Logan tent pov
As Steve and Peggy left my tent, a heavy silence settled over the room. I sat down, closed my eyes, and began the real work. I needed to train my mind to be a shield, a barrier so impenetrable that even a telepath like Charles Xavier wouldn't be able to find a way in. I wanted this knowledge to belong to me and me alone.
I shifted my focus inward, moving my Chi. I didn't want to use it just for external strikes or physical healing anymore; I wanted it to defend me from the inside out.
I began to construct a Memory Palace, layer by layer. Patrick Jane, the Mentalist, always made it sound so simple, just pick a building and store your thoughts. Yeah, right. Building a sanctuary out of thin air while a world war rages outside is anything but easy.
"If the information I carry ever got out," I whispered to the shadows of the tent, "I can't even fathom how many lives would be lost as collateral. The world isn't ready for this. They'd tear each other apart just to get a piece of what I know."
I sat deeper into the silence, the weight of it pressing against my chest. I didn't reckon there was a map big enough to show the graves that would be dug if my secrets were leaked.
My mind had to be a fortress. Not just for my safety, but for the safety of every innocent soul who would get caught in the crossfire of the powers that want what I have.
Sixty years ago, I was in Tibet, training at a monastery to control the beast that rages inside me. It wasn't Kamar-Taj, I wasn't there for spells, but the Ancient One did pay me a visit once.
He looked... weird, for lack of a better word. He had a stillness that I couldn't understand. My life across the timeline hasn't been kind, I've spent it running from home, being hunted by "normal" humans, and fighting in wars that weren't even mine.
The Ancient One wasn't interested in the wars of men. He lived in a world of spirit and shadow, while I was just a man trying to stop my own hands from shaking with rage.
The Ancient One didn't look at me like a student or a soldier. He looked at me as if I were an anomaly, a knot in the thread of time that wasn't supposed to be there.
The real mystery, the true anomaly, is that for all the changes I've made, the timeline hasn't deviated. I've saved lives that should have been lost, and I've built empires that didn't exist before, yet it's as if the universe is absorbing my actions. Even the Ancient One was puzzled.
It's like I'm not fighting against the Sacred Timeline, I'm part of the weave. No matter how much I shift the path for the people around me, the river of time just widens to accommodate me. It makes the ancient one wonder: Am I actually changing things, or was I always meant to be the ghost in the machine?.
The Ancient One didn't just stumble upon me. He had been using the Time Stone to monitor potential threats to this dimension, searching for any cracks in our defenses. That's when he saw me, a strange, jagged spike in the flow of time.
To him, I wasn't just a traveler, I was something "crashing" into the sanctuary of the monastery. He used the Eye of Agamotto to peer into my past and my possible futures, trying to figure out what kind of man could exist for so long without tearing the fabric of reality apart.
He saw the wars, the loss, and the secret power I carried, but even with the stone, I remained a puzzle. I was a variable that the universe refused to delete.
He saw it all, the shifted destinies, the altered lives, the sheer scale of the change I trailed behind me like a wake in the ocean. At first, his instinct was cold and clinical: he thought he needed to erase the anomaly before the rot could spread. He was ready to wipe me from existence to preserve the Sacred Timeline.
But he stopped. His train of thought was broken when he looked deeper into the green light of the Stone. He saw something different the second time, a pattern he hadn't noticed. He realized I wasn't a mistake, I was a stabilizer. I wasn't breaking the world, I was the one holding certain pieces of it together.
"Weird" was putting it lightly. The Ancient One had looked through the ages and realized something fundamental: my decision to build an empire and secure my future wasn't a deviation at all. The timeline itself seemed to acknowledge the effort. It was as if the universe respected those who took the reins of their own destiny, picking themselves up from the mud to change their lives, and the lives of those around them for the better.
My wealth wasn't a "cheat code" in the grand design, it was a reward for a man who had finally stopped running and started building. I wasn't breaking the world by becoming a founding father of a city, I was fulfilling a potential the timeline had been waiting for.
But it wasn't just my destiny that had shifted. That day, the fates of nearly eighty other people were rewritten alongside mine. It was a mass deviation, a collective pivot that forced the Ancient One out of the shadows.
He appeared before me because he had to know: what made this one particular human so special? How could a single man, a soldier in the mud, possess the gravity to pull eighty other souls out of their pre-written ends and into a new future? He didn't come to praise me; he came to study the anomaly that had become a shepherd for so many others.
In the end, the Ancient One saw the truth: strip away the mutation, the healing factor, and the centuries of combat, and I was nothing more than a normal man. There was nothing 'glaring' about me, no hidden desire to conquer empires or tear the world down. I didn't want to be a god, I just wanted to be a guardian for the people I called my own.
He realized that while I was an anomaly in time, I wasn't a threat to existence. I was just a man who had been given too much time and was finally learning how to use it for something other than survival. I wasn't the end of the world, I was just a new chapter he hadn't expected to read.
That was the part that truly baffled the Ancient One, the fact that the Sacred Timeline actually agreed with my existence. Between the business empire and the influence in Houston, I had the power to change the entire course of history. I had the money to buy governments and the strength to topple nations.
But I didn't.
The Houston group managed much more than just food and clothing for the masses, we held the keys to the city's future. Yet, we used that power to stabilize, not to conquer. The timeline remained intact because my ambition was tempered by my conscience. I was a man who could have been a tyrant, but chose to be a pillar instead. That's why the universe let me stay, I was a force of nature that knew when to be still.
That was the moment the Ancient One saw it, the true shape of my intent. As he peered through the Eye of Agamotto, watching me gather the families to start this empire, he realized I wasn't looking for a throne. I was looking for a veil.
I didn't want to be a conqueror, a king, or a god. I built that business empire because I wanted to hide. I wanted to create a world so stable, so layered with 'normal' business and 'normal' life, that no one would ever think to look at the man behind the curtain. The Ancient One stopped his hand because he understood: I wasn't an anomaly trying to rewrite history, I was an anomaly trying to find a place to rest.
The Sacred Timeline remains intact because it knows I won't deviate from the design. It knows that despite my influence and my secrets, I will still walk the path laid out for me. I'll still end up in that laboratory, I'll still endure the Weapon X program and the agony that comes with it.
I'm not building this empire to escape my fate, I'm building it to protect what I leave behind while I'm gone. I know that along that dark road, I'm destined to meet people who will change me, people who are 'nice' in a world that isn't. I accept the pain of the future because I know the value of the friends I'll find in the shadows.
The Sacred Timeline acknowledged my tenacity. It saw that while I had changed a thousand small things, the core of my journey remained the same. I was still destined to meet Charles Xavier, I was still destined to stand with the X-Men. My deviation was just one of many a ripple in a vast ocean that was ultimately insignificant to the grand design.
But for me, everything had changed. I had stopped being a man who runs and became a man who protects. I was stepping into my future responsibilities decades early, preparing myself to be a guardian for the children of the future, the mutant children who would need a shield. I am James Howlett. I am not a destroyer. I am a protector.
The ancient one pov -
"I have peered through the veil of time for centuries, and I have committed unspeakable acts to ensure this world remains on its axis. But the man standing before me is the very epitome of an anomaly. He is the shadow I was warned about, the one I was sworn to protect the world from.
He is the one who deviates from the timestream of fate, a jagged stone in a smooth river. By all the laws of the mystic arts, he should be an agent of chaos, a fracture in the grand design. Yet, as I look closer, I do not see a destroyer. I see a man who has taken the fragments of a broken destiny and forged them into a shield."
"As the light of the Time Stone pulsed, the truth finally revealed itself. This man was not a weapon to be feared, but a shield to be respected. His strength, his wealth, his very existence, none of it was for himself. It was for the others. He had become a protector of threads he would never even touch. The Sacred Timeline acknowledged this sacrifice, it recognized that while he stood outside of fate, he stood there to hold the door open for everyone else. He was no longer a deviation. He was the foundation."
"I have felt the change," I whispered, peering into the swirling green mists of the Time Stone. "The timestream is becoming rigid, tighter, as if a great hand is squeezing the life out of chaos. Someone, or something, is exerting a cold, calculated control over every second of existence.
And yet... they do not touch him. By all the laws of this new, 'Sacred' order, James Howlett should have been pruned long ago. He is the greatest anomaly I have ever witnessed, a man who rewrites the lives of eighty others with a single choice. But the agents of that rigid control never come for him. They leave him to his businesses, his city, and his protectors. It is as if he is a variable they have already accounted for a necessary glitch in their perfect machine".
And i matrealized in front of him
Normal past 60years pov
I sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor of the monastery, my focus narrowing to the rhythmic pull and push of the mountain air. In and out. I was pushing deeper than ever before, forcing my internal channels to widen. I managed to unlock the fourth of the Seven Heavenly Breathing Gates, but the cost was staggering.
Even with my cellular regeneration working at peak capacity, the sheer heat and pressure of the Chi flowing through me felt like molten lead in my veins. My healing factor was locked in a violent stalemate with the energy I was drawing in. I was becoming something more than a mutant, I was becoming a conduit for the universe itself, but I could feel the bridge beginning to crack under the weight.
I've been calculating the risks. When the day comes when I'm finally encased in that Adamantium steel, the toxicity should be lethal. But if I can hold the fourth or fifth gate, the sheer heat of my internal Chi will burn the poisoning away before it can settle into my marrow. I'll be a living reactor, distilling the metal as it bonds to my bones.
But for that to happen, I have to play the part. When Victor comes looking for me, I can't be in Houston. I can't lead the hunters to the families or the empire I've built. I have to step back into the mud, back into the shadows of the 'Sacred' path. I'll let the timeline have its pound of flesh, just to ensure that the people back home stay safe in the light I created for them.
That when i felt something weird, I feel the air was vibrating, The air didn't just shimmer, it began to vibrate with a frequency that set my teeth on edge. "This is new," I muttered, my senses screaming. Then, the space in front of me fractured like a pane of glass. A man, weathered, ancient, and carrying the weight of a thousand years stepped through the rift.
I didn't wait for an introduction. Shock was still written across my face, but my body was already in motion. I was on my feet in a heartbeat, claws unsheathed with a grinding bones snickt, my Chi rising like a tidal wave to encase my skin.
I pulled that first deep, controlled breath, and I felt the First Gate of Heavenly Breathing slam open. My lungs pumped like a forge, the air burning in my chest as my perception of the room slowed to a crawl. I was ready to strike before the old man could even close the hole in reality behind him.
The moment I saw the weight and the weave of that robe, the blood in my veins turned to ice. I knew exactly who he was. My claws didn't retract, if anything, the First Gate surged harder, my lungs burning as they fought to process the stagnant air around the fracture.
I had spent two lifetimes fearing this day. In my first life, he was a myth, a ghost story told by those who feared the end of all things. In this life, he was the inevitable checkmate. I knew why he was here. He wasn't here to praise my empire or my city. He was here to ensure I played my part in the tragedy to come. He was here to remind me that no matter how much gold I piled up in Houston, I was still just a soldier in his war.
"You," I growled, the word vibrating through my teeth as the First Gate hummed in my chest. I didn't lower my guard. I didn't retract the bone. but here, in the presence of the Sorcerer Supreme, it was a declaration of war. "What are you doing here?"
I spoke as if I knew him, because I did.
"you know me, boy?" the ancient one ask, curious how could someone know him if he never even meet him, a being who stood entirely outside the natural order of his world.
"I've heard rumors around here," I said, addressing the Ancient One. "I've lived in these mountains for fifteen years. You hear things, stories about demons and other threats. They say you guys are the ones who banish those things to keep the natural order. The monks here even mentioned they met you once".
I kept my voice steady, playing the part of a local who had simply kept his ears open. I didn't want to admit that I knew his true identity from another life. By framing it as monastery gossip, I gave myself an excuse for knowing things a normal soldier shouldn't.
"Ahh, the young monk who became the head of this monastery," the Ancient One mused. "That was a long time ago, fifty years ago, I would say. When people came to ask for his help to heal a possessed boy, I gave him a helping hand."
He spoke with the casual tone of someone for whom decades are like days. By mentioning this event from fifty years ago, he was testing me, acknowledging that while i had been there for fifteen years, he had been watching over these mountains for much longer.
I still didn't drop my guard in front of him. I was already at the edge, my instincts screaming. How could someone capable of vibrating the very atmosphere be anything close to normal?
"Why are you here, monk?" I asked, my voice tight with the strain of the First Gate.
I kept my eyes locked on him, my bone claws still glistening in the dim light of the monastery. To anyone else, he might have looked like a simple man in a robe, but my heightened senses told a different story. The air around him didn't just move it pulsed with a heavy, artificial frequency that felt like a warning from the future itself.
"Don't be so tense," he said, offering a small smile. "I just came here to introduce myself. I am what the people here call the Ancient One."
He continued to speak with an effortless calm that stood in stark contrast to the vibrating, fractured air behind him. Despite his peaceful demeanor, the power radiating from him was undeniable. He wasn't just a master of the monastery, he was the master of the very forces I was trying to harness through my breathing and my Chi.
"Is that really your name?" I asked, my voice rasping through the heat of the First Gate. "It sounds made up."
"Every name is made up, James," he said, smiling again.
It was that same grandfatherly smile I always showed to the kids back home in Houston, the kind of look that promised safety and hidden wisdom. But coming from him, a man who had just stepped through a fracture in reality, it felt both comforting and deeply dangerous. He wasn't just some monk, he was a mirror reflecting the man I was trying to become.
"How do you know my name?" I asked. i was tense, did he do a background check on me, I didn't want him to know that I knew he knew what I knew.
"Curious, isn't it?" He was still smiling. That look told me everything. he knew that I knew exactly what he was. The air between us was thick with unsaid truths. Realizing that my "poker face" was useless against a man who could see the threads of time themselves.
"Let's just say I know who you are and what you do," I growled, "Why are you here? Do you want to erase me?".
I didn't blink. I knew that for someone like him, an anomaly like me, I was waiting for the snap of his fingers, the flash of energy that would send me into oblivion, but my bone claws remained ready. If I was going down, I was going to leave a mark on time itself.
"No, I didn't actually," he replied, still wearing that calm, knowing smile.
Ugh. I wanted to punch that face so bad.
I could knock that saintly expression right off his head. But he just stood there, completely unbothered by my claws or the heat rolling off my skin. He was enjoying this, playing with me like a cat with a mouse, knowing he held every single card in this game.
"Then... why are you here?" I asked. I waited. I stood there waiting to see if he was going to attack. my center of gravity low, ready to lunge or dodge the second he made a move.
"That is the question, isn't it?" the Ancient One replied cryptically.
I was absolutely certain in that moment, I really wanted to stab this old fossil. My knuckles ached with the urge to strike, His riddles were twisting my patience into a knot, and his calm, smug attitude was the only thing standing between me and a total loss of control.
"Stop that," I growled. "I was certain we were about to fight. If you want to get this over with, fine, at least I wouldn't have to wait any longer to shred someone."
I wanted a resolution. If he was here to end me, I wanted him to try so I could finally stop holding back.
"Why so serious, boy?" He was still smiling. That was it. I had officially lost every last bit of patience I had.
I lunged at him, moving with the speed of a normal car, my bone claws brandished and ready to tear. But he didn't even flinch. He simply lifted one arm and shifted his body, just enough to let me whistle past him.
He did it all with that same smile on his face. In that moment, I realized the truth: even with the supernatural speed of the First Gate, he could dodge me as easily as if he were taking a casual stroll through a park.
I let go of everything. For a moment, I stopped and drew in a massive breath, pumping adrenaline through my system. I had already opened the First Gate, but now I wanted to open them all. I retracted my claws and stood perfectly still, my eyes clouding over with raw power as I muttered under my breath.
"Dai-ni Kassei," I let the words flow. My muscles contracted and surged, hardening into cords of steel. I didn't stop there, I hit the third flow.
"Dai-san Kassei."
Again. "Dai-yon Kassei."
My skin turned a searing, burning red, and steam began to hiss off my body as my sweat evaporated instantly. The heat was unbearable, but I pushed further.
"Dai-go Kassei!"
A massive shockwave erupted from my center, blowing back the surrounding air. My heartbeat was thundering so loudly it echoed through the stone, and the entire monastery began to shake under the sheer pressure of my Chi.
My skin started tearing itself apart, the flesh ripping under the pressure only to stitch back together in a blurring cycle of agony and renewal. My heart was pumping air and blood so violently it felt like a grenade about to detonate in my chest, but my healing factor was a relentless engine, repairing the damage to my heart and lungs as fast as the Fifth Gate could cause it. I was a living paradox, a man being unmade and reborn every single second.
Pain. So much pain.
It was a white-hot, grinding agony that threatened to swallow my consciousness whole. But I didn't back down. This was the first time I'd ever faced someone so dangerous, so fundamentally powerful, that I couldn't afford to play it safe. To hold back now was to die, or worse, to let him dictate my fate again. I leaned into the suffering, letting the pain anchor me to the present as my healing factor screamed against the internal tide of the Fifth Gate.
"Wow. That was different," I heard him say.
My ears were ringing, my vision was swimming in a red haze of heat and blood, and my heart was thundering like a pneumatic drill. I was putting my soul on the line, tearing my body apart and stitching it back together just to stand in his presence. And he just said... wow?
"Okay, okay... calm down, boy. I didn't come here to do anything to you," the Ancient One said, his voice as steady as the mountain itself. "But let's just say... I was curious."
He spoke as if we were discussing the weather over a cup of tea, completely ignoring the fact that the air around me was still distorted by heat and my skin was a roadmap of raw, healing tissue. His calmness was infuriating, yet it acted like a bucket of ice water over my burning nerves.
Again, that calm voice.
It felt like even opening the Fifth Gate wasn't enough, not even close. The raw, destructive power I was channeling should have leveled the room, yet he stood there completely unphased. It was a sickening realization: he didn't just have more power; he knew exactly how to counter me. It was as if he could see the flow of my Chi before I even moved it, making my greatest efforts look like a child flailing in the dark.
I slowed my breathing, consciously letting the brutal contraction of my muscles loosen. My reddish skin began to simmer down, the heat dissipating as the steam finally stopped hissing from my pores. I let the "Seven Breathings" technique go altogether, the power receding like a retreating tide and leaving me feeling hollowed out and heavy. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the sound of my own ragged, normal breaths.
"Is that funny to you?" I asked, my voice a low, dangerous growl.
"Why not? I was curious," the Ancient One said, letting out a small, lighthearted laugh.
He shrugged as if he hadn't just watched a man nearly implode from internal energy. To him, the Five Gates were just another phenomenon to witness, a flicker of light in a very long life. But that laugh felt different now, less like he was mocking me and more like he was genuinely surprised.
"I've lived a very long life, but I've never seen a technique quite like that," the Ancient One said. "It stands to reason that such a style shouldn't exist by normal human standards. But with a physique like yours... that technique could finally reach its full potential. How very curious."
He spoke with a quiet certainty, his eyes tracing the way my skin had already finished its impossible repair. He knew. He didn't just see the "Seven Breathings", he saw the underneath his humanly mutant flesh, He knew that my healing factor was the only thing in existence that could turn a suicidal martial art into a sustainable weapon. To him, I wasn't just a warrior, I was the perfect vessel for a forbidden power.
"Why are you here, monk? Seriously, what's with the cryptic talk? Is this just a game to you?"
The growl tore from my throat, fueled by the sheer frustration of his bullshit. I was standing in the wreckage of our "spar," my body still radiating enough heat to warp the air, and he was treating the situation like a riddle wrapped in a joke. I didn't travel across time and bleed through the Five Gates to be someone's curiosity. I needed answers, and I needed them without the mystic smoke and mirrors.
"What do you know about time, James?" he asked.
looking at me with eyes that had seen empires rise and fall into dust. He stood there with his hands tucked into his sleeves, but the way he said my name made my hundred-plus years feel like the blink of an eye. He wasn't asking about clocks or calendars, he was asking if I understood the prison we were both standing in.
I don't know how to answer that. I was never a genius when it came to time travel or any of that bullshit as far as I knew, a clock tells the time, and that's all. While I was a genius with an IQ of 179, I was the book-smart type. In my past life, I was an engineer, I worked on motherboards and computer hardware, not time.
"Time, for me, is linear, James, something to be watched over," he continued. "That is why I know who you are and what you are. This might seem sudden, but I did see how your life would turn out."
He was telling me things that shouldn't be spoken about. In my head, I honestly thought the man had gone crazy.
"Are you telling me that you know what my future is?" I asked.
My voice was flat, devoid of the earlier rage but filled with a deep, cold suspicion. As an engineer, I knew that even the most complex simulations had margins of error. To have this monk claim he'd already seen the "finished build" of my life felt like a violation of the very logic I lived by.
"Curious, isn't it? Want me to tell you?" he asked with a smile.
That smile was starting to get under my skin, He was offering to open the box and show me the schematic of my own life, but I knew better than anyone that some data is corrupted the moment you try to read it.
"nah, ill pass" i said without missing a beat.
The Ancient One's face lit up, not because he realized I knew about the future, but because of what the timeline itself had revealed to him.
He wasn't a conqueror, he was a protector. And who was he to say the future couldn't change? I had already altered my path more than once, starting with the moment I left Victor behind. Now, I could feel it in my gut: Romulus had already begun searching for me.
I know Romulus can manipulate memories from afar without being physically present, but there's one thing he doesn't know: I am Logan Barrakus from another world.
I surmise that because my soul and Logan's soul have combined, his manipulative web of telepathic ability has become entangled. Victor and I have gone through war after war, but I know that might not be enough to outrun him.
That's why I came here to Tibet, to learn and to guard my mind. Because I know that in this world, everyone wants to play God.
to be continued -
next chapter 2/2