Spreading Chaos and Mischief across Worlds

The multiverse, for all its infinite breadth and incomprehensible laws, had one universal truth: if you wished to find the God of Mischief, you had to let him find you first.

Wong hated that.

He stood beside Doctor Strange in the belly of the Dimensional Astrarium, a chamber deep within the pocket-realm of the Eldritch Vault. Before them was a shifting, unstable map of tangled fates and collapsed timelines. Dozens of red strings pulsed in rhythmic defiance—strands of reality rewritten by something… or someone.

"Are you sure this is the right variant?" Strange asked, arms crossed and tone skeptical.

"No," Wong replied bluntly. "But this one's unaccounted for, and he once hijacked a celestial prison disguised as a time library. That sounds like our Loki."

Strange tilted his head. "That was me."

Wong didn't flinch. "Exactly."

He extended a rune-seared hand, and the multiversal thread burst outward into a starfield. At its center, a realm blinked into view: a twisted, inverted city made of collapsing paradoxes and glowing mirrors—The Nowhere Archive.

Strange stepped forward. "This place doesn't exist anymore."

"It does now," Wong said. "Amon reopened it—only a being who understands both 'what happened' and 'what should not have happened' could do that."

"And Loki fits the bill," Strange muttered. "Lovely."

They opened a portal.

Meanwhile… Somewhere Between Realities

Wanda knelt in a ritual circle surrounded by arcane mirrors and frozen starlight. The spell sigils glowed crimson under her command, but beneath that crimson shimmered faint traces of gold—leftovers from the last time Amon had toyed with her thoughts.

He would not do it again.

Her trap wasn't a cage or a weapon. It was a story—one designed to bait Amon's favorite things: layered meanings, recursive loops, and his own image reflected back at him.

Within the center of the spell-circle floated a fractured mirror shard, enchanted to replay Amon's words back to him with inverted truth. It was her answer to his "game." Her own joke. A recursive loop where he'd become the punchline.

But she knew better than to expect him to fall for it quickly.

She would have to wait. And she hated waiting.

Elsewhere… In the City of Never-Time

Amon walked down the shifting corridors of the Nowhere Archive like a child skipping through a funhouse—except this funhouse was collapsing at the edges, dripping with the thoughts of timelines long devoured.

The books here didn't have words. They whispered directly into your mind.

"Help… help… I was a father…" one spine muttered.

"I was Earth-238," crooned another. "Until she turned into glass…"

Amon chuckled as he passed a pedestal where an ancient chronomancer once sat. Now the stone chair was empty, save for a rusted hourglass leaking forward sand.

"Such drama," Amon said, wiping imaginary tears from beneath his monocle. "And not a decent comedy section in sight."

Then he paused.

There it was again—that ripple in the air. The faint humming of multiversal threading. Someone had opened the door.

He tilted his head, grinning.

"Wong," he whispered. "And he brought his emotional disaster of a colleague."

At the Entrance of the Archive

Doctor Strange stepped into the Archive and immediately felt nausea crawl up his spine.

"This place bends time," he muttered. "Every second we spend here—"

"—is another opportunity for Amon to play," Wong finished.

Books floated past them, suspended in anti-gravity, their pages whispering disjointed scenes of different timelines: Ultron victorious; Tony Stark resurrected; Wanda reigning as Queen of Nine Earths. None of them had happened—yet each felt real.

They pressed on, past mirrored walkways and ink-flooded stairs, until a voice echoed through the vaulted ceiling.

"Well, well, well. I knew you two couldn't resist."

Amon stood atop an upside-down clocktower that somehow floated in the ceiling's center, cane twirling, hat gleaming.

He hopped down—sideways—until gravity flipped and he landed before them with a flourish.

Strange raised a hand. "No tricks."

Amon smiled. "I never promised honesty."

Wong conjured golden shackles, but Amon merely stepped to the side and allowed the spell to pass through a perfect afterimage.

"You're not here to stop me," Amon said. "You're here because you need me."

Strange's face darkened. "We need to find Loki."

"Oh," Amon said, eyes gleaming. "That Loki."

He snapped his fingers—and the entire Archive shuddered. A mirrored doorway unfolded behind him.

Out stepped a man with a long emerald coat, black horns tucked beneath messy hair, and a look of exasperation frozen on his face.

"Of course it's you," Loki muttered, brushing dust from his shoulders. "I felt the unraveling of the timeline and thought maybe it was another Kang. But no. It's the bloody monocled magician."

Amon bowed. "Charmed."

Loki's eyes moved to Strange and Wong. "And you two. What madness have you signed me into?"

Strange didn't answer. Wong stepped forward. "We need someone who knows how to lie to a liar."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "You flatter me."

Back With Wanda…

The mirror trap pulsed once.

Then again.

Wanda stood, her breath quickening.

The sigils began to shift… not as she wrote them, but in tandem with a new rhythm. One she recognized.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She turned—and there he was.

Amon.

But not fully. A reflected version, caught in the mirror's field. He smiled at her, cane against the ground.

"You're clever," he said.

Wanda narrowed her eyes. "So you triggered it."

He walked forward—but the mirror-image stuttered, glitching.

"I didn't come," he said. "You summoned the idea of me."

Wanda frowned.

"This is not a trap," Amon continued. "It's an invitation. You think I fear mirrors? I was born from reflections."

The mirror fractured again.

Wanda moved to reinforce the sigils, but Amon's image leaned close.

"You didn't ask the right question," he whispered.

Then the spell shattered.

Wanda flew back, eyes glowing, but there was no Amon—only a voice echoing around her.

"You asked 'how to stop me'… but the better question was 'who wrote the story in which you win?'"

Meanwhile: Chaos, Loki, and Uncomfortable Alliances

Strange, Wong, and Loki moved deeper into the Archive with Amon leading them—his steps too casual for someone supposedly under surveillance.

"I thought this was about stopping Amon," Loki muttered.

"It was," Wong said. "It still is. But the only way to stop a narrative manipulator is to give him a better script."

Amon grinned. "That's the spirit."

"Why are you helping us?" Strange asked flatly.

Amon didn't look back. "Because if the plot ends too soon, I don't get to see Act Three."

They came to a chamber shaped like a spiraling staircase, each step a scene frozen in time. There, Amon turned serious for the first time.

"The threads are fraying. Wanda's mind is catching up to mine. That was faster than expected."

Loki nodded. "Scarlet Witch. She always had the capacity for rewriting reality. But she's starting to write against you, isn't she?"

Amon twitched.

"She doesn't know the ending," he said. "None of you do. Not even me."

Strange frowned. "You… don't know?"

Amon looked at him with unsettling calm.

"I lost the final chapter when I died."

Everyone went still.

Then Amon smiled again. "But that's what makes it fun, doesn't it?"

Epilogue Moment – In a Space Outside All Time

A pale figure floated in a void of stars and memories.

She wore a crown of thorns forged from paradox, her eyes glowing like dying suns.

She watched the events unfold through a crystal monocle of her own—one that shimmered with both madness and prophecy.

"My little brother plays too freely," she whispered.

Then she turned a page in the Book of Errors and smiled.

"Soon, we shall all take the stage."