The shadow clone's body, built from infinite power, could have absorbed the dark energy without difficulty.
It chose not to.
As the clone stepped off the edge of the light and into the returning dark, every defensive layer dropped — the Biotic Field, the passive resistance, everything — falling away deliberately, like a swimmer choosing to stop treading water. The dark energy of the Dark Dimension, presented with an invitation, rushed in through every available channel.
This was the plan.
To do something in darkness, Jordan had told it through the Mind Network, first become the darkness.
From the light where Jordan was standing, the view changed. The rich white brilliance of the explosion's aftermath was being consumed at the edges — a viscous darkness pressing back in, Dormammu's new avatar cutting through it like a prow, trailing dark currents behind it, devouring the light that had appeared in his dimension without permission. The avatar's presence was larger this time, the power dialed up several registers from the previous version. He'd clearly done some reflection during his brief absence.
His attention was entirely on Jordan.
He didn't notice what was moving through the ambient fabric of his dimension.
"You cowardly bastard." The voice carried fresh fury. "Who are you, really?"
Jordan shook his head with a small sigh.
"Wrong question." He stepped forward. "Try again."
"Standard Uppercut."
The punch was unhurried. Textbook mechanics, no embellishment, the Ordinary Series expressing itself through form rather than force. The avatar froze at the moment of impact — a full-body cessation, dark energy locking in place, cracks propagating from the contact point outward through the magical structure like ice fracturing under sudden weight.
The avatar exploded.
The debris field scattered.
Jordan looked at the space where it had been.
Third one, he thought.
He called into the cleared air: "Next."
Somewhere in the deepest part of the Dark Dimension, Dormammu's true form was doing something it had not done in several geological ages.
It was having a crisis.
The story was supposed to go a specific way. He had consumed enough civilizations, observed enough challengers arrive at his dimension with confidence and leave without souls, to understand the formula. The challenger arrives. They clash with his avatars. The avatars demonstrate the scope of his power. The challenger perseveres through courage and desperation. Eventually Dormammu deploys a truly overwhelming capability — the time loop, or something of that caliber. The challenger, having proven their worth through suffering, finally earns the negotiation. Both parties walk away with the sequence having demonstrated everything it needed to demonstrate about everyone involved.
This was not that.
He hadn't finished two sentences before losing three avatars.
There was, Dormammu felt, a fundamental disruption to the correct narrative architecture of this engagement, and it was making him feel things he hadn't felt since the last time Doctor Strange had — actually, he was thinking about Strange again. Strange had been fragile, at least. Killable. Every iteration of the time loop, Strange's body had died, which was something. This creature in front of him simply stood in the aftermath of demolished avatars without a mark on him, tidying his boots.
Dormammu created a fourth avatar, through what could only be described as emotional effort.
And a fifth. Reserves.
His true form sank deeper into the core darkness.
Never, he decided with absolute certainty. My true form will never come out there. That is not happening.
He would sustain this operation entirely through avatars, however many were required, at whatever personal cost. The alternative was unacceptable.
The fourth avatar emerged with the careful dignity of something that had integrated three rounds of failure into its operational experience and arrived at a modified approach. Dormammu made a point of reviewing the avatar's composition before sending it forward — checked the power levels, confirmed the stability, ensured nothing was obviously wrong with it.
Everything looked correct.
The avatar projected itself before Jordan.
Jordan's fist was already moving when it arrived.
This, Dormammu had time to think, is a sensation I am becoming very familiar with.
"Wait—" The reverb vanished in the urgency of it. "WAIT. I'm here to negotiate!"
The fist stopped.
Jordan blinked.
He'd honestly expected this to take longer. The Strange precedent suggested dozens of cycles, hundreds, the sort of protracted engagement that tested everyone's patience and provided the dimensional demon with ample opportunity to experience every possible variation of the same outcome before accepting it. Four rounds was — fast.
Doctor Strange is going to be impossible about this, Jordan thought.
He lowered his fist.
"Correct answer," he said warmly. "Congratulations. Proceed to the next step."
The relief that moved through Dormammu's fourth avatar was genuine and considerable. He straightened. The ancient imposing aura reasserted itself by degrees — the reverb returning, the dimensional authority resettling into its proper channels, the specific quality of presence that had made civilizations reconsider their options.
"Very well," Dormammu said, with recovered gravity. "State your—"
"Hold on."
Dormammu stopped.
"I don't like talking while looking up at someone," Jordan said. "It's an ergonomics issue."
Dormammu considered this. He was already preparing to scale the avatar down to something less architecturally overwhelming — a concession to the practicalities of negotiation, nothing more — when the figure in front of him blurred.
And then reappeared above his head.
Jordan had used Instant Transmission to place himself approximately thirty meters above the crown of Dormammu's fourth avatar. He raised one hand, and from the dark energy ambient in the surrounding space — drawn and shaped by the same authority he'd been using to restructure this dimension all day — a throne assembled itself. Dark material. Clean lines. The aesthetic of the dimension itself, repurposed as furniture.
Jordan settled into it, crossed one leg, and gestured with the expansive courtesy of someone inviting a guest to begin their presentation.
"Go ahead."
Dormammu looked up at him.
The lord of the Dark Dimension, master of this entire cosmos, consumer of worlds, stood in the ruins of his fourth avatar's introduction and looked up at the throne Jordan Evans had built in his own dimension from his own substance, and processed the specific quality of the moment.
"...Human." His voice had regained most of its composure. "You said you came to negotiate terms." A pause in which a great many things were not said. "State them. And tell me who you are."