Kaecilius was waiting on the stone bench just outside the Ancient One's tea room.
He sat with his forearms on his knees, staring at the ground as if it owed him an explanation for his entire life.
Arthur studied him from the doorway.
Kaecilius looked awful. The sharp, disciplined Master of the Mystic Arts looked frayed at the edges. There were dark circles bruised under his eyes, and his usually rigid posture was slumped in defeat.
But it was better than Arthur had feared.
Crucially, there was no corruption of the Dark Dimension on him yet. No smell of burnt time. No purple fractures creeping around his eyes like shattered glass. Dormammu hadn't sunk his claws in deep enough to leave a permanent mark.
Not yet.
But Arthur could sense the grief. It hung around the man like a suffocating shroud.
For years, Arthur had kept his distance from Kaecilius's personal tragedy. He'd maintained a relationship of professional rivalry and nothing more, knowing the man was destined to become a villain, a pawn of Dormammu. Arthur had been terrified of interfering with fate, prioritizing his knowledge of the future over the person standing in front of him.
But after yesterday... after defeating Mephisto and locking him in his own dimension... something had shifted.
If he still needed prophetic advantages to win his battles, then all the power he'd accumulated meant nothing. He would be a fraud. A cheat playing with loaded dice.
Arthur was done worrying about the "canon." Which was why he had wanted and planned to save the Ancient One. Sadly she had refused, choosing her own end. But she had pointed him here. To save the person in front of him.
"You look like you slept in a dumpster, Kaecilius" Arthur said, stepping out of the shadows.
Kaecilius looked up slowly. A flicker of a smile crossed his face, but it didn't reach his eyes. "And you feel hollow, Arthur. Like you burned yourself out from the inside."
"Rough week." Arthur sat down on the bench beside him, leaving a comfortable distance between them. "How are things?"
"Fine."
"Liar."
Kaecilius almost smiled. Almost. "The students are progressing well. The new intake shows promise."
"I didn't ask about the students."
A long silence stretched between them. The mountain wind whispered through the courtyard.
"Arthur," Kaecilius said. His voice changed, flattened into something careful and controlled. The voice of a man who'd been rehearsing a conversation in his head for a very long time. "Can I ask you something?"
"You can always ask."
"Do you know?"
"Know what?"
"The Sorcerer Supreme." Kaecilius's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek. "She draws power from the Dark Dimension. Do you know?"
"You've been reading the Book of Cagliostro," Arthur stated. It wasn't a question.
"I have," Kaecilius admitted, his eyes flashing with betrayal. "The rituals for eternal life. The symbols... they match the energy I've sensed on her for years. She preaches about the natural law, about surrendering to the cycle of time... yet she uses the Forbidden Power to stay immortal." He looked at Arthur, desperate for validation. "She is a hypocrite."
"Is she?" Arthur asked quietly.
"How can you deny it? She forbids us from touching the darkness while she bathes in it."
Arthur leaned back against the wall and considered his answer carefully. He owed Kaecilius honesty. Not the Ancient One's truth, not his own rationalizations. Just the clearest picture he could offer and let the man make his own judgments.
"I'm not going to defend her," Arthur said. "I'm not going to tell you she's right and you're wrong, or that her actions are justified because she's wiser than us. I'll let you decide that for yourself."
Kaecilius blinked. Whatever he'd expected, that wasn't it.
"But I'm going to ask you to do something difficult," Arthur continued. "I'm going to ask you to separate two things that are tangled together in your head right now. The lie and the power."
"They're not separate. The lie is about the power."
"The lie is about the secrecy. That's worth being angry about." Arthur held up a hand to stall the interruption. "But you're not just angry about being lied to. You're making a leap from 'she lied about using Dark Dimension energy' to 'Dark Dimension energy might not be as dangerous as she claims' to 'maybe I can use it too.' And that leap is where things get dangerous."
Kaecilius's jaw tightened, but he didn't deny it.
"Let me ask you something," Arthur said. "In your research, all these years studying dimensional energy theory, have you ever come across a power source that is inherently good or evil?"
"No. Energy is energy. The application determines—"
"Exactly. The application determines." Arthur nodded. "I've met a woman who was infused with alien energy meant to be a weapon of mass destruction. She uses it to protect people she's never met. I know a man who carries a curse in his blood that turns him into a creature of pure rage. He's spent years making sure it never hurts an innocent soul."
Arthur leaned forward, catching Kaecilius's gaze.
"Power doesn't have a morality, Kaecilius. The Dark Dimension isn't evil. It's a dimension. It has properties, energies, an entity that rules it. And yes, that entity is dangerous. Immensely dangerous. Dormammu's energy can influence your mind if you are unable to control yourself. But the energy itself is a tool. And what ultimately matters is who wields it, why they wield it, and what they do with the results."
"And the Ancient One?"
"Look at what she's done with it." Arthur gestured at the compound around them. "Not what she's said. Not the philosophy she teaches. What she's actually done. For seven hundred years, she has stood as a shield between Earth and the things that want to devour it. She's sacrificed a normal life, sacrificed peace, sacrificed the luxury of death, just to keep us safe. She wields a poisoned weapon to protect the innocent."
He let that sit in the cold air.
"Now ask yourself: if you strip away the anger about the lie, if you judge her purely on her actions... is she a woman who was consumed by dark power? Or is she a woman who bore an impossible burden in secret because she didn't trust anyone else to understand?"
Kaecilius stared at him. The anger was still there, banked behind his eyes like smoldering coals. But something else was working beneath it. The scholar. The man who pursued truth even when it cut him.
"Both can be true," Kaecilius said finally. "She can be a protector and a hypocrite at the same time."
"Yes," Arthur agreed. "Both can be true. People are complicated. The question isn't whether she's flawed. She is. Nobody is perfect. But you already knew that." He paused, softening his voice. "So tell me. What's the real reason you're so angry?"
Kaecilius went silent. His jaw worked tight.
"I'm angry at the lie," he said, his voice strained. "She told me that time is absolute. That death gives life meaning. That we must accept the end."
His voice cracked, the anger bleeding away to reveal the raw, gaping wound underneath.
"I came to this place broken, Arthur. I didn't come for power. I came for meaning. My wife... my son... they were taken from me. Senseless. Cruel. I wanted to understand why. I wanted to find a way to bring them back, or at least understand why they had to leave."
He slammed his fist against the stone bench.
"But she told me it was impossible. That natural law cannot be broken." Tears welled in his eyes, hot and angry. "And now I find out she's been breaking natural law for centuries to save herself. If she can break the rules for herself... why can't she break them for me? Why can't I have my family back?"
Arthur looked at him. He saw the path Kaecilius was on. It wasn't just grief; it was the agonizing feeling of injustice. If the rules were fake, then anything was possible. Including resurrection.
That was the lie Dormammu whispered to desperate men.
"The Ancient One didn't lie to you about resurrection," Arthur said softly. "She lied about herself, yes. But bringing back the dead? That's a different kind of law entirely."
"Is it?" Kaecilius challenged. "With all the magic in the multiverse? With gods and dimension lords who bend reality like clay?"
He met Arthur's eyes directly, pleading.
"You've traveled further than anyone I know. You've seen things the rest of us only theorize about. Tell me the truth, Arthur. Is there truly no way?"
Arthur looked at the man sitting across from him. Exhausted. Desperate. Brilliant. Dangerous. Standing at a crossroads where one path led to healing and the other to ruin.
"There is no spell to truly resurrect the dead, Kaecilius," Arthur said, his voice heavy with the weight of that truth. "At least none that I know of, and I know more than most. I've heard of false resurrections, implanting memories into new bodies, shadows that mimic life... but not true resurrection. The chances of bringing someone back whole, happy, and real? They're zero."
Kaecilius slumped, the fight draining out of him. He looked utterly defeated.
"Then what's the point?" he whispered. "What's the point of all this power if I can't save the only things that ever mattered?"
"I don't have a meaning for you," Arthur said quietly. "I wish I did. I've looked for those kinds of answers myself, and what I've found is that the universe doesn't offer explanations for why good people suffer. It just doesn't. Not because the universe is cruel, but because it's vast, and most of it isn't paying attention to us."
Kaecilius's shoulders sank further.
"But," Arthur said.
Kaecilius looked up.
"There's one person who might be able to give you what you're looking for. Not me. Not the Ancient One. Not any book or theory or dimensional entity."
"Who?"
Arthur held his gaze. "Your wife."
Kaecilius went very still.
"My wife is dead, Arthur."
"I know," Arthur said. "But I have a unique ability. It allows me to bridge the gap between the living and the dead, for a short time. If she hasn't fully moved on... if she is still waiting... I can let you speak to her."
Kaecilius's hands began to shake. He pressed them flat against his thighs to stop the tremors.
"I couldn't do this before," Arthur explained. "But now I can. Though there are limitations. The person with the connection needs to be near me. And the soul can't have moved on to its next life. If it has, then there's nothing anyone in this universe can do. It's over."
"You're saying—"
"I'm saying there's a possibility. A slim one. Years have passed, Kaecilius. Most souls don't linger. If she's moved on, then you'll have your answer - she found peace, she isn't waiting, and the kindest thing you can do is find your own."
"And if she hasn't?"
"Then you can ask her yourself. Everything you've been carrying. The questions about meaning, about purpose, about whether any of it mattered. You can ask the one person whose answer would actually make a difference."
Kaecilius's breathing had gone ragged. He stood up, sat back down, then stood again. The restless energy of a man whose body didn't know what to do with the hope flooding through it.
"This isn't a trick," he said, his voice trembling. "You're not—"
"It's not a trick. I couldn't bring my own parents back. I used this same ability to speak with them, years ago. They told me things I needed to hear. And to make sure I didn't try something stupid, they moved on. I could never contact them again." Arthur paused. "I can't promise your wife is still there. But if she is, I can give you a few minutes."
"Please." Kaecilius grabbed Arthur's arm, his grip almost painful with desperation. Tears finally spilled over, tracking through the dust on his face. "Arthur, please."
"Come with me."