The Demons Were Already in the Human World

In the deepest part of Kamar-Taj's Sanctum Sanctorum, the chamber normally reserved for the highest-level meditation and spacetime observation was occupied by Doctor Strange alone.

On the heavy sandalwood door, Wong had personally laid seven layers of silencing and protective spells, cutting off the ever-nearing explosions, screams, and the shrill wails caused by dimensional friction outside.

It was meant to keep the situation outside from affecting Doctor Strange's spellcasting. However, after seeing the altar Doctor Strange had set up, Wong felt that what he had done was utterly meaningless.

The offerings on the altar were all food!

And the kind of food packed with technology and brutal additives!

How was this any different from playing house?!

Wong fired off question after question.

Doctor Strange did not answer any of them. He simply focused on the operation at hand. Inside the chamber, the Eye of Agamotto hovered in midair, its emerald glow already much dimmer—the energy of the Time Stone had been consumed enormously over the past few hours maintaining cross-universe communication and projection.

At that very moment, Stephen Strange was kneeling before the spell formation at the center, his face pale, tiny beads of sweat at his temples glittering in the faint magical light. His Cloak of Levitation hung quietly behind him, as though it, too, sensed its master's exhaustion and—some unspeakable sense of absurdity.

The spell formation itself had been drawn with extreme precision, golden lines spreading like blood vessels across most of the room's floor. This should have been a cross-universe summoning ritual of the highest specification, one worthy of being recorded in the annals of Kamar-Taj. Yet on the five core nodes of the formation, what had been placed at this moment was not some thousand-year magical artifact, dimensional crystal, or the remains of an Ancient God.