----
The wager between Nolan and Mordo had spread across Kamar-Taj like wildfire.
Most didn't even know Nolan's full na. But everyone knew Mordo.
Ever since Kaecilius, the forr prodigy, once hailed as the next Sorcerer Supre,, had betrayed the order, stolen forbidden texts, and slain the librarian, Mordo had beco the top disciple under the Ancient One.
So when news broke that Mordo had made a wager... with a newcor?
It shook the foundation of the temple halls.
"A bet?"
"Three days to master the Mirror Dinsion?"
"From that guy? The new recruit?"
On the portal training grounds, where morning lessons had just ended, apprentices gathered in circles, gossiping feverishly.
"There must be a mistake," one muttered. "Who in their right mind would turn down Mordo's personal instruction?"
"No mistake," said another, wide-eyed. "It was that guy, Nolan. Said magic's not that deep and that he'd rather teach himself."
"Nolan..." soone echoed. "Isn't that the guy who stopped showing up to early lessons?"
"That's him. Skipped out after mastering portal magic in three days."
"Three days?"
Whispers turned to stunned silence. Mastering portals in three days?
"That's not normal," soone muttered. "Maybe he really is a genius."
"But the Mirror Dinsion isn't the sa as portals," another argued. "One's an entrance exam. The other's a master's thesis."
Still, uncertainty lingered.
Then soone ntioned the clincher:
"He was brought here... by Master Wong."
That shut everyone up.
In Kamar-Taj, there were two nas everyone recognized: the Sorcerer Supre and Wong.
If Wong personally escorted this guy in?
He wasn't ordinary.
"Could he be... the Ancient One's new disciple?" a voice murmured.
Even then, so scoffed. "Even Kaecilius never dared claim mastery over the Mirror Dinsion in three days. Probably let the success from portals get to his head."
"Guess we'll know in three days."
Their discussion was cut short when footsteps approached.
"Why are you chatting?" Mordo's stern voice cut through the murmurs like a blade. "Did any of you master portals in three days?"
The crowd imdiately stood at attention.
"Say what you will about Nolan, but he earned his arrogance. From zero to mastering portals in three days? That's more than most of you will do in three months."
Mordo paced slowly through the group, his voice low and hard.
"If he loses this wager, good. He'll learn humility."
"But if he wins... then perhaps he's more than even we thought. The world rewards talent. It bends for the gifted. If you're not gifted, then you have no excuse not to outwork him."
The apprentices resud training, their hands glowing as they carved portal sigils through the air with renewed urgency.
Mordo watched them go, but his thoughts drifted.
'If Nolan actually masters the Mirror Dinsion... then few in Kamar-Taj will be qualified to teach him.'
'Hell, maybe it'll be his job to deal with Kaecilius.'
---
anwhile, the man at the heart of the storm sat in quiet concentration.
Nolan's chamber was dim, serene, the sll of incense faint in the air as he moved through precise gestures, whispering arcane syllables under his breath.
"Gestures correct... Incantation accurate... posture stable..."
But no Mirror Dinsion opened.
He frowned.
The resonance of the strange echoing tension in space that should vibrate when you touch a dinsional node wasn't clear enough.
The spells worked, the theory checked out, but... sothing was missing.
The key to the Mirror Dinsion wasn't just knowledge. You had to feel the dinsional threads, the fragile seams of reality that linked one world to its shadow.
"Dinsional nodes..."
Then it hit him.
"The Tesseract fragnts..."
Nolan's eyes lit up. He thrust a hand forward, and sparks flared.
The gateway opened into Dr. Otto's lab.
Otto nearly dropped a power cell as Nolan stepped through. "Boss?! You're... back?"
"Need your help," Nolan said quickly. "Get the Tesseract fragnts and the data logs. I need the frequencies, the radiation, magnetic resonance, energy flux patterns,, all of it."
Otto blinked. "All of it?"
"Yes. And run scans again. I need to see if they correspond with dinsional weak points."
Nolan's mind was racing.
The Tesseract, the MCU's Space Stone, was pure spatial magic in crystalline form. Even its broken shards radiated traces of higher-dinsional energy.
If he could map how the fragnts interacted with space...
If he could record how they bent dinsions...
Then all he had to do was imitate it.
"If I can sync my brain's electromagnetic field to mimic the stone's frequency... then I'll feel the spatial nodes like the Tesseract does."
Not magic through feeling.
Not magic through faith.
Magic through science.
"Traditional training is too slow," Nolan muttered as he watched Otto prepare the instrunts. "Why would I spend years ditating in the dark... when I can replicate a cosmic artifact's energy pattern in a week?"
The goal wasn't just to learn like everyone else.
It was to rewrite the way magic was studied.
To engineer sorcery.
Nolan didn't believe in mysticism. Not really.
To him, magic was just science, at a frequency we didn't yet understand.
And he planned to change that.
----
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