I didn't expect my little decoy trick to fool the X-Men long, but at this point I was just playing for time. If the X-Men had decided that I needed to be stopped, then sooner or later they'd find me. The best I could hope for now was to stay a step or two ahead of them.

It was time for me to go home.

Well … home being a relative term.

The house- my house as much as any place could ever be considered mine- lies in a deserted section of a forgotten woods. There's no road to it. I had stumbled on it by accident as a teenager. I'd started my journey there … everything I had become had started in this deserted, decrepit-looking house out in the middle of nowhere.

Welcome back, Kyle, the House of Shadows said to me when I stepped through the front door.

"Thank you, House. It's good to be back."

Oh, didn't I tell you?

The House of Shadows is alive.

And- though not very willingly- it serves the Lady too.

Did you get what you looking for?

"I'd say that I got more than I was looking for, but yeah. I got it."

It's an old-seeming House without even the most primitive of electric lights. There are candles that never melt away and kerosene lamps that don't ever run out of oil. I just have to pick one up when I need it, and it flares to life.

After all this time, though, I seldom need one. I know the place backwards and forwards.

The Library is the room that I feel most at home in. When I do wind up staying here, it's the room that I tend to stay in even though there are bedrooms. (And a kitchen and a water closet if you're really that curious. Though I have to admit that I've always had mixed feeling about using the bathroom in a House that's alive …)

There's a lot of books in the Library, and various magical paraphernalia. Some of it is hardly better than what you'd order out of a stage magic catalog. Some of it was so deadly and powerful that the Lady had forbidden me to use it. There were books and scrolls- even a stone tablet that was reportedly written by Varnae of Atlantis.

The Lady had shaped my studies. A few of those tomes I had found myself in places that I'd just as soon forget. A few the Lady had given me herself- after I had paid for them with my blood and sometimes my flesh. There was so much she wanted me to know- and even more that she didn't.

I sat down in my favorite chair and sighed. I was bone tired from my abrupt magical translation back home, but I knew that I didn't really have the time to rest. The X-Men were bound to pick up my trail sooner or later. I didn't think I had given Kitty any information about my ultimate destination, but then I hadn't told the X-Men I was going to take a bus either. I hadn't felt Emma sniffing around my ward, and I had paid cash for my bus ticket.

And yet they had found me.

Maybe I shouldn't have run. That just gave them the idea they wouldn't like what I was up to. Naturally they weren't going to let things alone ...

That's the problem with dealing with heroes. They can be so darn heroic at times …

You've having second thoughts aren't you, Kyle?

I smiled. "Would it really be wise for me to answer that question, House?"

The Lady knows your heart, Kyle. There is nothing I could tell her that she wouldn't already know about you.

"But you would tell her?"

Of course. Especially if would make me look good. A House has to do what a House has to do, after all.

I laughed. "It's nice to know where your loyalties lie."

My loyalties lie with me. I'm not here because I love your company. It would be lovely to drive you to the brink of madness. I haven't driven a mortal insane for decades, and I rather miss it.

"Maybe you'll get lucky and the Lady will feed me to you once she's done with me."

A House can hope. One of the shutters banged open and shut- the House's version of a nervous cough. Er, that is if the Lady should decide to betray you- which I'm sure she'd never do.

"Of course not." I sighed again.

I had always known that the Lady wasn't what you'd call the most trustworthy being in creation. Her sunny and warm personality aside, she had never made any secret of the fact that she considered me little more than a tool to be used and discarded- and apparently she was arrogant enough to think I was okay with that.

No one likes to think of themselves as being stupid, but I was beginning to see that I hadn't exactly been smart when I had signed up to be the Lady's errand boy. To give me credit, I don't know that I'd really had much choice when she made me the job offer. If I had refused, then she could have just obliterated me on the spot.

Instead, I had made a Bargain.

The Lady had shown me how to unlock powers that I never would have believed I could have controlled. She had led me to tomes of magical lore and items of enchantment that I would never have found in a century of looking on my own. She had shown me the path to power, and promised that I'd be given even more later when I had done her bidding.

And I had done everything she asked.

I told myself that I wanted power. That power was the only thing that mattered to me. That no price was too high, no risk too great, if I could only gain the power that I sought …

I'd been lying to myself.

The price was too high.

But I was stuck.

I couldn't walk away. Not now. I had given too much of my flesh and blood to the Lady. She had kept me alive when I should have died, but that also meant that she had the power to take my life any time she chose. We were universes apart, but her reach was long …

Walking away might save the world, but it would be the death of me.

Remy could have done that. Rogue could have.

I didn't have their strength.

I was dead tired, and depressed, but I didn't see any way out. I had to keep my Bargain. I had to fulfill the promise.

I had to free the Lady.

"Lady."

I am here, my Kyle.

"I'm ready when you are."

Go outside of House, but not too far. His presence will make your task all the easier- as will the Eye of Agamotto.

Had she planned all along to give me the Eye or had that just proven to be a streak of luck for her? I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer to that. "As you say, Lady."

I went outside the House and into the field near the back. The air seemed much cooler than it should have been, but I was sweating.

Use the Eye.

"Eye of Agamotto!"

The Eye opened to the same swirling mass of chaos and destruction that I had sent the future SHIELD Helicarrier to. I could see something in that shimmering portal … something moving towards it … a shape.

A female shape with long hair … and even though it was still distant, I could see that it had the Lady's eyes ….

Bring forth the Uru. Hold it before the Eye.

I did this.

Until this moment, the light of the Eye had never seemed to have any sort of physical presence. It was just light.

But when I placed the Uru before the light, it was as though the Eye's light was an incredibly powerful water hose- the Uru was torn out of my hands and traveled along the beam until it stopped just in front of the portal the Eye created.

The Shape of the Lady raised her hand and a green flame flashed out of her hand and struck the Uru.

The Uru was a very small piece of metal, but the Lady's light managed to twist it and change it. It didn't make more of the metal, but it seemed to forge it into a shape. It looked like some sort of glyph or a symbol that I didn't recognize- but felt intuitively that I should have.

Take it.

"Lady, it looks kind of hot-"

Take it!

I sighed and reached out.

It didn't burn my skin, but I felt it sear my soul. The moment I held the glyph, I knew what it was- it was a key. A key that would let the Lady walk out of her Dark Dimension and into this world of mine. A key that held the secret of the Lady.

A key that held her name.

Now I knew who the Lady was.

Now I knew just how well and truly I was screwed.

Now, Kyle. Say my name and bring me forth to your world that we both might find fulfillment of our destinies.

I didn't want to.

Just then Rogue dropped out of the sky.

Remy was with her.

(Because of course he'd be with her.)

"Mon ami, what are you doing this night?"

"What I have to, Remy."

Ignore them, Kyle. Say my name.

"Kyle, sugah … you don't want to do this. Ah don't know what's going on, but Ah can tell this ain't good. This ain't going to give you what you want."

"Oh I know."

And I did know.

I didn't want to do the Lady's bidding any longer, but the moment I took her glyph in my hand I felt a powerful compulsion come upon me. I knew who she was. I knew what she meant to do. But I could no more stop now than I could will my heart not to beat.

"How did you find me?"

"Your clothes. The ones Ah gave you. There's a tracking device in them."

"I see." And I did. "So … you were never planning on leaving me alone at all. Emma's promise meant nothing."

"Ah wouldn't say that. Ah just wanted to make sure Ah- that we could find you if you ever needed our help, sugah. And Ah think that you need our help more than ever."

"Rogue, she speak the truth, Kyle. This is no good to you. This road will lead you to destruction. This shadow lady- she's been using you."

"I know."

"Kyle- Remy he has blood on his hands. He done things. Terrible things. He knows what it is to carry sin in his heart. He doesn't want that for you, Kyle. Let us help you,, mon ami. Let us save you."

"It's too late for that, Remy. You should run. Both of you should run. Run far away. I can't stop now. She won't let me stop now."

Say my name, Kyle!

"Kill me."

Rogue's face went pale. Remy muttered what I took to be an obscenity.

"Ah can't do that, sugah," Rogue said softly. "Ah can't."

"We find another way, Kyle. We three- we can do anything. We won't kill you, mon ami."

"Then you've doomed us all."

SAY MY NAME!

I couldn't fight her any longer.

I looked at the X-Men one final time and then said one word. The one word that would damn me forever. The one word that would destroy everything.

The Lady's name.

"Umar." I took a deep breath. "Lady Umar of the Dark Dimension, come forth and lay claim to this world!"

And the Lady- Umar, sister to Doramammu, a Faltine of almost unimaginable power and might- walked through the door I had opened for her.

"And now this world is mine!"

"Wanna bet?"

Wolverine.

He must have shown up while Rogue and Remy had talked to me. Big as life and twice as nasty, Adamantium claws gleaming in the moonlight, he smirked at Umar though he faced down goddess sorceresses on a daily basis.

"You want the Earth, you gotta go through me."

"You go through us."

Scott. Emma. Hank. Even Kitty and her boyfriend Piotr of the Steel-hard abs.

The X-Men had come to save the day.

But would they be enough?

I sighed.

"You know, this would have gone a lot better if you guys had shown up about five minutes ago ..."