Marvel's Strongest Mage

Daniel hadn't gone anywhere.

Not really.

Mjolnir carried him upward—straight through the cloudline—until the base, the bunkers, the blinking surveillance towers, all shrank into distant specks below.

Up here, there was only the wind… and the lightning.

He let it surround him.

Mjolnir responded like it knew what he wanted. The thunder curled at his fingertips. Electricity moved like breath through the air.

Daniel reached out—slowly—and began to feel. Not just wield the thunder. Not just command it. But listen to it. Trace the invisible veins in the atmosphere. Connect with the raw elemental heartbeat that thrummed through the sky.

He wasn't just flying.

He was communing.

But in the back of his mind, something still gnawed at him—Odin's interference.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

Daniel had planned his path carefully: to reach legendary rank through independent means, to avoid Odin's eye, to climb the metaphysical ladder without falling into divine chains.

But Mjolnir had changed that.

Whatever this hammer truly was—real or not—it had begun altering him. Not just in body, but in destiny.

And Odin… could now see him.

Which meant Daniel was no longer hidden. He was part of the gameboard.

And the game belonged to Odin All-Father.

Daniel exhaled.

There were only two outcomes from this point forward:

Thor returns, reclaims Mjolnir, and Daniel loses everything. The thunder would be stripped from his cells. The legendary energy he'd begun to absorb would vanish. His body might survive, but his cultivation would regress, the path harder than ever.Thor does not return—because this Mjolnir isn't real. In which case, Daniel keeps it. The thunder remains. But Odin's influence deepens.

Neither option was ideal. But the second… gave him time.

And time was all Daniel ever needed.

He would walk this path—even if it wasn't the one he'd chosen. He just needed to bend it to his own will.

He closed his eyes, letting Mjolnir hang suspended in midair, crackling quietly.

He couldn't build a path on thunder alone. Not safely. The element was too volatile, too closely tied to Odin's realm. But maybe it could serve as a lens—a conduit to reach other elements.

Thunder creates fire. Thunder stirs the wind. Thunder brings rain. Thunder splits the earth. Thunder reshapes metal.

Perhaps, through lightning, he could study everything.

And yet… There was a deeper problem. Even if he mastered every classical element—earth, wind, fire, water, metal—they would still be limited. They were mortal forces. Bound to nature. Bound to balance.

But what ruled the Marvel universe wasn't just classical magic.

It was cosmic law.

Time. Space. Power. Reality. Mind. Soul.

The six pillars. The fundamental truths that shaped existence. Elements were dust compared to them. Even thunder—sacred, divine, ancient—was still just a tool of a higher order.

If Daniel wanted to step beyond Odin's leash… he needed to transcend the elements altogether.

That's when he thought of Stark.

The Arc Reactor. The Cube. The engine designs were developed by Dr. Maya Hansen after experimenting with Tesseract energy.

All of it traced back to one source: The Cosmic Cube.

Daniel had already siphoned a massive amount of information from Stark's archives. Enough to recreate portions of the particle-based Cube mimic. He didn't have access to the heart of the tech—but now, with Mjolnir's micro-energy perception, he could refine it.

The thunder gave him the missing key—the link to contain and direct divine power in a stable loop.

And it was working.

Around him, thunder peeled and spun like obedient wolves. Not a single bolt touched him. Mjolnir pulsed in his palm, regulating the entire storm like a beating heart.

Below, Stark hovered in place, watching the sky.

He didn't dare fly up.

The lightning was too erratic. His armor could probably take a hit or two, but not at that altitude—not with the atmospheric ionization this intense. His sensors were already scrambled.

Still… something didn't sit right.

Daniel's behavior had shifted the moment he heard the name "Donald Blake."

It was subtle. But Stark had known enough diplomats, spies, and narcissists to read a twitch of the brow or the flicker in someone's voice.

So he'd started digging.

And now… things weren't adding up.

Jarvis had already pulled every available file on Dr. Donald Blake.

Not much to say. Harvard Medical. Brilliant. Promising.

But crippled.

Not visibly. Not enough to be labeled disabled by traditional standards. But it was enough to keep him from ever performing the highest tier surgeries—the kind that required twelve-hour standing sessions and hyper-precise micromovements.

In medicine, especially at the elite level, a doctor's body mattered as much as their brain.

Blake could've been great. But not top-tier. So he left the hospital. Opened a modest private clinic.

And somehow, dated Jane Foster.

That was his only point of overlap with Daniel.

But here's the thing: by the time Daniel arrived in New York, Jane and Donald had already broken up. And Donald had flown to Northern Europe for a solo getaway.

There shouldn't have been any connection between them.

Yet Daniel's reaction said otherwise.

So Stark did what he did best: dug deeper.

Jarvis brought up Norwegian travel records.

There it was.

Donald Blake had made a 911-equivalent emergency call during his trip.

The call recording still existed:

"Aliens… they're here… they're abducting people… please, send help—!"

The audio cut out halfway.

Stark leaned in.

The local police did search the area, but Norwegian wilderness was vast. It took hours before they found him.

Or rather, he found them.

Disoriented. Injured. Claimed he fell.

He backpedaled on the alien story. Brushed it off as panic. Said he was just confused.

But…

There was no sign of his phone. It was missing. Never recovered.

The cops assumed it had been lost in the forest. But the timing?

The call had been made at the exact same moment Mjolnir fell in New Mexico.

Not "around" the same time. Not "roughly." Exactly.

Once you accounted for the time difference, the two events were simultaneous.

Stark raised his eyes again to the storm above.

Daniel floated inside it, encased in crackling arcs of power. From below, it looked like worship. Like coronation.

'He's not just testing power,' Stark thought. 'He's hiding something.'

And Stark hated not knowing.

He activated his internal comms.

"Jarvis. Pull up all satellite footage from that date. I want to know exactly where Blake was standing when he made that call. Track any electromagnetic anomalies. Trace everything."

"Coordinates locked," Jarvis replied. "Do you wish to investigate in person?"

"Absolutely."

Stark's thrusters roared to life. With a high-velocity burst, he broke into northeast flight trajectory, vanishing across the horizon.

No one on base noticed.

Not S.H.I.E.L.D. Not the soldiers.

Daniel had been floating in the clouds for three days straight. No food. No descent. His signal, cloaked by divine interference, was unreadable. Stark's departure went unnoticed beneath the ambient thunder.

He'd even started experimenting with stealth tech, making his Iron Man suit invisible to radar. The upgrade wasn't finished, but it worked well enough.

If not for the swirling cloud vortex—if not for the lightning still kissing the sky—someone might have thought Daniel left too.

But he hadn't.

Down below, Jane Foster stared at her screen in frustration. No results or breakthrough. Just dead ends.

Then she looked at her phone.

A final message from Donald.

She stared at it for a long moment. Then sighed.

"Four years," she whispered. "I owe him closure."

She made her decision.

Jane packed her things.

She was going to New York.

High above, Daniel remained suspended in lightning. Although, his body had changed as well as his magic. 

Even his soul felt heavier, thicker, more divine.

The transformation wasn't just physical. It was metaphysical.

He wasn't mortal anymore. Not entirely. His body could now sustain energy the way a god's did. If Odin stripped the thunder away, Daniel would still remain—stronger than ever.

He'd never been a brawler. His fights with Hulk had relied on tactics, not strength.

Now he could fight head-on.

Even if Mjolnir left him.

Even if Odin turned against him.

He would endure.

Just like Thor.

Except…

Had Thor really lost Mjolnir?

That was the question.

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