"
Doctor Strange stared dumbfounded at the distant scene. The half-eaten slice of pizza slipped straight from his hand to the floor.
A moment later,
he slowly came back to himself.
"It's only been on the ground ten minutes. It's probably still fine."
He picked the pizza back up, muttered to himself, shut the door, and headed back into the Sanctum.
Then he froze.
"Wait. What did that kid say his name was?"
Doctor Strange suddenly ran toward the rear hall of the Sanctum, opened a portal, and crossed an enormous distance in an instant.
Kamar-Taj.
Stephen Strange stepped through the doorway, the soles of his boots striking the stone floor in quick succession.
No students greeted him.
No sorcerers talked in the halls.
Only the wind moving through the corridors could be heard.
The sacred place was empty and desolate.
The training dummies in the practice yard were covered in dust, and abandoned training robes hung rotting on their racks.
"I know that name!"
Strange's footsteps echoed through the long corridors. He pushed open door after door until he reached the library, which was just as empty and dust-filled.
His fingers skimmed along shelves that held very few books at all before finally stopping on one with a glittering golden cover.
He carefully pulled it free, the spine giving off a little crack as if it had not been opened in years. He had to blow the dust off before the title could be seen clearly.
The book inside was completely blank.
No words.
No spells.
But on the cover,
written in letters even more golden than gold itself,
were the unmistakable words:
Ian's Magic Book.
(End of Chapter)
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