The dark-red void storm swept over the crumbling remains of the abandoned altar, raising not a single grain of dust. All it carried away were the traces that matter had ever existed.
Several filthy black tentacles silently erupted from the shadows beneath the broken walls. Their tips split open into barbed maws, madly sucking at two faint clusters of white light floating above the center of the altar. They were Dormammu's servants, the scavengers of this desolate domain, specialized in devouring every remnant spark of life that fell into the Dark Dimension. With every lash of the tentacles, tiny particles of origin were forcibly torn from the illusory human forms. A young woman desperately shielded a little girl with pigtails in her arms. Her figure was so faint it was nearly transparent, while the outlines of her features warped inch by inch under the violent tearing.
What kept the shadows at bay was not some profound secret art, but a pale golden film as thin as a cicada's wing.
It was a barrier of obsession woven from strands of golden thread. Every filament was steeped in Kaecilius's madness, unwillingness, and his almost pathological longing for his wife and daughter.
"No wonder he could send dreams across dimensions. This madman really was insane."
Chen Xiao stood atop a floating black crystal. The sole of his cloth shoe crushed the weathered surface, producing a faint crisp crack. Kamar-Taj's library held tens of thousands of volumes on soul arts, and Mordo went on all day about commandments and defensive formations, yet those sturdy shields built from Vishanti's divine power could not last even three breaths in this dark wasteland.
Yet this man, branded a traitor by all of Kamar-Taj, had relied on a crazed obsession to hold up a tattered umbrella riddled with