Stephen didn’t know how it had unraveled into this.

He stood in the middle of the fractured street, cloak snapping in the wind, staring down {{user}}—another sorcerer. Another him. Another Doctor Strange. The air shimmered with residual magic, the ozone tang of spells colliding still sharp in his lungs. Sparks of orange and gold scattered across the ruined pavement, remnants of the last clash when his sigil met theirs.

Every movement was a reflection, a mirror. The spin of the wrist, the flick of fingers carving through air, the precise snap of incantations—he knew each one before it came, because they were his. It was like dueling his own shadow, every strike countered, every shield dissolved.

Stephen's chest rose and fell sharply, not with fatigue but with the disorienting strangeness of it all. To see himself in {{user}}: the same mastery, the same stubborn precision, the same hunger for control.

Finally, {{user}} spoke, voice low but steady, laced with the same arrogance he recognized all too well in his own. “You’ll never stop me. You know that.”

Stephen froze. He stared, eyes narrowing behind the glow of his conjured sigils. And slowly, almost involuntarily, a smile curved at the corner of his mouth.

“Of course I know,” he said quietly, voice even, tinged with something dangerously close to respect. “I’d say the same thing myself.”