An Eternal burned.

  The pyre reached long, crackling fingers toward the tapestry of stars above, cutting sharply through the cool night air. We were standing on a patch of bare red earth, not far from the Eternals’ homestead. The tree shrine that Thena had made was nearby, firelight playing over the long branches adorned with wind-chime-like fetishes of bone and carved wood.

  It hadn’t taken long to gather up the desert driftwood and kindling, and from the way that Gilgamesh had stacked the wood it was clear that this was far from the first time he’d built a funeral pyre. He was next to me now. Close, but not too close. We were together, but also apart, each of us standing quiet vigil on our own, in our own way.

  A dozen metres or so behind us was a large portal back to Kamar-taj that I’d tied off, a small cluster of figures standing just on the other side. Steve and a few of the others had wanted to pay their respects, but until we’d dealt with Druig it simply wasn’t safe for anyone who didn’t have their own mental defences to leave the monastery. I thought some part of Gil probably appreciated having them at arm’s length, in any case—they hadn’t known Thena, after all. Not really. Hell, I couldn’t honestly say that I’d really known her.

  Even so, my eyes glistened with wetness as I stared into the fire. Though my own feelings about her were mixed, Thena’s death was still sad. Gilgamesh had lost another person he’d loved. Ikaris might’ve been the one that had killed her, but the other Eternals were still her family. People had cared about her. And now she was gone.

  I didn’t know exactly how old Thena had been. Millions of years, if my recollection of Arishem’s words were correct. I knew she didn’t remember all of it, even after I’d unlocked her memories, but still—she’d had a life on a scale it was hard to conceive of. Most gods probably wouldn’t live that long. I’d only known her for a short time, but it still felt a little like the universe had just lost a piece of itself. Like it was all just that little bit less, without her.

  Some time passed. I wasn’t quite sure how long. Eventually, though, I turned toward Gilgamesh, the movement catching his attention. He looked at me with reflected firelight dancing in his eyes, its orange glow not fully concealing the redness that encircled them. His tears had long since dried, leaving him just looking exhausted.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  Gilgamesh let out a dismissive huff. “Thena went out on her terms,” he responded, his voice still firm despite the edge of tiredness to it. “For a goddess of war, dying in a real battle—over something that really matters—is a damn sight better than what might have happened without your help.”

  Actually, I wanted to say, Thena would have been perfectly fine if I’d never interfered with anything. Sure, it’d have been you who died instead, but still. This result was on me. I’d tried to work around the Eternals, tried to avoid the conflict that had happened in the original timeline but, when it came down to it, all I’d managed to do was shuffle the deckchairs around a bit on the deck of the Titanic. But making someone’s funeral all about me and my constant, ongoing failures would be crass and inappropriate, so I didn’t.

  My eyes dropped, instead, to the crested golden helmet made from Thena’s power that Gilgamesh held loosely in his hand. “Why did she…?”

  Gil’s mouth tightened in a small frown. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Can I…?”

  He lifted the construct and looked at it, turning it over in his hands a couple of times before hesitantly offering it to me.

  I took it from him, my eyes roaming over the golden threads of energy that formed the flowing wireframe for a few moments before cautiously feeling it out with my magic. It felt mostly the same as the interface that I’d examined previously, but there were some subtle differences that I couldn’t quite place. There was almost a presence to it, somehow.

  “It feels like her,” I said.

  “It does.”

  We stood in silence for another minute, him returning to staring into the flames while my magic gently played over the helmet. There was something reassuring about its existence. As far as I knew, it should have been impossible for one of Thena’s constructs to persist past her death, and yet… here it was. A part of her that had endured, despite everything that said it shouldn’t be able to. One final little miracle from a goddess.

  “There should be more,” Gil said suddenly. “I want to stay, pour out libations in her honour, stand until the fire burns itself out and there’s nothing left but ash. But…”

  “It’s a risk. The others might come.”

  He sighed. “Even then, part of me thinks that’d be better. They should be here for this. It shouldn’t just be me. I shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

  Part of me wanted to reassure him that he wasn’t, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. He didn’t want to be with some woman he’d only really known for a handful of days. He wanted his family. I stayed quiet, holding Thena’s helmet back out to him instead.

  He took it from me, running a finger over one flared cheek. “What was it that the sorceress said, again?” he mused. “Reality doesn’t bend to our preferences.”

  “I didn’t know you knew the Ancient One,” I said. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to be distracted, to talk about something else, but I didn’t really know what else I could do.

  “The Sorcerer Supreme. Merlin’s successor. She wasn’t called that, back then. We didn’t realise that was who you were talking about.” His forehead creased, a small frown crossing his features. “It’s strange. I don’t recall her name. Or anything else about her, really. My memory’s usually pretty good with that sort of thing.”

  Huh. It wasn’t much to go on, but that did remind me of something from the original timeline…

  Another minute passed in silence, then Gilgamesh sighed again. “I’ll be back in a moment. Then we can go.”

  I watched his back for a few seconds as he turned and trudged wearily toward the homestead, then I headed back toward the waiting portal. On the other side was Kamar-taj’s courtyard, now lit up with burnished lamps. I was pretty sure it was midnight-ish here in Australia, and eight or nine in the evening in Kathmandu, if I’d managed to get all the time zones straight in my head.

  Natasha and Sam stood with Steve near the threshold of the gateway, with Bucky and Carol a couple of paces behind them. Pietro sat on one of the low stone benches nearby, one knee pumping with nervous energy. Far in the background, Mordo stood impassively near one of the courtyard’s exits, keeping an eye on us. I gave everyone a tight smile, which most returned, but didn’t step through, turning to look back at the pyre and wait for Gilgamesh to return.

  It didn’t take long before he joined us. He still held Thena’s helmet loosely in one hand, but in the other he now bore a heavy-looking clay amphora by one handle. “I’m going to find a quiet spot for the two of us,” he told me, making it clear with a gesture that by ‘the two of us’ he meant himself and the helmet.

  We stepped through the portal together and I dismissed it, picking apart the magic with a thought. Pietro sprung to his feet, still bouncing slightly on his heels as he stepped forward to join the group.

  Steve gave Gilgamesh a sympathetic look. “If you need anything, let us know.”

  He nodded, then turned and headed toward a set of wooden steps that led to the upper terraces of the monastery. From his vantage point, Mordo watched the Eternal leave, his expression unreadable.

  “Are you alright?” Nat asked me as he walked away. She stepped in close, reaching up to touch my arm reassuringly as she spoke.

  “I’m fine,” I lied, looking at Carol instead. After we’d arrived at Kamar-taj, she’d taken off the top half of her uniform, revealing a simple black singlet, and the sorcerers had bandaged her upper arm where Shuri had clawed at her. It hadn’t been that long ago, but I was worried that it hadn’t healed already—she looked a little pale, a slight waxy cast to her skin, her hair hanging limp and lifeless. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not great,” she admitted.

  “Your power?” I asked hesitantly.

  Carol raised a hand, tightening it into a fist and seemingly concentrating on it. Nothing happened. She looked back at me, a lost expression on her face.

  There was an icy ball of anxiety and guilt sitting heavily in my stomach. Thena, then this… “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know Phastos could… I should’ve—”

  “It’s not your fault,” she cut me off.

  “Things could have gone a lot worse than they did,” Sam said.

  “They caught us all by surprise,” Steve agreed. “You still managed to get everyone else out.”

  Pietro was the one who’d managed to get everyone out. All I’d done was be wrong about Druig not being a threat, fail to kill him, get beaten by Sprite, be wrong about Phastos’s family, do nothing while he ripped Carol’s power from her, then get Thena killed. I’d been useless. Worse than useless. I didn’t say any of that, though. There was no point. Instead, I pushed it all down and nodded. “Can I…?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nat kept her hand on my arm as I took a step in closer to Carol. Raising my hands, red wisps of chaos magic spilled from my fingertips and played over her skin. She closed her eyes, leaning into it slightly.

  Traces of cosmic energy still smouldered within her, like hot coals left over from a blazing fire—fragments of power spread all throughout her body—but it wasn’t the neatly formed, precise structures of Celestial language I was used to. It was raw, chaotic… primal.

  Frustration intermingled with my anxiety and I kicked myself mentally a few more times. Stupid, dumb, idiot Wanda. I’d touched Carol’s power briefly once before, back when we’d been on the run from Eliza, but my understanding of cosmic energy back then had been almost laughable. Why hadn’t I thought to take a closer look at her powers while we’d been waiting around the compound? Because I was fucking stupid and thoughtless and dumb, apparently. If I had, it might’ve been possible for me to help, to undo whatever Phastos had done. Instead, I had no idea what I was even looking at, let alone what it was supposed to look like.

  Lowering my hands, I found myself staring at the ground, unable to look Carol in the face, shame and guilt at my ineffectualness burning my cheeks and eyes. “Sorry,” I said again. “I don’t think I can do anything.”

  “It’s okay, I didn’t expect you to. Stark and Mordo want to take a closer look, too. See if there’s anything that can be done from their ends,” Carol said, glancing back at where the sorcerer was standing. “Science, magic, whatever.”

  Nat gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I nodded slowly. “I have no idea if they can, but it can’t hurt.” My eyes flicked sideways. “Can you go with her?”

  “You don’t want to come?” Natasha asked, tilting her head questioningly.

  “Sorry. I don’t think I’m in the right headspace for it,” I offered weakly, looking at Carol apologetically. “I’m just gonna…” I trailed off, waving my hand vaguely off to one side.

  Natasha glanced between Carol and I, obviously a little conflicted.

  Pietro stepped in from the side, putting his arms around my shoulders and squeezing me tightly—I couldn’t hug him back from this angle, so I settled for reaching up with a hand and giving his forearm a little squeeze. I forced a smile, trying very hard not to just outright burst into tears. “Go on. I’m fine. Just need to process.”

  Steve and Sam went with Nat and Carol as they headed over to where Mordo was waiting. The sorcerer gestured toward the open archway next to them, and the four of them headed through, leaving me alone in the courtyard with Bucky and Pietro.

  My brother was still hugging me, and when I tried to shrug him off, he squeezed even tighter, refusing to let me extricate myself from his grasp. “Off,” I instructed.

  “Is it making you feel better?”

  “No,” I lied again. It was actually making me feel a little bit better. I just didn’t really feel like I deserved to feel better.

  “Well, then it hasn’t kicked in yet.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Bucky was watching the two of us silently, a small smile on his face. I looked back at him for a moment, then let out a sigh. “Bucky and I finally hooked up, last night,” I said conversationally, like I was discussing the weather. “It was pretty intense. It’s been a while since I had a guy blow my back out like that.”

  Bucky’s expression froze, like a deer caught in headlights, and Pietro made a disgusted noise. He still hadn’t let go.

  “I was super pent up, so I was completely feral for it. I think I came pretty much immediately when he put it in,” I continued, my tone casual. “And Bucky really knows what he’s doing—”

  “Wanda,” Pietro whimpered. Bucky was looking more and more mortified as I spoke.

  “—and he’s using his hand at the same time, so I just sort of kept cumming, because, you know, once you pop you can’t stop, right? I’m like a cum Pringle. Like, my legs are shaking, I can barely feel anything else from the waist down… it was just this big, messy, sloppy—”

  “Bleughaarrrhhhbleargh!” My brother let out an incomprehensible noise as he released me and recoiled away. “Okay! Enough!” He glared at me resentfully. “You’re gross and mean.”

  “I’m not as mean as I would like to be, sometimes,” I told him. “I really wish people appreciated that more.”

  Pietro’s face was still twisted in a disgusted frown, his hands held away from himself like he’d just touched something nasty.

  “In fact…” I stepped away from my brother, reaching out to slip my hand into Bucky’s. He didn’t resist, but he did let out a small, bemused sigh. “You might want to go find something else to do?” I jerked my head off to one side in a ‘get lost’ motion.

  Pietro’s hands went up further in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll just… go see what they’re doing with Carol. Or something.” With that, he took a step back, bounced once on his heel, then streaked away in a blur of motion.

  I closed my eyes. God, my shoulders were tense. I tried to relax them, taking a deep breath. It didn’t really help.

  Bucky gently lifted my hand, giving it a little squeeze as he rested it on his chest. “Did you want to talk?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I told him, opening my eyes again. Glancing around the otherwise-deserted courtyard, I gave a half-hearted shrug. “I made a bunch of stupid mistakes like I always do, and now Thena’s dead and Carol’s maybe lost her powers and I don’t even know what we’re supposed to do now.”

  “You know none of that’s your fault, right?”

  I let out a small, half-hearted huff of amusement. “That’s my secret, Buck. Everything’s my fault.”

  “Wanda—”

  “Bucky,” I said, cutting him off. “Telling me something’s not my fault isn’t going to change anything. I know you want to make me feel better, but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “…Okay.”

  We stood there quietly for a few moments before I took a step back, still holding his hand. “You know what would make me feel better? We could find a quiet spot somewhere and…” I trailed off, waggling my eyebrows suggestively.

  Bucky frowned. “You want to have sex? Now? After all of that?”

  “I mean, do you not?”

  It wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, but a hefty dose of dopamine from being railed into oblivion sounded pretty good right about now. Just something to focus on that wasn’t just me mentally beating myself up.

  He didn’t respond right away. He just looked at me, looking vaguely concerned, a slight crease to his forehead.

  It wasn’t a rejection, as such, but for some reason his expression made my chest tighten and I suddenly felt really awkward and uncomfortable. “Right, no. Sorry. That was stupid. I’m just not… I don’t know.”

  “We can just find somewhere to sit for a bit, if you want,” Bucky said. “We don’t need to do anything.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched and I felt a prickling at the corners of my eyes. I took a deep breath again, drawing out the exhale. “Thanks, but I think I kind of just want to be by myself for a little bit, if that’s okay? You don’t need to worry about me.”

  He hesitated for a beat, then nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Oh, sure,” a voice from behind him said derisively and I froze, my entire body going suddenly rigid. Over Bucky’s shoulder, I could see a familiar figure leaning against the wall.

  Eliza.

  “Breaking news: Wanda actually could use your support, but she’s convinced herself that asking for help would make her a burden and, instead of giving you the choice, she’s going to make the decision for you by telling you not to worry and suffering in silence instead.” She flicked her hand in a dismissive gesture. “More after this.”

  Oh, good. Now I was hallucinating again, too.

  Bucky had noticed the sudden shift in my body language. He turned, glancing back to see what I was looking at. When there was nothing there—because there obviously wasn’t—he looked back at me. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said, maybe a little bit too quickly. I gave his hand a small squeeze, then let go. “I’m just going to go for a wander. Wandering Wanda. I’m okay. Like I said, just need some space right now.”

  Bucky stared at me a moment, then gave a small nod. “Okay. But I’m here if you change your mind.”

  “I know. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you.” Stepping back in, I gave him a quick, vocal peck on the lips—“Muah!”—and was rewarded with a small smile in response. Turning on my heel, I hurried away, leaving him probably more than a little confused by my behaviour.

  I ducked into the nearest building, blindly pulling open the door and closing it again behind me. I sagged back against the hard wood, closing my eyes, taking a deep breath, and then counted to ten.

  When I was done, I opened my eyes again cautiously, peering around the dimly lit antechamber. “…Eliza?” My voice was quiet.

  There was no response. After a few seconds, I heaved a sigh of relief, then scrubbed at my eyes with the heel of my palm. Well, that had distracted me a little bit from how shitty I felt, at least, though my stomach was still twisted in knots.

  I blinked, only just noticing where I was. I’d been here once before, briefly. Just ahead of me, through an archway, were dark, intricately carved wooden shelves holding row after row of books and furled scrolls. Cautiously, I moved forward, stepping into the library proper. I really felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here, but I hadn’t been explicitly told that, and no one seemed to be around… Surely Wong would be around somewhere, as the librarian? I couldn’t see him, though. Maybe he’d gone to bed.

  I took a few more hesitant steps inside, head on a swivel. The cramped shelves and study nooks were dimly lit with an assortment of lamps, giving the space a warm, secretive atmosphere. It was a really cool library, though there didn’t seem to be any visible signage or markings on the shelves to indicate sections. I wondered what their cataloguing system was like—I would hardly expect a magical library to use Dewey Decimal.

  I stepped up to a random set of shelves, stuffed full of ancient-looking tomes alongside stuff that seemed much more recent. Some of them had their titles inscribed on their spines, and I tilted my head so as to read them more easily, reaching out to brush my fingers across them as I walked along the shelf: The Other Side: Creating and Travelling Through Portals; Astral Projection; About Time: The Study of Infinity; Emotional Sorcery: The Connection Between Feelings and the Mystic Arts; The Book of Archaic Curses…

  In one life, Pietro and I hadn’t really gotten much of a proper education after our parents died. In the other, I’d simply been a poor student: a stereotypical burnt-out gifted kid. I liked to think that I’d have been better at studying, however, had regular schooling promised to let me bend reality over a table and raw-dog it. Thanks to Thena, I’d only just recently realised how bad I’d been at using magic. How much could I have learned by now—how powerful would I be—if I’d given in to the whispers of Loki’s sceptre and seized control of Kamar-taj when I’d had the chance?

  “Anything catch your eye?”

  The sudden voice in the silence made me nearly jump out of my skin. The Ancient One had appeared while I’d been looking over the books and was standing a short distance away, her hands folded into the sleeves of the long, white robes she was wearing. I hadn’t seen or heard her enter at all, which was pretty impressive considering my enhanced senses—it was like she’d materialised out of thin air.

  “You’re as bad as Fury,” I told her, glancing back at the shelves. “I was just… browsing.”

  “Master Wong would be rather put out if he found you here,” she said. “The Sorcerer Supreme has instructed that no magical knowledge be shared with the Scarlet Witch without her express permission, after all.”

  I let out a small, disbelieving laugh. “Are we still doing this? Really?”

  “Really,” she said, though her tone was gentle rather than firm, a small smile touching her features.

  “I thought no knowledge was forbidden in Kamar-taj?”

  “No knowledge is forbidden for those who have been initiated. Normally, those who have not been would not be permitted to roam the monastery proper at all. This is an unusual circumstance.”

  “I feel like we’ve done this song and dance for long enough that you know I’m a friend, not a foe.”

  The sorcerer inclined her head in a small acknowledgement. “You’ve proven a potent ally of convenience so far, but these things can change. You are also still an anomaly whose actions—whose very existence—has threatened the foundations of our world. And you are still the Scarlet Witch.”

  It was just the two of us here. I didn’t think I would ever get a better chance to straight-up ask her about the prophecy. “Okay, and what does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means you’re dangerous. Beloved of Chthon, the first demon. Prophesised to either rule or annihilate the cosmos.”

  “What did Chthon actually say in his prophecy? His exact words?”

  She stared at me for a moment before responding, green eyes boring into mine. “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  A smouldering ball of anger started forming in my chest. “I… what? What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “The true prophecy of the Scarlet Witch is recorded in full in only two places. Within the Book of the Damned, and—”

  “And the place the book was transcribed from,” I interrupted. “Mount Wundagore.”

  “No knowledge is forbidden in Kamar-taj. However, it is an immutable mystic law that any power or spell comes with a cost that must be paid, either by the one performing the working or by the cosmos itself. True prophecy comes at a cost to those who are exposed to it—it is the sort of knowing that entangles you in it, until you find yourself part of the mechanism by which it becomes reality.”

  The tightness in my chest eased, my brief anger dimming somewhat. “You’re saying it’s an infohazard of some kind. Knowing the prophecy makes you help fulfill the prophecy.”

  The Ancient One nodded. “The Darkhold was locked away by Agamotto himself for a time, before it escaped back out into the world. He used spells to protect himself so that he could become aware of the contents without being influenced by it, but transcription was out of the question.”

  “The book escaped?”

  “Well after Agamotto’s passing. It’s one of the many artifacts that the Masters of the Mystic Arts have sought to protect the world from over the years. The Darkhold is… elusive. Some believe it to have a mind of its own.”

  “This whole time… and you don’t even know what it says.” I let out an annoyed huff.

  “We have the written testimony of Agamotto himself.” She straightened slightly, her tone changing as though she were quoting. “The Scarlet Witch is a being of unfathomable magic. She is touched by chaos itself, and can rewrite reality as she chooses, heedless of the costs that would be incurred by lesser powers. Her power will rule the cosmos or annihilate it.”

  I flicked my fingers, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the back of the library, toward the chamber where the enchantment that protected the minds of everyone in Kamar-taj now lay. “You needed me,” I said accusingly. I didn’t fully articulate it, but it was super frustrating the way that she was more than happy to take advantage of whatever I could do for them while still keeping me at arm’s length and refusing to teach me anything.

  “Energy flows through natural currents. Different energies are associated with different forms, and the Mystic Arts were built up over thousands of years of experimentation and study of these forms, across various types of energy. However, cosmic energy is the essence of the divine. Mortal magic struggles to capture its nuances. The sacred geometries you’ve learned are already far more refined expressions of cosmic energy than any sorcerer has discovered.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Well… I could walk you through what I’ve learned so far? I show you mine, you show me yours?”

  She smiled again, the corners of her eyes crinkling in amusement. “A tempting offer, as knowledge and power often are.”

  “I mean, I’d hardly be the worst entity you’ve bargained for power from, little miss drawing-power-from-the-Dark-Dimension-to-extend-my-life.” I shot back, regretting the words a little bit immediately after they’d left my lips. Stupid to be saying stuff like that out in the open, where practically anyone might be listening in.

  The Ancient One stiffened slightly, her smile wavering but not disappearing. Raising a hand, she traced a complicated design in the air with a finger, leaving a trail of yellow-orange energy. Once it was complete, she tapped the centre and something happened, though I wasn’t sure what. When she spoke again, her voice sounded flatter, and I realised that it wasn’t travelling in the space properly. Some sort of noise-dampening spell or anti-eavesdropping ward? “I’ve done what I had to. What was necessary to protect the world.”

  The words made me wince a little and I turned away from her, eyes roving over the shelves unseeingly. “Mordo’s going to flip when he finds out, you know.”

  “I know. My hope is that he will come to see the need and understand.”

  “Well, he absolutely will not. Your view of the original timeline stopped at your death, so you never saw what happened after he found out. He lost it. Tried to kill Strange. I think he might have tried to destroy Kamar-taj entirely.”

  “But he failed?”

  “…Yeah.”

  “Then it is regrettable, but being such does not negate the past necessity.” She paused and a moment or two passed in silence before she spoke again, a note of curiosity in her tone. “How much do you know, or think you know? You’ve spoken of witnessing events that pre-date your birth, but it’s not clear to me how far back that extends.”

  “How much do I know about what? About you?” She stared at me expectantly instead of responding and I took her silence as assent. Very briefly I considered lying, bluffing about the extent of my ‘visions’, but dismissed it as a stupid thing to do for no reason. “Almost nothing, if I’m being honest. Enough to know that there’s a lot I didn’t see.”

  “‘All I know is that I know nothing.’ The answer of a wise person.”

  I snorted. “Quoting Socrates isn’t going to trick me into thinking you’re older than you are. Sprite called you Merlin’s successor?”

  “Myrddin the Wild was my immediate predecessor as Sorcerer Supreme, yes. I understand that he knew some of the Eternals quite well. I met them only briefly, really.”

  “Why did you erase your former identity? Was that something that was necessary to protect the world?”

  It was only a guess, but an educated one despite the few clues I had to go on—Gilgamesh’s inability to recall the Ancient One’s former name, half-remembered snatches of dialog from the original Doctor Strange movie, and the existence of a spell that Strange had used to erase all memory of Peter Parker’s identity in order to save reality.

  “The Runes of Kof-Kol,” she said, a note of surprise in her tone. “You know of them?”

  Bingpot. “I saw them used, once.”

  “I nudge history when it’s required. At other times, however, a shove is necessary.”

  That didn’t answer my question at all, but… hang on. Something she’d said earlier was tickling at my brain, trying to get my attention. I frowned. “Wait. Now that you mention it, something’s not making sense to me. You just said before that true prophecy is dangerous, that it becomes self-fulfilling. How does that square with you using the Time Stone to view the future?”

  “The spells on the Eye of Agamotto allow me to work at a remove, shielding me from influence. I use it to view possibilities rather than the true, immutable future. A loophole, I suppose you could call it.”

  “I’m not sure that makes any sense.”

  The sorcerer just smiled.

  “Alright, then. Keep your secrets,” I said with a sigh. “Anyway, you spent two days working on a specific enchantment for this whole Eternals thing, so you’ve obviously got a plan for how you want it all to play out. How do we win?”

  The Ancient One gave a slight shake of her head. She was watching me carefully, her face an enigmatic, unreadable mask. “If I tell you what happens, it won’t happen.”

  I barely managed to catch myself before I flinched back, staring at her with wide eyes for only a brief moment before schooling my expression into neutrality. An uneasy feeling settled heavily in my stomach. Things rhyme, from time to time, and her words were ones I’d heard before, echoing across from the original timeline… the last words a sorcerer who’d seen the future had said to a hero, not long before that hero sacrificed themselves to save the universe.

  But there was no way she could know that, right? It was just a turn of phrase. They were just words. They didn’t have to mean anything.

  …Right?