"Shattered Reflection: A Magik Mystery"

Each morning, Magik’s day began in silence, as though the Hidden Library at the heart of Doctor Strange’s academy were holding its breath. The keen dawn of the New England coast lay across her private quarters, glinting against centuries-old spellbooks and the scuffed blade of her Soulsword, which rested on the desk beside the tremulous light of her bedside lamp. Magik would rise before the other teachers, performing her rituals with a grim efficiency: circles drawn in salt and sigils invoked to ward herself against stray influence from Limbo—her other home, the hellish domain that clung to her essence like a shadow. Only after these preparations would she gather her teaching materials: ancient tomes bound in demon-hide, a packet of shimmering chalk, a satchel for the artifacts she’d curated for today’s lesson.

Her path to the lecture hall was always deliberate, boots echoing on stone, gaze forward and intent. Students parted around her, their whispers mixing awe and superstition—she was Illyana Rasputin, the mutant known as Magik, taught in flesh by Belasco and in mind by Xavier’s ideals. She was the Academy’s resident expert in infernal studies, a field few dared to touch.

Her teaching unfolded like a conjuration. Magik would stride into the amphitheater, sunlight falling in broken angles through stained glass, casting unnatural colors over her pale braid and iron stare. She powered the lesson with stories, artifacts, and diagrams—dangers of hell-dimensions, the paradoxes of power, the subtle ways infernal realms change the soul. She conjured a small portal to Limbo, floating above her gloved palm, a miniature world swirling with brimstone clouds and howling winds. Students leaned forward, entranced and frightened; here was knowledge that Dr. Strange himself only trusted to a chosen few. Magik offered warnings laced with cold facts, the anatomy of contracts, demon politics, the cost of summoning and banishing. Lessons mixed with living memories, flashes of her time as Limbo’s ruler, scars buried beneath her skin.

After her lectures, Magik spent hours in the Academy’s archives, grading assignments or counseling a few trusted students, before retreating to the privacy of her quarters. There, she practiced containment spells, reviewed eldritch maps, sharpened her blade for what the night might bring. Dinner was solitary, never in the lively student-filled dining hall, but always looking out a window to the forests beyond, half expecting to glimpse the shifting silhouettes of Limbo’s denizens in the mist.

On that particular evening, when the corridors simmered in the deepening blue of dusk, Magik walked the winding hallways toward her chambers. She was exhausted, mind heavy with visions of hellscapes and the burden of teaching mortals about places mortals should never learn.

Reaching the corridor where Wanda Maximoff—the Scarlet Witch—kept her room, Magik detected an anomaly. Wanda’s door, usually closed and fortified with wards, was slightly ajar. Inside, lamplight flickered over shelves of occult books and red velvet, an unease settling in Magik's gut. She paused—Wanda was a student of chaos magic, unpredictable, powerful, and fragile.

Curiosity compelled her to push open the door, slippers making no sound on the rug. Magik's eyes found a mirror propped delicately atop an oak table, larger than Wanda herself, crowned with intricate silver filigree. Its surface held no normal reflection. Instead, it seethed, like smoke behind glass, and as Magik inched closer, the glass shimmered and darkened. She leaned in, and the vision seized her.

She saw herself—the blade in her fist, her eyes feral, her soul awash in Limbo’s fire. Around her lay the bodies of her friends: Strange, Nico, Zelma, even Wanda herself. Limbo’s terror crowned the vision—Magik, their killer, enthroned upon the corpses, her laughter echoing in the ruin. Each face was twisted in agony and betrayal. It was wrong; it was possible. She saw the horror of what she could become—had almost become, once.

Fear took her then, sharp and blinding. Instinct screamed, magic thrummed raw inside her palm, and she wrenched herself back, smashing the mirror with her armored fist. The glass fractured with a piercing, inhuman shriek, shards spinning through the air—each fragment reflecting dozens of Magiks, each baring teeth and crimson eyes.

From the splintered glass, shadows emerged, oozing forth, shapes without faces, crawling across the floor. They moved purposefully, intent to escape—impossible things, living vectors of chaos unleashed by the shattering of Wanda's enchanted mirror.

Magik had no time to think. With practiced reflex, she summoned a transfer disk, the space warping, white and gold and cold. The disk hovered, magnetic, as she forced it downward, scooping up the writhing shadows before they could sink into the floor, before they could find purchase in the fabric of reality. She poured Limbo’s will into her conjuration and expelled the invaders, sending them spinning across dimensions, exiled to the only hell she truly controlled.

As the disk snapped shut, silence flooded the room. Only the crushed remains of the mirror scattered on the floor, sparkling like blood in the lamplight. Magik’s breath was ragged, blade trembling at her side. She stared down at the broken glass, at the vision that had threatened to consume her—but now there was only her own pale face reflected in shards, and the knowledge of what she’d done.

Wanda would return and see the destruction, the forbidden magic spilled, something loosed from her private room and banished violently to Limbo. There would be consequences, anger, perhaps even vengeance. Magik had crossed a boundary she knew better than to cross.

The hellish dimensions she taught about had now bled, for a moment, from lesson into reality. The mirror was broken. Something had been released. And as she slipped from Wanda's room, Magik felt the weight of doom curling tight around her heart—her nightmare, or Wanda’s, or perhaps, one they now shared.

This story was generated by user mili.villi with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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