Heat spiked, like a thorn under the nail—why did they dump this sudden sacrifice on her? Aphelia bit down on her lip, tasting iron.

The Demon King pushed her aside and gave the cloaked Reaper a small nod.

“Right, one last thing. Keep walking, and you’ll understand why I exist today. Don’t hand the world to a lunatic like Sigdrifa.”

The air beside the cloaked Reaper tore like cloth. Before Aphelia could even blink, the rift yanked her from the barren palace. In a heartbeat, only the Reaper and the Demon King remained.

“Kh… ha. So waiting here for 108,941 choices, wading against inverted time—turns out I wasn’t wrong.”

Contentment softened him. He looked up at a sky strewn with diamonds and murmured to the stars.

At his words, the cloaked Reaper drew a pocket watch and pressed it to the Demon King’s brow.

“Even if no one will remember you?”

That airy voice carried a thin, cold curl of mockery.

“Ah… even if no one remembers me.”

His answer didn’t waver. The Reaper chuckled without warmth and pointed to the rift where Aphelia had vanished.

“You witnessed 108,941 shifting worldlines. Out of so many, why choose her on this one?”

The Demon King laughed, bright and reckless. He cocked his head, eyes glittering with mischief.

“Keeper of the Bier, have you lived so long you’ve forgotten what human feeling is?”

“Does it matter?”

Ice in his tone. He flipped the watch open and began to move the hands.

As the hands crawled, a tide of black souls drifted forward. They ringed the Demon King. Frost bloomed over him like winter grass.

“I saw more than a hundred thousand lines. Ravagers and cowards both. Some stronger than this Aphelia, some gentler. All of them snuffed out their humanity for godhood.”

“For those Aphelias, I tossed them a way back, paying with my own humanity. You know the outcome. You, a Reaper, saw it plain.”

The Reaper’s hand stilled. A chill gaze, hidden under the hood, speared him. The Demon King didn’t flinch. A smile teased his mouth.

A long pause. Then the cloaked Reaper spoke, voice like a grave wind.

“Without exception, all ended in ruin.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The Demon King’s laughter rang shameless and loud. The Reaper did not anger. He stilled the watch and drew it away.

The black souls receded like a tide, yet the ice on the Demon King did not melt.

The Reaper lifted the hood. Not a skull. Not a myth-worn elder. Beneath was a brown-skinned woman with an ordinary face, save for colorless pupils like dead moons. Without the cloak, no one would call her Reaper of the Land of the Dead.

“You’re that certain she won’t choose the path of annihilation?”

Her voice stayed cool, but the edge of denial had dulled.

“Wouldn’t you know? Reaper ruling the Land of the Dead, Brynhildr’s Keeper of the Bier. You’re not blind. If you could see Aphelia’s end, you wouldn’t ask.”

She didn’t bristle. She tipped her head back and looked into the jeweled dark, as if thinking with the sky for a mirror.

“Demon King, after all our wars, do you truly believe that Aphelia can cross the long ages and end this sorrowful cycle?”

Her dim eyes seemed to catch starlight, small fires in a deep well.

He shook his head, then nodded, like a branch bending to two winds.

“I can’t say what future she’ll carve. But if you can’t see her end, then among 108,941, she’s the only hope.”

At that, the brown-skinned woman’s mouth curved. She turned, stepped back to his side, and set the watch to his brow again. The hands moved without a tremor.

“Then for this single hope, trade me the last of your humanity. Even if the world forgets you, I’ll write you upon its ending.”

“Ha, better not. Being etched on the end is a lousy epitaph.”

His final laugh rolled out. Pure white light poured from the watch, like dawn without warmth. Under it, the Demon King drifted into ash, a slow snow, and vanished from the barren throne.

When it was done, the brown-skinned woman closed the watch with care. She pulled up her hood, took the Demon King’s place, and sat the desolate throne. Under that blazing sky, nothing in the Land of the Dead remained to prove he had ever been.

Aphelia blinked once, and the world snapped back. She stood before Odin and Uroboros.

A jagged stone waste filled her sight—spires and slabs, all lifeless gray. The two sheltered under an overhang. Odin stood above, spear of Thunder in hand, watching like a lone hawk.

“Hey, we’re already in the Land of the Dead. How long are you gonna play possum?”

Uroboros’s teasing brushed her ear. Aphelia jolted, grabbed their sleeves, and sprang up.

“Wait—where am I? Where’s the Demon King? The Reaper?!”

Odin dropped from the height in a clean arc. She caught Aphelia’s hands, warm as a hearth.

“This is the Land of the Dead. Aphelia, breathe. Whatever you saw before, it was false.”

A little Aether flowed from Odin’s palm, a cool tide that smoothed Aphelia’s pulse.

“So… false?”

Aphelia bowed her head. The memories crowded in like birds returning to roost. The chill of the cloaked Reaper. The arrogant, then saintlike Demon King. And that—

Starlight flared in her mind, a ceiling torn open to an endless sea. She shook her head, as if to scatter sparks.

“It wasn’t false…”

No proof, no witness. Yet the memory felt etched into bone. If it were false, would it cut this deep?

She rose and peered out through a vast stone maw.

“This is already the Land of the Dead, but only the fringe. We’ve got to go deeper to enter Niflheim.”

Odin came to her side. Blue-green Thunder unspooled from her fingertips, floating to mark a handful of zones across the waste.

“It does live up to the name. Bleak as an old tomb.”

Aphelia’s laugh was thin. Not a whisper of life showed, only stone on stone.

“Once we step into Niflheim, you may change your mind.”

Thunder scattered into mist, a veil drifting low to cloak the plain.

As the mist seeped in, the crags shivered. What she’d called lifeless began to breathe. Aphelia could only give a crooked smile.

No life? It was everywhere.

Inside the real knifed rocks, countless colossi—beasts shaped like the very ridges—opened scarlet eyes. They swept the horizons with a hunter’s calm. Wrapped in Aether, they could not see the three.

“So? Any change of heart about the Land of the Dead?”

Aphelia let out a helpless laugh. With monsters like these, any “change” was for the worse.

“Change of heart, huh…”

“We have to cross here to reach Niflheim’s gate. Don’t fret. These behemoths won’t be a threat. In a sense, they’re terminally lazy.”

Aether unfolded from Odin’s back as wings, quiet feathers of light.

“Terminally lazy? Hey, wait, Lady Odin, what are you doing?”

Odin stepped behind and gently took her under the arms. Dread pricked like sleet. Bad sign.

“These beasts, when startled without a target, chalk it up to a mirage and won’t stay wary. I just poked them with Aether and they found nothing… So, ready, Aphelia?”

Odin smiled kindly and guided her to the lip of the cavern. Cold wind knifed by. Even Aphelia’s stomach dropped at the sheer height.

“Of course… we fly down.”

“Nooooo!”