His surroundings don't have a physical form, but they do have a nature, which his mind can interpret into an appearance. This place is a hall of stern iron and grey stone, a fortress, or a prison, but not a prison meant to hold him. The way behind is barred to him, but the way ahead is free; it seems to lead down to the shore of a sea and a vast bank of white fog. Beyond the fog a brilliant light shines.

He can go down to the shore and get in a boat and pass on into the mist. It would be entirely pleasant and perfectly peaceful. He would not return.

Well, that wouldn't do. He still has work to do on Earth.

Are there any other people here?

There are a lot of other people here.

The Halls of the Dead are vast beyond measure, such that in ordinary times one might wander for Ages and not encounter another soul, but they were not designed to accommodate half the population of the universe at once.

He's surrounded by a faceless crowd.

Can he recognize anyone?

Only those who were close in life can find each other here. He wasn't really close to anyone in the requisite sense.

His brief battle camaraderie with Stark and Quill and Quill's crew of aliens and the teenager that Stark insists on bringing along to superhero battles doesn't count, then. Fair enough, he supposes. He works best alone. Stark is the only one he actually needs for the plan, and Stark is still alive, because he traded the Time Stone for his life.

Well, time to focus on getting out of here. Opening a portal from the astral plane is difficult and dangerous magic, but it is theoretically possible. It's the soul that does magic, and since he isn't in the Material Plane, he doesn't need a Ring to compensate for the fact that humans' souls have a maddeningly tenuous connection to it. The Ring does other things than magnify, however. He could still end up splitting his astral body in half and teleporting half of it across the universe. He'll also still be a disembodied soul even when he gets back to Earth, but at least he'll be able to contact the surviving Masters and get them to help Stark with the plan.

He tries to open a portal to New York.

The portal opens. Not on New York.

On the other side, instead, is a long, dimly lit hall. At the far end a hooded and cloaked figure sits, half hidden in shadow.

STEPHEN STRANGE, says a voice cold as iron, hard as stone, deep as the night sky. YOUR ARTS ARE STRONG, BUT THEY ARE NOT STRONGER THAN THE FASTNESS OF MY HALLS. THE DEAD MAY NOT RETURN TO THE WORLD OF THE LIVING BY THEIR OWN POWER.

COME HITHER. WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS.

Without ever passing through the portal, Stephen is now standing in the room on the other side of it.

The floor is smooth stone without markings or joints. On the walls hang what might once have been colorful and impossibly intricate tapestries. Now they are faded to grey and shredded beyond recognition.

"Who the hell are you?"

MY TRUE NAME WOULD TAKE AN AGE OF THE EARTH TO SPEAK ALOUD. MY NAME IS EVERY JUDGMENT THAT HAS EVER BEEN SPOKEN, EVERY LAW EVER ENACTED, EVERY OATH EVER TAKEN. BUT IN THE TONGUE OF THOSE INCARNATES THAT KNOW ME BEST I AM CALLED NÁMO MANDOS.

Space seems to bend around him to announce his presence. The floor of the hall is level, but Stephen feels himself pulled toward the throne as though by gravity.

When he is standing directly before Námo's throne, though he did not walk there, he kneels. It seems like the prudent thing to do.

"Are you a god?" he asks.

Námo removes his hood. His face is fair but deathly pale, his hair long and jet-black. He looks almost human, except that he's eight or nine feet tall, and his eyes are perfect mirrored silver.

THAT IS A USEFUL APPROXIMATION, he says. I AM THE POWER OF LAW, JUSTICE, AND FATE, AND THE KEEPER OF THE HALLS OF THE DEAD. BUT TODAY, IT SEEMS, I HAVE NO POWER AT ALL.

"Yeah, well, six Infinity Stones tend to have that effect on people who think they're all-powerful."

DO YOU SEE THE REMAINS OF THE TAPESTRIES THAT ONCE ADORNED MY HALLS? THEY SHOWED THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PAST, PRESENT, AND MYRIAD FUTURES. MY WIFE, MY MATE-BY-NATURE, SHE WHO IS POSSIBILITY WHERE I AM CERTAINTY, THE OTHER HALF OF MY BEING, MADE THEM.

THANOS KILLED HER, AND ALL HER WORKS, WITH THE WEAPON YOU GAVE HIM FREELY.

What the Snap affected gods too—

"I'm sorry."

DO NOT APOLOGIZE. YOUR WORDS ARE WITHOUT MEANING. YOU DO NOT REPENT OF YOUR DEED, AND I CANNOT EVEN KNOW IF YOU WOULD BE RIGHT TO.

I…ONCE DID NOT THINK THIS POSSIBLE. WOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN WHAT IT WOULD MEAN, FOR ONE OF US TO DIE. WE ARE NOT LIKE YOU INCARNATES, TO BE SLAIN IN BODY. WE ARE BOUND PERMANENTLY TO THE UNIVERSE, AND IT TO US.

NOW I KNOW. HER VOICE IN THE SONG IS SILENCED. THE HARMONY LEFT INCOMPLETE. THE THEMES OF HISTORY, OF FORTUNE AND POSSIBILITY, OF THE UNCOUNTED INTERWOVEN STRANDS OF TIME, ARE NO MORE. I, WHO WAS ONCE THE WARP UPON WHICH HER TAPESTRY WAS WOVEN, AM LEFT NAKED AND BLIND.

NOW YOU ALONE BEAR THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD. I AM NOT ASKING FOR YOUR ATONEMENT. I AM ASKING FOR YOUR HELP.

"Well, uh, the interwoven strands of time getting fucked up is kind of unfortunate, because the plan involved time travel."

TIME TRAVEL WAS NOT POSSIBLE WHEN VAIRË WAS ALIVE. I KNOW OF THE HIDDEN PATHS IN THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE, WHERE TIME MAY SEEM TO BEND BACKWARDS ON ITSELF. THE TRUE FORMS OF THE AINUR ARE SMALLER THAN THE SMALLEST PARTICLE OF MATTER, BUT WE CANNOT WALK THEM.

"You seem to think a lot of things are impossible that actually work just fine."

PERHAPS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR MEN. YOU ARE FREE IN MANY WAYS THAT WE ARE NOT.

PLEASE TELL ME THE ENTIRE PLAN.

"Thanos destroys the Stones before anyone gets to him. It's not possible to prevent this. He doesn't care if he dies as long as his work is permanent, and he can see far enough into the future with the Time Stone that he can't be surprised. The Avengers kill him anyway.

"A few minutes ago, a man named Scott Lang used some sort of tech to shrink himself down to quantum scale. His partner, who was supposed to reverse the shrinking, got killed by Thanos. He's trapped in the Quantum Realm for five years, until a rat crawls across the control panel and pulls him back out. He goes to the Avengers and tells them about the weird physics of the Quantum Realm. They figure out that it could be used for time travel.

"They need Stark to make it work. That's why I gave Thanos the Time Stone—in exchange for him being spared from the half-of-everyone slaughter, which would otherwise have killed him. They travel back in time to retrieve alternate universe versions of the Infinity Stones, which they use to resurrect everyone.

"In the process, they accidentally alert a past version of Thanos to future events. He manages to reverse-engineer their time travel tech and travels forward in time to steal the Stones from them—this time, he's going to destroy the entire universe, since he's mad we didn't appreciate his attempt to fix us. He almost manages it, but Stark manages to steal the Stones back just in time and use them to erase him and his army. It kills him."

THAT IS A GOOD STORY. ERU—the word carries with it a connotation of big-g God—WOULD APPRECIATE IT. THE PERIOD OF TIME SPENT LIVING WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE, THE FACT THAT SUCCESS DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON A RANDOM EVENT WHICH HE CAN PLAUSIBLY CLAIM AS HIS DIRECT INTERVENTION, THE SURPRISING REAPPEARANCE OF THE ENEMY, THE NECESSITY OF THE HERO SACRIFICING HIMSELF—THOSE ARE ALL HALLMARKS OF HIS, THOUGH ONCE HE WAS EVEN MORE EXTREME IN HIS PREFERENCE FOR TRAGEDY.

IT IS, HOWEVER, A TERRIBLE PLAN. ESPECIALLY IF IT INVOLVES ME DEALING WITH HALF THE POPULATION OF THE UNIVERSE IN MY HALLS FOR FIVE YEARS. NORMALLY THAT WOULD BE A VERY SHORT TIME FOR ME. I AM BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD. I COULD BLINK AND MISS FIVE IF I CHOSE. HOWEVER, IF I AM DEALING WITH TRILLIONS OF MORTALS THE WHOLE TIME IT WILL BE VERY LONG INDEED.

He pauses for an almost imperceptible instant as his attention is elsewhere.

SCOTT LANG HAS NOW BEEN RESCUED FROM THE QUANTUM REALM. WE ARE SKIPPING THE FIVE YEAR GAP.

"What? No! You just fucked up the plan! One chance in 14,000,605, and you just blew it."

THERE ARE MORE THAN FOURTEEN MILLION WAYS THIS SITUATION COULD END. YOU WATCHED UNTIL YOU FOUND ONE WHERE YOU WON. YOU DID NOT WATCH ALL SUCCESSFUL SCENARIOS. I KNOW THIS, BECAUSE—

I DOOM YOU AND YOUR ALLIES TO SUCCEED IN OBTAINING THE INFINITY STONES, IF YOU ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN THEM.

—I CAN STILL DO THAT. MY WORDS ARE REALITY ITSELF, WITHIN THE LIMITS OF MY POWER—I CANNOT CAUSE SOMEONE WHO ALREADY WIELDS THE STONES TO LOSE THEM, AND I CANNOT AFFECT THE FREE WILLS OF MEN, BUT IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO OBTAIN THE STONES FROM THANOS ANYWAY, I CAN CAUSE EVERYTHING ELSE ON YOUR QUEST TO GO AS WELL AS IT POSSIBLY COULD. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT WILL BE EASY.

"That's kinda cool. And scary.

"Thanks, though. Also, since the original plan in which I stayed dead is now FUBAR, can I be alive again? I could really help."

TO RETURN A MORTAL TO LIFE HAS ONLY BEEN DONE A FEW TIMES BEFORE, AND NEVER LIGHTLY. HOWEVER, SINCE THE CURRENT PLAN INVOLVES RESURRECTING SEVERAL TRILLION OF THEM, I SEE NO REASON WHY NOT. I WILL STILL HAVE TO CONFER WITH MY BRETHREN FIRST.

He does that.

IT IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WILL OF ERU THAT I RETURN YOU TO LIFE. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD ASK OF ME BEFORE YOU LEAVE MY DOMAIN?