Earth's night air tasted different—thin, polluted, vibrating with faint magic that felt nothing like Middle-Earth or the Merlinian currents of my own realm. But tonight, none of that mattered.
Tonight was about harvest.
Steel groaned behind me as another stack of raw materials vanished into a shimmering portal, transported directly into my personal dimension. Mountains of metal, stone, rare ores, alchemical reagents—everything this world could offer, I was ripping from Earth and feeding into my growing empire.
Beside me, Tom Riddle watched the portal swirl with a faint, appreciative smile.
"My lady," he murmured, "I almost feel sorry for this world. You're stripping it clean."
I smirked."Earth will recover. I'm not here to destroy it. I'm here to take what's useful."
And then—My boots squelched in something wet.
A crimson field stretched around us. Bodies lay scattered across cracked ground—limbs twisted, eyes frozen in terror, the scent of burnt magic thick in the air. A coven of witches… or what was left of them.
What once had been a sacred witch burial site was now a slaughtered graveyard.
Tom wiped blood off his wand, looking unbothered."They were weaker than expected."
"We didn't come for a fight," I said. "We came for their secrets."
And we had taken them—mercilessly.
When the last witch fell, a surge of Marvel-world magical knowledge rushed into my mind: spellcraft based on emotion, chaos magic theory, witch sigils, hex formations, and forbidden rituals that would make even Saruman pause.
But among all the corpses and fallen spellbooks, one treasure stood above everything else.
A black, ancient book rested on a cracked stone altar, its cover shifting as if alive. Murmurs of corruption echoed faintly from within.
Tom stared at it with fascination and a hint of dread.
"The Darkhold… the true Darkhold," he whispered. "Are you certain you want that thing, my lady? Even I can feel it trying to crawl inside my thoughts."
I stepped forward calmly.
The book pulsed for me.
Power.Chaos.Forbidden knowledge that even Merlin never touched.
"I don't want it," I said softly."I need it."
When my hand hovered over it, the Darkhold trembled like it feared me.
Then—
SNAP
I closed my fingers around its cover, and the whispers went silent.
A rush of dark magic surged into my skin, recognizing its new owner.Tom staggered back from the wave of energy.
I smiled.
"Nice try," I told the book, "but I'm far beyond corruption."
With a flick of my wrist, a system sigil appeared beneath it, spinning.
"System," I commanded, "store it."
The Darkhold vanished in a flash of light—locked securely in my system space, where even its reality-warping influence was nothing but a tool waiting to be used.
Tom gave me a slow, impressed look."You are truly terrifying sometimes."
I brushed blood from my cloak.
"Tom, this is only the beginning. Now that I have the Darkhold, Earth's knowledge, and its resources…"
A portal opened behind me, swirling with power.
"…we return home. The real work begins."
And together, we stepped into the portal—leaving behind a graveyard of witchesand carrying with us a book that could reshape worlds.