When I finally stopped shaking, stopped seeing the image of that headless body every time I blinked, I realized something important: I hadn't walked into this blind. I had warned her. I had shouted into the ether, knowing she was listening, and told her that if she didn't come to me willingly, I would come to her by force. And she had let it happen. That guy—her student, her top student—had stood in my way, thrown spell after spell at me, and drew weapons that looked like they belonged in some nightmare carnival act. I fought back. I survived. And I had… overdone it. My strength had gone too far.
It wasn't completely my fault.
Not one hundred percent.
I still couldn't breathe right when I replayed the sound, the spray, the way the body twitched and fell. My chest tightened every time I remembered it. But if I drowned in guilt, I'd be useless. And useless wasn't an option. Not with what I knew. Not with what was coming.
The Ancient One closed the mirror dimension with a wave of her hand, and reality seemed to snap back together, like a shattered pane of glass suddenly remembering how to be whole. The world stilled, and the strange distortions of light and space melted away. She didn't look at me with disgust, or rage, or even disappointment. Just that same maddening calm, as though she had seen this kind of tragedy unfold a thousand times before, and would see it a thousand more.
"Come," she said simply.
I followed, silent, guilt still heavy on me but curiosity gnawing just as fiercely.
She lifted her sling ring, drawing a clean arc through the air. Sparks flared, golden and alive, and a doorway opened into another place. I knew this room. I'd seen it before—on a screen, in a theater seat surrounded by the smell of popcorn and the muffled coughs of strangers. A wide chamber, dimly lit, lined with relics and history, where the Ancient One would one day sit opposite Stephen Strange, teaching him to open his mind. And now here I was, stepping into the same place, the air humming faintly with some quiet power that felt older than the walls themselves.
She knelt with a graceful ease, folding herself onto the floor. Her robes settled around her like still water. Without a word, she gestured for me to sit.
I lowered myself cross-legged onto the cold stone, still hyper-aware of the blood that had dried on my knuckles, of the tremor that wouldn't quite leave my fingers.
The Ancient One studied me, her gaze sharp but never cruel. "Now that you have gone to such lengths to gain my attention," she said, "tell me. What is it that you truly need?"
The question should've been simple. But it wasn't.
I hesitated, chewing the inside of my cheek. There were a thousand ways I could answer. A thousand things I could ask. But one burned brighter than the rest.
pebble. Then she smooths it out, composure folding back into place like a practiced bow.
"How much," she asks—slow, deliberate—"do you know of the future?"
I don't hesitate. Not now. "Enough," I say. My voice is steadier than I feel. "Enough to change things. I don't know every twist, every small moment, but I know the big arcs. I know who matters, and when. And if you'll listen—if you'll let me—then I can help steer those arcs so fewer people die."
She studies me the way she studies everything: as if she's reading a palimpsest and trying to see what the most recent writing covers. "Very well," she says. "In exchange for information about Stark, tell me something about the future. If you speak the truth, I will speak in turn."
It's an odd bargain—like trading a coin of memory for a coin of fate—but it's the only currency I've got. I lean forward, feel the tension of muscles under my shirt and bone, and I tell her the story of a man she will one day meet.
"There's a surgeon," I begin. "Brilliant hands. Narcissistic, maybe, brilliant for it. Stephen Strange. He's going to die in his old life in a rolled car—an accident that shreds his wrists and leaves him unable to hold a scalpel again. Pride breaks him first, then grief. He'll hear the names of places he shouldn't believe in, and they'll lead him to you. His need will be too great to pretend ignorance. You will take him in—teach him to bend what he cannot fix—and he will become one of the most powerful sorcerers the world has ever seen."
Her fingers twitch just a fraction. I press on, words pouring because the image of Strange in a hospital bed is etched so clearly in me, part memory, part half-forgotten film.
"He will stand against Dormammu. He will break and rebuild the rules of reality a dozen times to keep us safe. There will be betrayal—Kaecilius, the one that I had uhm... killed, would have ended up betraying the sect. He'll run, and he'll find dangerous friends with the single goal of bringing the dark dimension to Earth. Strange will have almost no trouble convincing Dormammu to leave… and in the end, he will become the Sorcerer Supreme."
She lifts a hand before I can finish the last, half-formed thought about allies and the way loyalties splinter. The motion is quiet but absolute—a benediction and a veto both. "You are not wrong, Peter," she says, each word measured like placing stones across a rushing river. "A surgeon named Stephen Strange will come to me after an accident. He will learn what you speak of, and he will stand against Dormammu. Though Kaecilius's part simply won't take place as another will take his place."
I watch the lines at the corners of her eyes. She is telling me what I want to hear, but she's also fencing it in, pruning the dangerous branches. Then, as if turning the soil, she makes a statement that tilts the whole world.
"But," she adds, voice colder now, "the Age of Heroes you speak of will not begin with Stark."
For a second I freeze. My mouth tastes of incense and the memory of other people's lives; my mind flips through the images I've always been given—Stark in a cave, Stark building armor, Stark making the world take notice. "It starts with him?" I blurt, meaning Tony, and then mean myself. The word comes out like a dare.
Her eyes lift to meet mine, and there's no theatricality in her tone. "It begins with you."
I laugh—short, disbelieving. The sound is a knife: half-nervous, half-emboldened. This woman has seen timelines fold like origami. If she says the hero's age begins with me, that means everything I remember could be off by an entire heartbeat.
"You were meant to live your life," she says gently, the way someone explains a long-forgotten law. "You were to take up the mantle years after the Band of Avengers—after they faced Loki and the world reshaped. You were to grow into it. The schedule of the cosmos has been written for you to reach that point later, when certain events have already settled into place."
I feel a furious, dizzying clarity—like standing too close to a cliff and realizing I can see the whole coast. "So I'm early."
"You are several years ahead of where you were supposed to be," she confirms. "If you choose to assume heroism now—if you press forward on this accelerated timetable—you will cause ripples. Small changes will compound. People you save will live to make choices that will alter other lives. Allies will shift. Enemies will act differently. So the choice is yours, to wait and have the future you know or start earlier and face changing the very foundation of the future you claim to know."
My throat tightened. I thought of all the comics I had read, all the movies, all the lessons drilled into me by a lifetime of loving heroes and villains on a page and screen. "It doesn't matter if I end up changing everything, I'm going to be the first hero," I said finally. "Spider-Man will protect the world no matter the cost."
The Ancient One's lips curved just slightly, not a smile exactly, but something close. Amusement flickered in her eyes. "So be it. The future that is to come… will be most exciting, then."
Her calm certainty sent a shiver down my spine. Not because I doubted her words, but because I realized she wasn't just humoring me—she genuinely believed I would change things.
She tilted her head, studying me like a puzzle piece she wasn't sure where to place. "Is there anything else you will ask of me before you go?"
I hesitated, then swallowed hard. "Yeah… there is. Can you—would you—train me? I mean as a sorcerer. I want to learn. Not just webs, not just fists. I've seen what magic can do. I want to… add it to who I am."
Her head shook slowly, robes whispering as she moved. "No. I cannot take you in, Peter. Not yet. You have not learned to control what is already within you. Power without mastery is destruction. Your strength—" she paused, eyes flicking ever so slightly toward my hands, "—already cost a life. Until you prove to yourself that you can protect without killing, you are not ready to hold more power than you do now."
The reminder stabbed like a knife, and I found myself flexing my fingers unconsciously, trying to scrub the phantom blood from them. I nodded, forcing my voice steady. "I understand."
But then I leaned forward, letting a small grin tug at my lips. "Okay… but you wouldn't just… happen to have some books lying around, right? Y'know, maybe a couple dusty grimoires you wouldn't miss if they walked off? Strictly educational."
Her eyes closed, and she actually rolled them. The Ancient One. The master of mystic arts. Rolling her eyes. "You test my patience, Peter Parker."
I held up my hands quickly. "Hey, can't blame a guy for trying."
She sighed, but I caught the tiniest twitch at the corner of her mouth, almost like she was suppressing a laugh. "No books. Not today. You will return home now. And rest assured… someone is about to visit you."
I blinked. "Wait, what do you mean someone—"
The world tilted before I could finish, the chamber spinning, the walls dissolving into gold light like sand being swept away. My stomach lurched and then—
I hit something soft.
I blinked up at my ceiling. My ceiling.
I sat up in my bed, heart still racing, the echo of her words rattling around in my skull. "She seriously just—ugh, dammit." I dragged a hand down my face and groaned. "Stupid smug cryptic sorcerer."
And then—ding-dong.
The doorbell rang downstairs.
I froze, every muscle going taut.
The Ancient One's words whispered in the back of my head: someone was about to make a visit to you.
I cursed under my breath and scrambled off the bed, already dreading what came next.
I crept down the stairs, each creak of the wood somehow louder than usual. My heart hammered in my chest like it already knew something I didn't. Aunt May and Uncle Ben had already left for work—I was sure of that. The house should've been empty. Quiet. Safe.
Ding-dong.
The bell rang again, sharper this time, like whoever was outside had no patience for waiting.
I reached the door and hesitated, hand hovering over the knob. "Okay, Pete," I muttered under my breath. "It's fine. Just open the door. Worst-case scenario, it's a Girl Scout with cookies."
I twisted the knob and pulled the door open.
Standing on my porch, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, was a girl my age. Long dark hair, sharp eyes, a look on her face that was half-nervous, half-determined.
"Cindy?" I blurted before I could stop myself. My brain scrambled, trying to make sense of it. "What the—what are you doing here?"
Her eyes flicked up to mine, and something in the way she held herself—tight, coiled, like a spring about to snap—set off alarms in the back of my head.