Two weeks had passed in the outside world while Jack's soul was adrift in the River Acheron.
Deep beneath a nameless, barren stretch of land, in a secret facility that appeared on no SHIELD manifest, two figures lay strapped to clinical, steel tables. The restraints were not leather or steel, but the dull, unyielding grey of pure adamantium. The two Jack Hou clones had not moved, had not even twitched, in the three weeks they had been captive.
Alexander Pierce stood in the observation room, looking down through a double-paned, bulletproof glass window. His expression was one of cold, academic curiosity.
Inside the sterile operating theater, teams of surgeons in black HYDRA scrubs were preparing. Today was the day. For weeks, they had been stumped. Jack's skin was an impossible barrier. But they had finally succeeded in forging a small, priceless set of surgical tools from the most indestructible metal on Earth.
"Where is the bio-scanner array?" Pierce asked the HYDRA agent standing beside him.
"None of the machines can scan his body, sir," the agent replied, his voice a nervous, deferential thing. "Even when we try, the readings are a jumble of nonsensical energy signatures. The surgeons say it wouldn't help them, anyway."
Pierce's lip curled in a faint sneer of disapproval. "So, what are they going to do? Cut him open without any monitoring?"
The agent stammered, "Y-yes, sir."
Below, the head surgeon approached one of the tables. He was an old man, his white hair a wild, unkempt halo, his mouth almost watering as he stared down at the unconscious clone. He looked less like a doctor and more like a ravenous ghoul.
"My perfect specimen," he whispered, his voice a low, obsessive hiss. "Mine. Mine alone!"
He picked up an adamantium scalpel, its edge gleaming under the harsh surgical lights. He pressed it to the clone's arm. There was an incredible resistance, a sickening, grinding scrape as the blade struggled against the impossible flesh. But it cut. The skin parted sluggishly, revealing not just flesh and muscle, but that impossible, swirling mixture of deep crimson and liquid gold.
The surgeon, in his manic excitement, pressed too hard. With a sharp SNAP, the priceless adamantium blade broke.
He threw the handle against the wall in a fit of pure, childish rage. "MORE!" he shrieked. "BRING ME MORE SCALPELS!"
An assistant hurried forward with a new one.
From the monitoring room, Pierce scoffed, a sound of pure, clinical disgust. "Tell him not to ruin the simian," he said to the agent, his voice a low, final command.
The agent nodded, his face pale. "Yes, sir."
…
Jack's hug was suddenly empty. He was alone, standing in a silent, endless, and perfectly white void. A blank canvas.
Then, the void dissolved, into the familiar, chaotic sights and sounds of a Chinatown night market. The air smelled of sizzling skewers, cheap cigarettes, and old magic. And there, tucked between a noodle stall and a mahjong parlor, was the same old stall covered in faded red cloth. Behind it sat the old man, his piercing golden eyes watching Jack as if he'd been expecting him.
A raw, choked sound escaped Jack's throat. "Master Perv… you old bastard!"
He ran, slamming into the old man and wrapping his arms around him in a desperate, clinging hug, his face buried in the familiar, scratchy fabric of the old man's robes.
"Master! You old perv!" he rambled, his voice a broken, childlike thing. "It was horrible! They were all so mean! The screaming and the hate and the sadness… I saw… I did…"
The old man's hand gently patted his back. The touch was warm, reassuring. "You have passed the hardest trials, my boy," the master's voice said, full of a warm, paternal pride. "You have faced your hate. You have borne your woe. You have earned your rest."
He gently pushed Jack back, holding him at arm's length. "Congratulations. Here is your fragment. Your reward."
He held out a hand, and in it materialized an ornate gourd, carved from a single piece of celestial jade, a soft, golden light pulsing from within.
"Whoa," Jack breathed, his eyes wide. "Is that it? Should I drink it?"
"Of course," the master said. But his voice had changed. It was a soft, seductive whisper that seemed to bypass Jack's ears and speak directly to the deepest, most tired part of his soul.
"Drink, and be free," the voice cooed. "Imagine it, Jack. The quiet. The peace. All of it, gone. The 341 lifetimes of pain, washed away. No more nightmares of being a tyrant. No more phantom pains of broken hands. Just you. Jack Hou, the final one, the one who won. You could go back to the Golden Peach, eat noodles, start fights… you would be free of the burden of being a king."
Jack reached for the gourd, his hand trembling. The offer was a paradise, a perfect, beautiful escape.
But then, he paused. He looked at the master's face, at the kind, patient, loving smile.
And it was wrong.
"What…?" Jack said, his voice a low, suspicious thing as he pulled his hand back. "No. You're not him."
The master's smile didn't falter. "Of course I am, my boy. Who else would I be?"
"You're too good to be him," Jack said, his voice gaining a sharp, certain edge. "You're not even offended that I keep calling you Master Perv." A slow, cynical grin spread across his face. "The real one would have hit me at least ten times by now, just for the hug. And he definitely would have called me an idiot for crying like a baby."
The master dropped his act. The warm, paternal smile faded, replaced by a look of profound, ancient disappointment. He sighed, a sound that seemed to shake the very foundations of the soulscape.
"So be it."
And then, the night market was consumed by fire. Not the clean, crimson fire of a phoenix, but a raw, angry, punishing inferno that erupted from all sides, a river of pure, divine judgment.
…
Four weeks had passed in the outside world while Jack's soul was adrift in the River Lethe. The panic had a new, sharp focus. News outlets across the globe blared with reports of a heinous terrorist attack: the Brotherhood of Mutants had destroyed a power plant in Russia.
But the reality was different. Magneto and his group had not attacked a power plant; they had attacked a secret Russian experimental base. A base that, in their arrogance, had managed to capture five of the fallen Jack Hou clones.
(Flashback – Six weeks ago, on the shores of Krakoa)
Magneto was the first to arrive. He descended from the sky, a regal, imposing figure, his magnetic powers gently lowering a snarling Sabretooth to the ground beside him. As per the agreement, they could only bring one guard.
He landed and looked at Natalie Beckman, a flicker of genuine curiosity in his old eyes. "Quite an interesting place you have here."
"Show your respect," Natalie replied, her tone cool and even. "This island is Jack Hou's disciple."
"I can tell," Magneto said, a small, almost imperceptible smile on his lips. "The entire electromagnetic field around this island is… skewed."
A massive, humanoid form made of vines and flowers rose from the ground. "And I can control it," Krakoa's voice boomed, a chorus of a thousand rustling leaves. "So your power will not work here, old man."
Sabretooth snarled at the living island, his claws extending with a sharp snikt.
"Calm your dog, Magneto," Natalie said without taking her eyes off Magneto.
Magneto raised a hand, and Sabretooth reluctantly stood down.
Just then, the familiar whine of the X-Jet was heard. It landed softly on the beach, and the ramp lowered, revealing Professor Xavier in his wheelchair and Hank McCoy.
Xavier looked around at the strange, beautiful, and tense gathering, then whispered to Hank, "Thankfully, it was you who came, and not Logan."
Hank saw Sabretooth, and a cold knot of dread formed in his stomach. He couldn't even imagine how the meeting would have started if those two had faced each other.
Another jet arrived, this one a sleek, commercial aircraft. From it emerged Ami Han, the leader of the Korean Tiger Division, and her guard, Shiro Yoshida, the Sunfire. They shook hands with Natalie.
"I thought you didn't want to be tied to any organization, Shiro-san," Hank said, his tone friendly but curious.
Shiro chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. "Well, these are trying times. I guess I'm just trying."
Magneto then turned to Ami Han. "Does the Korean government know you're here?"
"I am here as the leader of the Tiger Division," she replied, her voice a sharp, professional thing. "And for your information, we have cut ties with the government. We now operate across Asia."
"It is good to know there are such organizations," Xavier said, a hopeful note in his voice. "If you wish, we can help each other."
"Isn't that what we're trying to do with this meeting?" Natalie interjected, bringing them all back to the point.
"Should we start now?" Ami Han asked.
"One more participant," Natalie said.
As they waited, a final Quinjet, black and impossibly sleek, landed on the beach. The ramp lowered, and the sound of high heels on metal echoed in the quiet air. From the jet emerged Emma Frost, the White Queen, with her guard, Elektra Natchios, a silent, deadly shadow at her side.
Natalie gestured to the assembled group. "Here we all are," she announced. "Magneto, the leader of the Brotherhood. Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men. Ami Han, the leader of the Tiger Division. And lastly, Emma Frost, the leader of the Hellfire Club."
…
By rejecting the gentle, numbing waters of the Lethe, Jack was not returned to his soulscape. He was plunged into an inferno.
He was in the Phlegethon, the River of Fire. But this was no ordinary flame. It did not burn his skin; it burned his soul. It was an internal, spiritual conflagration, a furnace of consequence designed not to destroy, but to purify. This was the forge. This was the curriculum.
The fire first seized upon the memory of his greatest pride: Sun Wukong, standing defiant before the armies of Heaven. It took the feeling of glorious, righteous rebellion and inverted it.
The pride became a hot, searing shame. The power became a heavy, crushing weight. The fire consumed the glory of the memory, leaving only the hollow, childish arrogance behind. It burned away the justification, revealing the raw, naked ego that had driven him. It was a lesson in the poison of vanity.
Then, the fire shifted. It sought out the memory of the blind slave girl, and its nature changed. It was no longer a punishing flame, but a cauterizing one. It burned away not the pain of her life, but the victimhood. It seared the wounds of helplessness shut, leaving behind not scars of weakness, but of resilience. It showed him that her final act of defiance, burning the mansion, was not just revenge; it was the act of a soul freeing itself. The fire burned away the label "helpless," leaving only the truth: "survivor."
The inferno of empathy raged. It took the memory of the tyrant king, the one who saw himself as a savior. The fire incinerated his justifications. The concept of the "greater good" turned to ash, revealing the cold, hard ambition beneath. His crown became a brand of shame, the weight of a million screams his only legacy. The fire taught him that power without compassion is the cruelest poison.
Then it found the heretic scholar, burning on his pyre. The fire cauterized the bitterness of his rejection. It showed him that the act of freeing his knowledge, the paper birds taking flight, was the true victory. The flames that consumed his body were meaningless compared to the immortal fire of his ideas, now scattered to the winds. The fire burned away his need for validation from his oppressors.
The flames roared, and he was the geokinetic architect, his grand tower a monument to his ego. The fire did not burn the stone; it burned his pride. It forced him to feel the grinding of dust in the lungs of his workers, the snap of a bone in a falling body, the gnawing hunger of a family whose food he had taken. His masterpiece was not a tower, but a tomb built on a foundation of suffering.
Then it found the artist with the broken hands. The fire burned away the despair. It showed him that even when her tools were taken, her spirit was not. Her final, chaotic masterpiece, painted with her own body, was not an act of a broken woman, but the ultimate expression of a soul that refused to be silenced. The fire cauterized the pain of her loss, leaving only the beautiful, defiant scar of her creation.
Jack floated in the river of fire, no longer fighting it. He understood.
This was the curriculum. The 342 lifetimes of learning. The powerful lives were a lesson in the consequences of ego. The powerless lives were a lesson in the resilience of the spirit. They were two sides of the same soul, a cosmic equation of balance. His arrogance as a king was paid for by his suffering as a slave. His ambition as an architect was balanced by the defiant creation of the artist.
He had to accept not just the punishment, but the reason for it. It was a long, brutal, and utterly necessary education.
He closed his eyes, and for the first time in 342 lifetimes, he stopped resisting. He let the fire do its work. He let it burn away the last, stubborn remnants of his divine pride, the final, lingering poisons of his mortal bitterness. He was not being destroyed. He was being forged.
The fire receded. The searing heat faded, replaced by a profound, chilling cold. His newly forged soul, tempered but heavy with the wisdom of a thousand lifetimes, was no longer burning. It was being pulled down, into a new, dark river of black, frozen ice. He was drifting into the Cocytus.
**A/N**
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**A/N**