He hadn’t even made it to his knees when another bolt came down. Thunder split the sky like an ax, and he burned to charcoal, dead beyond doubt.

The “culprit” drifted from the treeline, wrapped in an endless sea of Thunder, like a moon rising from storm-tossed pines.

“Who’s next?”

Odin wiped her blood-red lips and smiled cold, like frost on a blade.

Deep in the forest, where Aphelia was being remade, her mind-sea heaved like a capsized lake. Inside, everything overturned.

“What… is happening?!”

Panic hit first, like icy rain on bare skin. She tried to rouse her power after, steady as a hand on a rudder. In the mind-sea, will rules all. If it breaks, you rebuild.

Yet nothing mended.

“Why won’t it fix?!”

She summoned her Crimson Fire, a stubborn ember cupped in two hands. Even so, the mind-sea kept collapsing, slow as eroding cliffs. Nothing could halt the fall.

She didn’t give up. If the mind-sea was failing, her body had to be the root. Whether this change was blessing or curse, even Aphelia couldn’t tell.

Helpless, she wrapped her awareness in Crimson Fire, a lantern in a cave. Darkness crept in like winter floodwater, while that Crimson Flame burned on, obstinate as a red plum in snow.

“So it is. This is a metamorphosis.”

Her voice thinned to a thread. Thought turned inward.

The darkness didn’t last. Blinding arcs ripped it apart like dawn through fog. The shattered mind-sea reknit, laughably crude, as if time itself rewound.

What rose was simple to the point of bare. Gone was the self-contained, ordered world. What stood now felt like a child’s wild graffiti, only colors, no form.

Shrouded in Crimson Fire, Aphelia looked jarringly out of place, a scarlet flame in a chalk-streaked void.

Before she could explore, the world broke again. Pain hit like a saw through bone. She bit back a scream.

That crude world became shards in a breath. Crimson Fire warded them like a cloak. Even so, her flame wavered, a candle in wind.

The shards weren’t simple debris. Burned to ash by the Crimson Fire, they turned to a warm current rising inside her, like spring water under ice. It didn’t erase pain, but it gave back a familiar thing.

The thing called power.

The color-smeared world shattered, and lines replaced it—only lines. Orderly like a loom, yet merely threads without cloth.

As expected, it didn’t hold. Under her gaze, it broke once more, became falling fragments like sleet.

Pain surged again, harsher, like a drumbeat in a war camp. The power surged with it, a wave hitting a cliff. The collision rattled her mind to static.

No time to breathe. The darkness filled in, and a strange mind-world rose again, the wheel turning like a watermill in flood.

“Not even a breath? Fine.”

Excitement flared first, feral and bright. Her black eyes turned vicious, like a wolf’s under moonlight. In some sense, she had stepped out of being human.

The world recast, then shattered again. Darkness swallowed her Crimson Fire, a lone skiff in a rainstorm.

Hearing. Sight. Smell.

In a world this broken and scattered, what use were they?

If they had no meaning, cast them off.

Through racking pain, Aphelia stripped away excess senses, the way a tree sheds leaves before frost. She kept only the most basic feel. Better to dive wholly into pain and power than let noise muddy the heart.

Trade pure pain for pure power. A bargain as clean as steel.

“Heh—she learned fast, didn’t she~”

At the edge of the dark, a certain awareness watched Aphelia like a cat at a window. It laughed softly.

“Of course she did, Uroboros. If she couldn’t grasp something this simple, better she dies here. Loose her on the world and it’s a plague.”

Another voice rose from the dark, sharp as a proud horn. The boast in it rang clear.

“Sure, sure~ Keep watching without stepping in. One day she’ll walk herself to the cliff.”

Uroboros sounded amused, barbed like a fishhook. The barb met pride that didn’t feel it, and preening only grew.

“Then let’s see~”

The presence called Uroboros faded like ink in water, leaving the other to keep silent vigil over Aphelia.

On the plain, Odin still flung her vast sea of Thunder wide, like a storm god painting the horizon. Cruel, austere, and beautiful, she granted the giants death.

Even the strongest giants looked like children in that storm, small as reeds before a gale—beaten, scattered, unable to strike back. It wasn’t a chase so much as a wide, indiscriminate culling.

Aether was newborn, bright as a comet. To giants who’d never touched it, it was muskets against cold steel. The side behind the times always bleeds.

Worse, the wielder was Odin—Master of the Asgardian Realm, Lord of All Gods, the one who once ruled this age.

In this moment, she was the only deity under heaven. Endless lightning sat in her palm like a coiled dragon. Power itself wrote the meaning of godhood.

The “fearless” giant legions were grass under a scythe before her.

Giants weren’t mindless brutes. Even a beast knows pain. These were the same giants who toppled a realm beside humankind.

A streak flashed from the dark.

“An anti-magic arrow, this junk?”

Odin sneered at the black shaft in her hand. For Asgardians of old, it was venom in a cup.

It severed their bond to the World Tree, shredded every Rune—nightmare of the Asgardian gods. But to Odin with Aether in her veins…

“Parlor tricks… huh? Now that’s interesting!”

Before she could strike back, arrow-rain closed in, a monsoon from all sides. Giants raised great bows from horseback and loosed without aim, a tide spilling over a cliff.

The “anti-magic” arrow in her hand hadn’t been a sneak attack—only a beacon to pin her position.

Hidden among the giant ranks, the archer wasn’t a giant at all. A white-bearded elder stepped out in a beast-skin robe, eagle-eyed and razor still. He stared at Odin like a man at his nemesis.

He raised his longbow again, a silent challenge like a drawn line in sand.

“Amusing. Then fight!!!”

The surging azure Thunder hitched, like breath before a roar. A savage force tore free from within her, ripping the cocoon. Dazzling crimson, twin to Aphelia’s flame, bled into the storm.

In a blink, the sky turned to a world of blood.

Lightning branched like root and vein, stitching the firmament. It swallowed the arrow-rain whole. Odin stood at the eye, her pale face inked with strange scarlet sigils.

Time seemed to freeze. Only the Crimson thunder kept spreading, like wildfire in dry reeds.

Murder filled her gaze, stoked like a furnace.

The stillness cracked. Giants lifted their heads. Maybe that crimson storm was a mirage. The sky looked normal again. Yet the hot ash sifting down told them it was no dream.

They raised their heavy bows once more. Elders with eagle eyes slid through the ranks like wolves, hunting angles in shadow for the next strike.

Odin wouldn’t stand there and take it. She moved to act—then chill pricked her back, a needle under armor. Her body hitched.

“Honored Lord Odin, need a little help~?”

A cold woman’s voice brushed her ear like winter breath. She snapped around. Only a silver ring hung behind her.

“What are you?”

Odin swept Thunder in her hand and smacked aside the incoming shafts. She eyed the ring and smiled thin as a knife.

“Hmph~ I’m not a thing, ‘Lord’ Odin. There’s a limit to looking down on people…”

“Say one more useless word and I crush you.”

She had no time for a ghost’s chatter. She turned. The ring floated up, blocking her sight like a coin before the eye.

“If you don’t trust me, I’ll show you once~”

Before Odin could move, the ring shot toward the giant host like a silver fish.

Nothing happened. The sea stayed calm. Giants still hurled arrows like rain. The white-bearded elder kept circling for the angle, ready to sting Odin from the shade.

In that instant, a black shadow flicked across Odin’s sight, quick as a swallow over water.