New York City was restless.
Not in the way of riots or revolutions—but in the quiet, anxious buzz of a world still grieving a miracle. The Snap had ended, reversed by the hands of heroes and gods, yet the wound in reality remained. People walked faster now. Laughed quieter. Loved harder. It was a world barely stitched back together, and the seams were obvious.
Perfect, thought Amon.
He sat atop a gargoyle on the eastern wing of the Chrysler Building, legs crossed, fingers tapping a small brass timepiece. Not because he needed to track time, but because people in this world believed in it. Schedules. Calendars. Futures. It amused him.
Beneath his feet, mortals played out their narratives with admirable sincerity. The guilt-ridden genius, the sorcerers of Greenwich, the soldiers and gods and monsters who still pretended this world could be saved by sacrifice.
Admirable, but deluded.
Amon didn't deal in salvation.
He dealt in opportunity.
And this world was ripe for it.
He glanced skyward as clouds shifted above, revealing the half-finished tower that once bore the name "Stark." The flickering remains of a broken arc reactor illuminated scaffolding and dust. A ghost of genius lingered there. Something half-alive. Half-grieving.
"I would've liked him," Amon murmured. "Arrogance with cause."
The Sanctum Sanctorum stood like a silent sentinel in Greenwich Village, wards humming softly against the night. Since Strange's disappearance after the Snap and Wong's reluctant ascension to Sorcerer Supreme, the magical defenses had grown… defensive.
To most beings, the place was a fortress.
To Amon, it was a puzzle box left partially open.
He entered not through a door, but through possibility—a fold in the moment between candle flickers. One second, he was on the roof of a pizza place. The next, he stood in the Sanctum's library, reading a book titled Intermediate Dimensional Geometry: When Circles Lie.
Amon chuckled.
"How quaint."
The walls did not respond. They had not yet noticed the error.
He wandered between shelves, running gloved fingers across grimoires and spellbooks, the old magic of this world prickling at the edges of his perception. It was... clumsy. Loud. Ritualistic. They tried so hard to control forces that were meant to remain untamed.
Amateurs. Endearing, really.
A book fluttered open behind him without being touched. Another's title rearranged itself to read "Unauthorized Presence Detected." The air thickened.
Footsteps approached.
Wong.
He entered with staff in hand and eyes already glowing with a spell. "I know you're there."
Amon turned the page slowly. "Of course you do."
Wong's brow furrowed. "You're not part of the multiverse registry."
"No," Amon agreed, snapping the book shut. "I'm something... off the books."
Magic swirled in Wong's palm—a spell that could bind the limbs of a demon or erase a lesser mind entirely.
Amon smiled politely.
And moved.
Not with speed, but with misdirection.
One blink, and he was seated in Wong's favorite chair, sipping from his favorite teacup.
"How do you like the chrysanthemum infusion?" Amon asked, swirling the liquid. "I found it soothing. Mortal tastes are usually so… bland."
Wong froze, unsure if it was illusion, teleportation, or something else entirely.
"I don't know what you are," he said, voice tight. "But I will give you one chance to leave."
Amon tilted his head. "That seems inefficient. Why not ask me to stay and share what I know? After all…" He gestured lazily toward the stack of arcane books. "Your people seem desperately curious about cracks in the multiverse. Wouldn't it be helpful to ask someone who's fallen through one?"
Silence.
Wong said nothing.
But the spell faltered.
Amon leaned in slightly, monocle glinting under torchlight. "You've seen the anomalies, haven't you? Timelines that don't obey pruning. Variants that shouldn't exist. A mirror that reflects the wrong expression. And once—if I'm not mistaken—your shadow whispered in your own voice."
Wong didn't move.
He couldn't.
Amon's smile widened. "Tell your Sorcerer Supreme this: The lie has taken form. And it's walking your world."
He stood, setting the cup down precisely.
"And tell him I'd love to exchange philosophies someday. I hear he's rather fond of bending reality. I wonder how he'd like it… when it bends back."
A flicker of light.
The monocle flashed—
And Amon was gone.
That same night, across the East River, in a S.H.I.E.L.D. observation post buried beneath Brooklyn, a junior agent stared at her monitor.
"Hey, Max," she called to her partner, frowning. "You seeing this?"
Onscreen, a subway station feed looped. Commuters entered. Exited. Then it rewound. Played again.
Then again.
But each time, one man stood perfectly still—wearing a black coat and top hat. Eyes covered by a gleaming monocle.
He never moved. Never blinked. And in every loop, he stared directly into the camera.
"Is that live?" Max asked, leaning over.
"No. It's archived."
"What's the timestamp?"
She paused.
"There isn't one."
Before they could speak again, the screen glitched—and the entire footage was replaced by archived weather data.
No trace.
No signature.
Only one file remained—titled:
Monocle.mp4
Inside it, five seconds of video.
A voice speaking softly.
"Chaos," it said. "Is simply free will with style."
The following day, in a gleaming lab bearing the Wakandan crest, Shuri narrowed her eyes at an anomaly in the vibranium resonance array.
"It's mimicking observer state fluctuation," she muttered. "But it's... reflecting expectations."
She froze.
Not expectation of outcome—but of self.
The machine was showing what someone else believed Wakanda should be.
She tapped a screen.
The image rippled—reforming into a mirror of the lab, only upside-down and filled with cracked stars.
Behind her, a tea cup shattered on its own.
Back in his chosen temporary residence—a lavish penthouse acquired by whispering one wrong sentence to the building's manager—Amon sat on a chaise lounge, feet up, reading an article on Stark Tech and multiversal incursions.
"How delightfully primitive," he said, sipping from a crystal glass of dark red wine that wasn't wine.
He turned to the mirror, where his reflection wasn't reading, but watching him.
"Tell me," he asked it. "What do we break first?"
The reflection smiled with teeth too sharp.
Later That Week...
The Daily Bugle ran a headline:
"TIME LOOPERS? Weird New TikTok Urban Legend Emerges in NYC"
One post claimed a man tipped his hat to a mugger—and the mugger burst into tears, screaming about a memory he never lived. Another claimed the pigeons at Times Square began following a man in a black coat, forming perfect spirals around him.
J. Jonah Jameson dismissed it live on air as "Another multiverse nut job hoax."
But Peter Parker, watching the feed, tilted his head.
His Spider-Sense didn't flare.
But something in his bones whispered:
Watch the mirrors.