The battle continued.
By now, the Eredar Twins knew something was wrong.
They simply hadn’t identified what.
"Shadow, consume her!"
Salyssra leveled both daggers.
A massive burst of Shadowfury detonated toward the Ancient One.
Unlike Evenson’s version, hers covered an enormous area, its explosive force vastly more destructive.
Yet before the spell erupted...
The Ancient One stepped through a portal and disappeared.
The blast detonated harmlessly in empty space.
Salyssra’s eyes narrowed.
That shouldn’t have been possible.
Shadowfury was an instant-cast area spell. Even if someone sensed the surge of magic beforehand, escaping its radius in time should have been nearly impossible.
Yet the Ancient One had done so effortlessly.
Unless...
She already knew I was going to cast it.
The thought surfaced uninvited.
A sudden gust brushed the back of Salyssra’s neck.
A portal had silently opened behind her.
A golden magical blade thrust straight through it.
"Damn it!"
She threw herself forward on instinct.
Ever since the battlefield had been transformed into a maze of shifting dimensions, the Ancient One had attacked from impossible angles.
Walls.
Windows.
Ceilings.
Had Salyssra not stabilized the surrounding space earlier, she suspected the Sorcerer Supreme might have started attacking from beneath the ground itself.
But this strike had only been a feint.
Only one of the Ancient One’s arms emerged from the portal before withdrawing again.
The instant Salyssra leaped clear...
Another portal opened directly where she was about to land.
The Ancient One burst from it with twin blades aimed straight at her chest.
"Alythess!"
Without hesitation, Alythess launched a blazing fireball to force the Ancient One back.
The Sorcerer Supreme didn’t even bother looking.
She raised a single hand.
A tiny portal opened directly in the fireball’s path.
The spell vanished into it.
An instant later...
Another portal appeared above Alythess.
Her own fireball came hurtling back down.
Alythess caught it in one hand and crushed it into sparks.
Her expression darkened.
Something was deeply wrong.
Dodging Shadowfury.
Redirecting her fireball.
Every response had been immediate.
Effortless.
Perfect.
There wasn’t the slightest hint of surprise.
It felt...
Rehearsed.
The redirected fireball hadn’t been entirely useless, however.
The Ancient One had needed one hand to create the portal.
That reduced her dual-blade assault to a single strike, giving Salyssra just enough time to recover and meet her head-on.
The two women clashed again.
Steel met conjured light.
The longer Salyssra fought...
The more disturbed she became.
She already knew the Ancient One excelled in close combat.
This was something else.
Every attack she launched was avoided by the narrowest possible margin.
Every tiny opening she exposed was exploited immediately.
It was as though the Ancient One already knew everything she intended to do.
"Don’t get cocky!"
Salyssra snarled.
Darkness erupted around her.
Three Shadow Images materialized, joining the original to surround the Ancient One from every direction.
Four attackers.
Four simultaneous strikes.
No escape.
Or at least...
There shouldn’t have been.
The Ancient One twisted through a gap so impossibly small it barely existed.
She slipped free without taking a scratch.
Salyssra frowned.
The irritation she’d been suppressing finally crystallized into something else.
A suspicion.
A dangerous one.
"...Heh."
A slow smile spread across her face.
"If that’s really how it works..."
The next exchange began.
The four Salyssras attacked together once more.
The Ancient One responded exactly as before.
Then, unexpectedly, one of the shadow duplicates discarded both daggers.
Instead...
It lunged forward and wrapped both arms around the Ancient One.
For the first time since the battle began...
The Ancient One’s calm expression cracked.
Not with fear.
With surprise.
"Alythess!"
Salyssra burst into laughter as she sprang backward.
"Burn my mark into her memory!"
Alythess understood instantly.
"Flames! Devour her!"
She pointed toward the immobilized target.
An overwhelming surge of fire magic condensed in an instant.
The Ancient One realized the danger immediately.
A portal opened beside her.
She tried to retreat.
The shadow duplicate refused to let go.
Forced to drag it with her, she vanished through the portal.
The moment it closed...
A blinding flash exploded beyond it.
Then came the thunderous roar.
When the Ancient One emerged again...
Her composure was gone.
Her yellow robes had been scorched into blackened rags.
Burns covered much of her body.
Several patches of skin had been carbonized by the blast.
Even the Sorcerer Supreme couldn’t stand beside a point-blank magical detonation without paying a price.
Then...
Everything froze.
Reality itself seemed to stop breathing.
The world reversed.
Colors flowed backward.
The battlefield rewound.
An instant later...
The Eredar Twins stood once again where they had started.
The Ancient One faced them from her original position.
Hands folded behind her back.
Completely unharmed.
As though the previous exchange had never occurred.
This wasn’t the first time.
Or the second.
Or the third.
They had experienced this scene again...
And again...
And again.
Understanding finally dawned.
"Time reversal..."
Alythess’s expression hardened.
"So that’s it."
At last, everything made sense.
Why every surprise attack failed.
Why every feint had been anticipated.
Why the Ancient One always seemed one move ahead.
Because...
She had already fought this battle.
Time itself was not merely another source of power.
It was a fundamental law of reality.
Mortals might exploit tiny loopholes.
They might borrow fragments of its authority.
But to command time as though it were an ordinary spell...
That belonged to no mortal.
Even races approaching godhood often lost themselves when granted such authority, swallowed by endless timelines until their own existence unraveled.
Yet the Ancient One...
Had mastered it.
Inside the fortress, Clea watched quietly from her chair.
"It’ll be over soon."
She sounded surprisingly pleased.
"Those demon women are powerful..."
"But no one can defeat the Sorcerer Supreme while she possesses that treasure."
"The Eye of Agamotto."
Evenson finished the sentence before she could.
"The Time Stone."
Clea stared at him.
"...You know what it is?"
Powerful sorcerers could briefly accelerate themselves.
Some could rewind their own personal timeline by a few moments.
But manipulating time this naturally...
On this scale...
There was only one explanation.
The Infinity Stone.
Outside, the battle began once again.
Evenson looked through the window.
"This should be..."
He counted silently.
"...the tenth loop."
Unlike the battlefield outside, his fortress remained untouched.
Its dimensional anchor isolated it from the Ancient One’s manipulated pocket reality, leaving everything inside unaffected by the repeated rewinds.
A slow smile crossed his face.
"Just about what I expected."
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