The King of the Deep adjusted his posture, his fingers tracing the cold grain of the stone table. "So," he said, his voice regaining its sharp edge, "someone is going to explain this."
Tony Stark raised a single finger, pointing vaguely toward the ceiling that wasn't there. "Just to be clear, I already stopped questioning impossible things somewhere between building a miniature sun and realizing the universe has a profoundly strange sense of humor."
Namor's gaze flicked to him. "You accept this far too easily for a titan of the surface."
Tony's smirk widened, his eyes reflecting a newfound depth of experience that hadn't been there a few months ago. "I stopped panicking the moment I realized this place operates on a logic higher than anything we have in Malibu. You don't argue with the laws of physics, you just learn to work within them."
He added, glancing at the translucent interface hovering before him, "Besides, I've already traded with this place. I've experienced the metaphysical power of the system firsthand… how it refined my biology and granted me control over magnetism without ever needing to touch my DNA. It's a clean transition. Once you've felt the system's authority to restructure your capabilities while leaving your soul intact, you stop worrying about whether reality is bending… you just start wondering what the next upgrade costs."
That earned a reluctant snort from Namor… the wary respect of a king realizing the stakes of the world had changed without his knowledge. He looked at Tony, his eyes narrowing with a hungry curiosity.
"You speak of miracles as if they are commodities," Namor said, his voice dropping an octave. "What kind of power is this truly? To refine a man without the knife or the needle... what does it feel like to have the system rewrite your potential?"
Tony leaned forward, his eyes sparking with the manic energy of a genius describing a new discovery. "It's not like a drug or a sudden surge of power. It's... clarity. When I bought the Metaphysical Magnetism and the Serum Refinement, I felt a change in my authority over the world around me. One minute I was a man in a room, the next, the very metal in the walls felt like an extension of my own nervous system. It's seamless. No scars, no recovery time… just a new 'you' that's fundamentally better."
T'Challa nodded in confirmation, his hands resting flat on the stone table. "I felt it as well. I traded for a Precognition… a 'pathway' that allowed me to see fragments of the future. My biology remains the same, but my consciousness has been elevated by the system's logic."
Aryan watched the exchange, playing his part by leaning in with an expression of scholarly interest, the guide allowing the students to teach each other. "It seems we are all collectors of the impossible," he mused. "The system doesn't care about your lineage or your crown, it only cares if you have the vision and the wealth to demand more from your existence."
Namor looked back at his own hands, his mind reeling. He had spent centuries guarding the purity of his people, rejecting the surface world and its crude corruptions. Yet here were two of the most powerful individuals on the surface admitting they had willingly allowed an unknown "system" to touch their very essence. The fear of the unknown was rapidly being replaced by a predatory intrigue. If Stark could control the fundamental forces of the earth and T'Challa could see the future, what could a King of the Deep become if he offered up the untold treasures of the Atlantic?
Wanda spoke next, her voice calm but curious as she studied the Sub Mariner. "You're taking this better than I expected."
Namor folded his arms across his bare chest, his posture radiating a defiant pride. "Talokan has its own legends. When something defies explanation, we do not run. We observe it."
Tony tilted his head, his mind already working. "Talokan?" he repeated, the word sounding alien in his mouth.
Namor's eyes narrowed. "The place your people call 'Atlantis' in your fairy tales."
"Wait, back up," Tony said, holding up a hand to pause the conversation. "You're telling me that while I've been mapping the stars and building arc reactors, there's been a whole civilization living in the one place my sonar couldn't penetrate? I thought the 'little mermaid' vibe was just a myth, and now you're telling me I've been missing a whole zip code under the Atlantic?"
T'Challa's eyes narrowed with sudden focus. The legends of his own people spoke of spirits in the waters, but to hear a man claim an entire kingdom beneath the waves… was a revelation that shifted the geopolitical scales in his mind instantly.
Wanda looked at Namor with genuine curiosity. She had spent her life in the war torn corners of Europe, thinking the world was just a collection of squabbling nations. But now, the map was expanding in ways she couldn't possibly grasp. "A city in the deep," she whispered. "I thought the surface was all there was."
Even Aryan, who usually maintained a mask of calm, allowed a flicker of "surprise" to cross his features, playing the part of the shocked surface dweller perfectly.
Namor's gaze flicked across their faces, his expression hardening into a smirk that mirrored Tony's own arrogance. "You seem surprised, King of Wakanda. And you, Stark… the man who claims to see everything. It seems the ocean has kept its secrets better than your satellites and your spies."
T'Challa nodded slowly. "I am surprised. I simply chose not to show it until now. It seems we share more than just this fog, Namor. We share the burden of being the world's best kept secrets."
That drew a genuine laugh from Wanda, a sound that seemed to ripple through the gray fog like a stone dropped in a still pond. "It's a crowded table," she said, a hint of wonder in her voice. "A billionaire futurist, a hidden king of the earth, a hidden king of the sea and a CEO who owns the internet. We're all just legends to someone else, aren't we?"
The conversation drifted then, like the mist itself, thick with the weight of things left unsaid. No one rushed to dominate the space, the stories came in fragments by design, like shards of a grand puzzle being pieced together in the dark.
They spoke of the first summons as a sensation. It was the feeling of space folding wrong, as if the geometry of the world had suddenly decided to overlap. Tony described a high frequency whistle that seemed to vibrate in his teeth right before the workshop dissolved. T'Challa recalled the terrifying clarity of his awareness slipping forward in time, leaving the physical world behind like a discarded cloak.
Wanda spoke of the silence within the castle walls. She described it as something… observant. It was a living silence that seemed to hold its breath, watching their every move with a neutral curiosity. "It doesn't judge," she said softly, her eyes tracing the swirling gray currents. "It simply waits to see what we choose to become when no one else is looking."
T'Challa recounted his arrival with the clinical precision of a strategist who had been forced to surrender his weapons. He spoke of how his instincts had screamed of an invisible trap. His muscles had been coiled to strike, his mind mapping every exit that didn't exist. Yet, as the seconds bled into minutes, he realized that no blow was coming. There was no predator in the fog, only a presence so vast, so absolute, it made the concept of hostility feel petty and small.
Tony framed the experience through a lens that was uniquely his own, his ever present wit acting as a polished shield for the raw awe he couldn't quite hide.
"It's the ultimate corporate power move," he said, gesturing with his hands as if explaining a business model. "Imagine stepping into a high stakes boardroom where the chair at the head of the table is occupied, but the CEO hasn't said a word. They don't introduce themselves, they don't hand out an agenda… but the atmosphere tells you they've already read your quarterly metrics, seen your five year plan and they're just waiting to see if you're smart enough to realize you're the one who needs to justify being there."
That earned an appreciative nod from Aryan. It was the perfect description of The Fool's aura… a power that didn't need to speak to be heard and didn't need to move to exert a pressure that could crush an empire.
The topic of the honorifics came up next. They explained to Namor that it was more like a protocol… something between a cryptographic key and a formal handshake. The weight of speaking those strange words was psychological, a way to anchor their minds to a reality that defied all logic. Each of them admitted the same thing: the first time they'd been asked to recite it, they had hesitated. It was a natural resistance, born of respect for a power they didn't fully understand.
"It listens," Wanda said slowly, choosing her words with careful reverence. "It acknowledges the gesture."
"Exactly," Aryan agreed.
Namor listened to all of it without interruption. His dark eyes moved from speaker to speaker, absorbing their tones, their pauses and their subtle shifts in posture. Every so often, his fingers tapped rhythmically, against the armrest of his stone chair, his brow furrowed in deep thought.