[Change everything using your hands?]
Miss Minutes repeated Alex's words, her brows furrowed in confusion, not fully understanding what he meant.
"I think I've fallen into a trap."
Ignoring her doubts, Alex muttered to himself, seemingly lost in thought.
[My lord, what have you realized?]
Hearing his tone, Miss Minutes instinctively sensed the stench of conspiracy. She hadn't figured it all out yet, but she could tell—Alex had found a clue.
"Can you reach the overseers of the Sanctum of Mystery right now?" Alex looked at Miss Minutes and asked.
[I'll try.]
She responded and her body began to glow with a soft, amber light.
The glow persisted for a while. At that moment, Miss Minutes resembled a small solar-powered lamp, illuminating the surroundings. But strangely, the light didn't banish the darkness—it only created a strange mix of shadow and illumination, as though both existed on different layers of reality. The scene was unsettling.
Alex, however, had no time to care about that. He stood still, quietly waiting for her response.
Before long, Miss Minutes's facial features slowly reappeared—her expression, however, was twisted in concern.
"Well?" Though Alex already had an inkling from her expression, he still asked.
[My lord, something's interfering with my signal. It's strange—my data systems are functioning normally, and I can still access archival records, but for some reason, I can't reach the overseers' network.]
Her expression turned rigid. Clearly, this was a first for her—an unexpected failure—and it frightened her a little.
"I figured. Since I'm the target, it's only natural the enemy would come prepared. I just didn't expect their reach would extend even to you." Alex spoke calmly, his face unreadable.
[You already know who's behind all this?]
Miss Minutes widened her eyes, unable to hold back her curiosity.
"It's just a guess... but I'm eighty percent certain." Alex lowered his eyes and paused before continuing. "It's not hard to figure out, really. Just trace everything back logically."
"The target is me. I don't know their exact goal, but the fact they're confident enough to bait me in means they know me—deeply, intimately."
Miss Minutes fell silent for several seconds, then asked in a strange tone: [My lord, are you saying... this being has been hiding by your side all along, watching your every move? That's impossible—if someone like that existed, we couldn't have missed them for this long.]
"Or maybe," Alex said quietly, "we subconsciously ignored their presence."
He looked straight at her, his face still and calm.
"There is someone—a being who possesses power beyond the multiverse. Their eyes can see through all things, and they do not exist within the rules of any universe."
[The Watcher!?]
Miss Minutes immediately grasped the implication, but still looked doubtful.
[But why would it be him? The Watchers have always been our allies. They've helped us so much—if one of them truly intended to harm us, they would've acted long ago.]
"There's more than one Watcher. And I'm not talking about the one who stayed behind in the Wasteland." Alex shook his head slightly. "Do you remember the warning that Watcher gave me before we left?"
[The Dark Watchers… my lord, are you saying that the ones who lured you into this universe are corrupted Watchers?]
"That's right."
Alex didn't deny it. He simply explained calmly.
"That's why I said I had fallen into a trap earlier. At first, I thought the one orchestrating all of this was someone born from within the multiverse—someone like Doctor Strange, a powerful mortal who tampered with cosmic forces. But I overlooked one thing—Watchers have the ability to traverse dimensions… and they're far better at it than anyone else."
In the What If...? universes, the Watcher demonstrated complete command over the multiverse. With a mere gesture, he could cross infinite timelines. With a single glance, he could pluck people out of their realities.
When faced with Ultron wielding all six Infinity Stones, the Watcher swiftly assembled the Guardians of the Multiverse—Captain Carter, Strange Supreme, Party Thor, and others from shattered realities.
Watchers exist beyond time and space. They are walking paradoxes—glitches in the cosmic code.
Which is why, if someone like Cloak and Dagger, Magik, or Wolfsbane were suddenly transported into this world, it would be trivial work for a Watcher.
Alex clearly remembered the warning given to him before they left—that the Dark Watchers, corrupted and severed from the central Nexus, had hidden themselves inside doomed realities across the multiverse.
And now, the "invaders" appearing here—every last one of them—were from those destroyed universes.
Petra. Cloak and Dagger. Magik and Wolfsbane. All of them.
Alex didn't believe it was a coincidence.
He pointed to his own eyes and continued.
"The Watchers all share vision across realities. When we interacted with the Watcher before, he hadn't yet been corrupted—he was still connected to the Nexus. Which means, back then, they had a clear line of sight on everything we did."
"Even while we were talking to the Watcher... those fallen ones were on the other side of that shared vision, silently watching."
Miss Minutes fell into silence.
She closed her eyes, deep in thought, trying to measure how plausible all of this really was.
After an unknown amount of time, she finally opened her eyes again.
[So that means this corruption, this fall into darkness—it wasn't some sudden impulse. They must've been planning it for a long time. They just hadn't revealed themselves yet. Which raises the real question—what exactly triggered their downfall?]
"I don't know either," Alex replied, stroking his chin in thought. "But I'm certain everything is connected. Something must have happened back then that set all this in motion."
He tried to retrace his steps.
The ambush on the Watcher happened while he was helping Alex search for the X-Men's reality. Which meant the Dark Watchers had already been corrupted before that point.
And before that incident, the last universe Alex had visited was just one—
[The Boys' Universe.]
His brow furrowed instinctively.
[You mean the world born out of corruption itself?] Miss Minutes blinked, quickly recalling the period when Alex had briefly gone dark.
[If anything could spark this level of chaos, it would be that twisted world. There's nothing in my archive about it, which means something may have happened there—something off the records.]
"That's impossible. I cleaned that place up." Alex pressed his lips together, frowning.
"There's no way any residual corruption escaped. I'm certain of that. The only person I even discussed it with was…"
He stopped mid-sentence.
A tremor passed through his gaze, as if a realization had hit him like a thunderclap—one too terrifying to accept. His expression froze completely.
Seeing his reaction, Miss Minutes instantly knew he'd remembered something critical.
[My lord…]
But lightning was already cracking through Alex's mind.
He no longer even registered her voice.
Staring into the distance, his eyes began to drift… unfocused, unblinking.
Mephisto's cold, mocking grin flashed before Alex's eyes.
In an instant, the surroundings warped into a hellscape—sulfur thickened the air, and eerie whispers of demons curled around his ears.
'That thing... it possesses a twisted kind of consciousness—not matter, not mind. It was born from the void, forged in the end of all things.'
'You should be grateful the Hell Dimension has been severed from the physical realms. If it weren't, even mentioning it—let alone projecting it—would risk its corruption spreading.'
Consciousness.
Speech.
Contagion.
Alex staggered back two steps, breathing heavily.
[My lord!]
Miss Minutes rushed to his side, concern etched across her face.
"It was me… It was my fault."
Alex's expression twisted, his eyes now visibly altered.
A horrifying realization had just emerged in his mind—one that could spiral into something far worse.
Piecing together events from across years and universes, Alex finally understood the truth:
He had vastly underestimated the corruption's insidious nature.
This wasn't something logical. This was something alien—utterly unnatural.
[Your fault?]
Miss Minutes's voice stiffened, a serious look settling in her eyes.
She was beginning to see it too.
[You're saying… when you returned and spoke with the Watcher about that corrupted universe… the contamination was already spreading? Through your thoughts—through the very act of speaking?]
Even though the Watchers didn't operate as a hivemind, their sight and awareness were all interconnected.
If any of the others had been watching through the same "eyes," they might have been infected too.
But Miss Minutes still couldn't help protesting:
[But that shouldn't be possible! You already purged that world, didn't you? If there's no source left, the corruption shouldn't be able to spread—right?]
Alex just let out a bitter laugh, pressing a hand against his forehead.
"And what if the corruption they received…"
He looked up slowly.
Alex's gaze locked with Miss Minutes's.
"…was me?"
.....
📢Advanced chapters on p@treaon📢
For advance chapters: [email protected]/Uchiha_Itachi007 (replace @ with a)
1. 30 advanced chapters of American Comics: Multiverse of Madness.
2. 30 advanced chapters of Warhammer, but Emperor's Chosen.
3. 20 advanced chapters of The Witcher: Wolf School's Hunting Notes.