The portal closed silently at the foot of Mount Wundagore, its last sparks fading into darkness.
The clone of Levi raised his head, examining the mountain before him.
The peak was wrapped in a thick layer of black, viscous substance. It wasn't mist, but a writhing, semi-solid magical mass—like a colossal living organism clinging to the mountain. With every pulse, it emitted a nauseating energy.
The air was heavy and sticky, filled with the stench of rotting flesh mixed with hellish sulfur—enough to make one choke.
He released his mental force, spreading it like an invisible web up the mountain.
There were things inside. More than one. Their mental fluctuations were murky and chaotic, like a stirred swamp—consciousness blurred, thoughts shattered. Only their deep-seated hostility remained clear, like beacons in the dark.
"Corrupted guardians…" the clone murmured, recalling information extracted from Mordo's memories.
The wardens of Mount Wundagore had once been dark sorcerers in pursuit of ultimate power.
They had sacrificed their flesh and souls to the Darkhold, gaining twisted immortality in return.
Centuries had passed. They were no longer human, but something far more troublesome than the rule-bound sorcerers of Kamar-Taj.
Troublesome not because of strength—but because of their nature.
They feared no death, felt no pain, and had no logical weaknesses.
They were pure creations of darkness—beings born solely for slaughter.
The clone began to climb.
He didn't fly or teleport. He simply stepped onto the pitch-black ground.
The dark substance beneath his feet churned violently as he approached, like living tissue splashed with boiling oil. Yet it recoiled instinctively, forming a two-meter vacuum zone around him.
These dark magical materials could clearly sense the Death Law within him—something that stood above all.
To darkness, death was the end—the judgment of a higher dimension.
Halfway up the mountain, the first guardian appeared.
It squeezed itself out of the viscous black fog, its body hunched and twisted. Pale gray skin clung tightly to its skeletal frame.
It had no eyes—only two bottomless sockets and a mouth split wide to its ears.
"—HSSS!"
A shriek tore through the air, something no living creature should be able to produce. It scraped directly against the soul, filled with fractured madness and eternal hunger.
More figures surged in response. Ten, twenty, fifty…
They crawled out from shadows and black fluid, surrounding the clone completely.
Green soul-fire ignited within their hollow sockets, locking onto the intruder.
The clone stopped, scanning these creatures that had long lost their humanity. A cold smile tugged at his lips.
"Another fool who seeks death…" the leading guardian rasped. Its voice wasn't produced by a throat, but like countless wailing souls echoing from the depths of hell.
In an instant, all the guardians howled together. Their voices merged into a visible black shockwave, laced with mind-rending dark magic, crashing toward the clone.
He did not move.
When the shockwave struck him, it was like a raging tide hitting an eternal reef.
No explosion—only silent, complete disintegration.
The guardians fell silent. The green flames in their sockets flickered violently, betraying something akin to shock.
For centuries, they had seen countless intruders—strong, cunning, brilliant. But never had they encountered someone completely immune to pure dark magic.
The clone slowly raised his right hand. A faint golden light appeared, flowing like intricate celestial orbits.
Alchemy Law.
"You are nothing more than humans reshaped by the Darkhold," he said calmly. "Flesh, bone—even your souls—were dismantled and reassembled with dark energy."
His gaze swept across their twisted faces.
"In other words, you're just contaminated, structurally unstable raw materials."
The moment his words fell, his fingers clenched.
The nearest guardian's body suddenly twisted and began to disintegrate. Its skin, muscles, and bones were forcibly broken down at the microscopic level, turning into a cloud of gray-white dust that dispersed into the black mist.
No scream. No struggle. No energy surge.
It was simply… erased.
For the first time, true fear emerged among the remaining guardians.
They stopped probing and unleashed their full power at once. Dark magic erupted from over fifty ancient beings, weaving into a massive net that covered the sky. Each node pulsed with destructive runes as it descended upon him.
Faced with an attack capable of annihilating a city, the clone merely sighed softly.
He raised his left hand.
Death Law.
A gray-black aura spread from his palm. It had no light, no heat, no sound. Yet wherever it passed, time seemed stripped away, and space fell into absolute stillness.
The massive black net withered instantly upon contact—like dry leaves cast into fire—collapsing at the most fundamental level.
The essence of Death Law was to define the end of all things.
For these guardians, their "death" meant total conceptual erasure.
The gray-black aura rippled outward, brushing gently across each of them.
Their movements froze.
The green soul-fire in their sockets flickered violently, dimming rapidly—until, one by one, they were extinguished like snuffed candles.
Ten seconds later, silence returned to the mountainside.
Only the clone remained.
The fifty guardians—beings that had terrified countless sorcerers—left not even a trace of ash behind, as if they had never existed.
He lowered his hands and continued upward.
His pace was unhurried, like a stroll through his own courtyard. Yet with each step, the black fog receded, and the writhing magical matter shrank away in terror, clearing a path.
The summit drew closer.
He could feel it.
The book was there.
The Darkhold.
A wave of energy came from the peak—both familiar and unfamiliar. It shared the same origin as Wanda's Chaos Magic in the main universe, yet was more primal, more violent… and purer.
A faint smile appeared on the clone's lips.
This journey was proving more interesting than expected.
At the summit lay a vast circular platform. At its center stood a black stone altar, its material unknown, covered in twisted runes.
Unlike the orderly formations of Kamar-Taj, these runes embodied madness—like scars torn open from within and forcibly stitched back together. Every line spoke of pain and chaos.
At the center of the altar floated a book.
The Darkhold.
The clone stopped, his gaze fixed on it.
It was smaller than the Book of Vishanti, its cover a deep crimson, like blood long since congealed. A faint black glow seeped from its pages, drifting like mist.
He could clearly sense that its power was the perfect opposite of the Book of Vishanti.
One represented light, order, and protection.
The other—darkness, chaos, and plunder.
But what truly surprised him was something else hidden within.
A third energy.
One he knew well.
Chaos Magic.
It was identical in origin to Wanda's power—yet like an untamed ancient beast, filled with primal savagery and destructive instinct.
The clone narrowed his eyes.
The twisted runes on the altar were no longer mere decoration. They told a story:
Of an ancient dark god—Chthon, the first practitioner of dark magic—who created the Darkhold.
Its ultimate purpose was to serve as both beacon and bait, to locate and corrupt the destined Scarlet Witch, turning her into a vessel for his descent into the physical world.
It seemed this universe followed the same script.
The knowledge of Chaos Magic within the book… was, at its core, the most lethal trap of all.
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