The air cracked like gss.

  Dr. Stephen Strange stood at the cusp of a rift not made by hands, not torn by power, but by grief—raw, unrelenting. Mount Wundagore had crumbled behind him, its twisted geometry bending under the pressure of dark forces. Yet ahead, suspended in nothing and everything, floated the Chaos Field—Wanda Maximoff’s psychic prison, a pce forged from despair, shaped like a bleeding heart.

  Wong had warned him. “This realm is not governed by rules. It is the wound.”

  Strange stepped forward.

  The moment he entered, light became memory. Gravity bled into thought. Words had weight, and silence had form. The Chaos Field was not a dimension but a fever dream of shattered selves—fragments of Wanda's soul suspended like gss shards in a blood-colored void.

  “Wanda,” he called.

  The name echoed infinitely—then reversed, whispering back to him in nguages of forgotten realms.

  He moved through ndscapes that shifted with her pain: a Sokovian street afme; a Westview dinner table still set for four; the empty cradle of twin sons never meant to be. With every step, the air thickened, like trying to breathe through tears.

  Suddenly, she stood before him.

  Wanda.

  But not.

  Her body was limned in scarlet fire. Her eyes, endless abysses. She wore grief like armor and rage like a crown.

  “You shouldn't be here, Stephen.”

  “I came for you.”

  “I’m not me anymore.”

  Strange raised a hand, fingers trembling not with fear but reverence. “Then let me help you remember.”

  The Chaos surged. Scarlet tendrils shed toward him, forming illusions—Wanda’s face twisted with betrayal, Vision’s death repeating, Billy and Tommy screaming into the void. Strange held his ground, whispering a forgotten invocation from the Book of the Vishanti.

  “I bind the soul to its source; I call the self back to itself.”

  A flicker. Her fme pulsed.

  Then Voldemort’s shadow slithered through the cracks—pale and grinning, his body now ced with crimson glyphs, the remnants of the Scarlet Throne’s power embedding themselves in his flesh.

  “You thought love would bring her back?” he hissed. “Love is weak. But this power—this Chaos—it bends to me!”

  He raised the Elder Wand, its tip bleeding scarlet mist. “Avada Kedavra!”

  The green curse streaked toward Strange—but the mirror dimension fractured into pce. Strange twisted reality, rebounding the spell through reflection. He unched a counterstrike.

  “Fmes of the Faltine!”

  Voldemort recoiled, flesh cracking like porcein. The Chaos Field rebelled against his presence.

  “I’m not here to fight you,” Strange said to Wanda. “I’m here to remind you… of who you were, of who you are.”

  He reached into his cloak and revealed a tiny construct: two origami swans folded from paper—one red, one white. Wanda gasped.

  Westview.

  The first time she taught Billy to fold them.

  Memory tore through the illusion. Her form trembled, the scarlet fme dimming. Voldemort screamed, now disintegrating under the weight of a soul he could not possess.

  “I… I remember,” Wanda whispered. “I’m sorry, Stephen.”

  “I never asked you to be.”

  With a tear of red light, she stepped toward him—and the Chaos Field shattered like gss under the first note of peace.

  ---

  Epilogue: The Quiet Fme

  Wanda’s soul, freed, no longer burned, but glowed softly—embers, not wildfire. She did not return to Earth, but remained within the timeless veil, guiding the ley lines, a guardian of the bance she once fractured.

  Strange returned alone. Changed.

  Not with victory, but with understanding.

  Wong met him at the Sanctum’s door. “She’s at peace?”

  Strange nodded.

  The wind shifted. Somewhere beyond the veil, the Chaos whispered. Not as a scream—but as a lulby.

  And in a hidden grove outside Westview, two small swans rested beside a still pond, never moving, never fading.

  Just waiting.