Chapter 5: "What Grows in Sokovia"
The ruins outside Novi Grad hadn't changed much in the years since the city fell out of the sky and back down again — cracked foundations reclaimed by weeds, rebar reaching out of broken concrete like fingers, a memorial garden the Sokovian government had planted and mostly failed to maintain. Tourists didn't come here. Even birds seemed to give the deeper ruins a wide berth.
Kent Nelson stood at the crater's edge in the helmet's gold light, Strange beside him with his cloak snapping in a wind that didn't feel entirely natural, and Wanda a few steps back, arms wrapped around herself against a cold that had nothing to do with the Eastern European autumn.
"I hate this place," she said quietly.
"You have reason to," Strange said, not unkindly.
*"So does the ground itself,"* Nabu murmured. *"A city was killed here and half-resurrected somewhere it didn't belong. That kind of wound doesn't heal clean. It scars over, and scars are where things like Mordru like to dig."*
The lattice map, when Fate called it up over the crater, showed the seam pulsing directly beneath them — not at the surface, but deep, buried under what had once been the foundation of Novi Grad's old clock tower, the one landmark that had partially survived the city's brief flight and violent return.
"There's a sub-level," Wanda said, before anyone asked. "I remember it from — before. HYDRA had a research annex under the tower. Officially cleared out years ago."
"Officially," Strange repeated, with the flat weariness of a man who'd heard that word applied to entirely too many basements this week.
They found the entrance half-buried under collapsed masonry, a stairwell descending into dark that Fate's golden light didn't so much illuminate as politely negotiate with. The air grew colder with every step, and by the third landing, Kent's breath fogged in front of him despite the helmet's usual indifference to temperature.
"He's close," Wanda said, voice tight. "I can feel him. Like feeling someone read over your shoulder."
*"Then he already knows we're here,"* Nabu said. *"Which means whatever we find at the bottom of these stairs is exactly what he wants us to find."*
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The chamber at the bottom had been a laboratory once — rusted equipment, shattered monitors, a HYDRA insignia scoured half off one wall by more recent damage. But the far wall was no longer a wall. It was a window, vast and black-gold, looking out not onto rubble but onto something that made Strange's mystical instincts scream in a register he hadn't heard them use since the Dark Dimension.
Beyond the window-that-wasn't, a landscape stretched — towers of black glass under a sky the color of a healing bruise, geometry that hurt to look at directly, and at the center of it, seated on something that might have been a throne if thrones were built from the accumulated regret of a thousand collapsed realities, sat a figure in dark robes, hands folded, patient as erosion.
He did not turn to look at them. He did not need to.
"Doctor Fate," the figure said, and his voice arrived in the chamber without seeming to cross the distance between them, resonant and unhurried. "Nabu's newest glove. I confess I expected you sooner. You've always been slower than your predecessors to notice when I'm working."
*"Mordru,"* Nabu said, and Kent felt the name land like a held breath finally released. *"You've grown bold. Cutting between entire realities is not a game even you used to play."*
"I don't play games, old friend. I collect. Your world—" the dark eyes shifted, finally, toward Strange and Wanda, "—and this one, have both become terribly convenient. So much power scattered so carelessly. Stones. Witches. Wizards playing at gatekeeping with wards a child could eventually pick." A thin smile. "I merely intend to gather what's been left lying around."
"You'll gather a fight," Strange said, sparks already gathering at his fingertips.
"I anticipated that as well." Mordru's gaze settled on Wanda, and something in his expression sharpened with real interest. "The Scarlet Witch. Chaos wearing a mortal shape so beautifully it forgot it was ever meant to be a tool rather than a person. I wonder — does it frighten you, how much of me you can already feel in your own hands?"
Wanda's crimson light flared bright, defensive, furious. "Don't."
*"Ignore him,"* Nabu said quickly, low. *"He collects more than power. He collects doubt. Do not hand him yours for free."*
Mordru's smile didn't fade. "Wise counsel, Nabu. As ever." He rose, unhurried, robes pooling like spilled ink. "But counsel changes very little, in the end. The seam is nearly wide enough. I've spent three years feeding it patience I don't often spare for mortal affairs — a hollow little scientist here, a war-scarred city there, small debts that add up to a very large door. You've arrived just in time to watch me finish opening it."
The black-gold window behind him pulsed, widening by degrees even as they watched, and Kent felt Nabu's presence coil tight and cold at the base of his skull — not fear, exactly. Something closer to recognition of a fight that had been coming for a very long time and had finally, unavoidably, arrived.
*"Then let us close it before you do,"* Nabu said, and gold light exploded outward from the helmet as Kent's body became, once again, entirely Doctor Fate's.
*End of Chapter 5*