Odin said it as she led them, slipping through the trees like a slow stream under shade. Green pooled like lacquer on the eye, small lives flickered like brushstrokes in the undergrowth. No predator dared fix its gaze on three so-called “weak women.”

“‘Now’? So there used to be a domain like that in the Land of the Dead?”

Catching the phrasing, Aphelia plucked a dew-cool fruit with a careless hand, bit in, and asked with a smile that tasted of sunlight.

“You’re bold, aren’t you…”

Odin rapped her lightly on the forehead, a knuckle like a pebble on a pond, then answered.

“Indeed. In the past, a Valkyrie temple held vigil in the Land of the Dead. Not only there. Even in the human world, temples stood. But… before disaster struck, that valiant Valkyrie took her host and left this world.”

Memory rose like mist; Odin’s eyes warmed with old fire, then cooled with regret, and she sighed like wind through pines.

“Left this world, meaning…?”

“The literal meaning. With us none the wiser, the Valkyries vanished overnight, like breath on glass. Later, we found fierce spatial ripples lingering in their halls. We could only judge they’d departed this world.”

Uroboros cut in, her voice a thin blade. “Why leave this world? Weren’t they your kin?”

“Of course not.”

Odin smiled and shook her head, then spoke with iron under silk.

“They were human. Unmistakably human.”

“By their own strength, they proved humankind’s worth to the Aesir. Even mankind’s old enemy, the giants, no longer struck lightly. The Aesir gave them respect.”

“That’s why I don’t know why they left. Looking back, maybe they refused to be wedged between both sides, awkward at both ends.”

Anyone could read the helplessness in her eyes, a tide breaking on rock.

A thought flashed like a fish; Aphelia seized it and leaned in. “Odin, do you remember the leader’s name and face?”

Such a simple question tangled the goddess. Nostalgia froze on her features, as if winter touched a lake. She had forgotten.

“Sorry, Aphelia… I don’t know why. It’s like I never truly saw her. Her name, her face, both slip away. Beyond the battles we fought shoulder to shoulder, there’s only a vague white blur.”

Odin offered a sheepish smile. They reached a river and stopped, the water writing silver on stone. They sat to breathe.

“So you forgot. It’s fine… Odin, do you remember a Valkyrie named Hrok? She often used a longsword, and carried a—”

“A massive black coffin, right? Though when I knew her, she hadn’t taken to the sword. She used a spiked mace, blunt and brutal. A real butcher of the field.”

Odin laughed, and the sound loosened old knots. Aphelia’s eyes narrowed like slits of moonlight; she slid a glance at Uroboros. Uroboros whistled, all innocence drawn in ink.

“So you did know her… Wait, Lady Odin, are we talking about the same person? The Hrok I know uses a longsword. Her swordcraft is peerless.”

“She’s the same no matter what she holds.”

Seeing through Aphelia’s doubt, Odin shook her head and explained, voice steady as a drum.

“She’s a master of weapons. Even generals of the Asgardian Realm salute her control. From short arms to long, from cold steel to Rune-wrought arms—she makes them sing. If she wished, she could hew a sword-wave with a spiked mace.”

She pinched her spear and swept the air. No ripple of Aether, no trace of a Rune. Yet an air-blade hissed out and slammed into a boulder, which burst like a clay pot.

“See? Without Aether or Runes, that’s my peak. And I need my life-bonded spear to reach it. But Hrok?”

Admiration lit her face like dawn on bronze.

“She can pick up anything and do better than that. Inside that giant black coffin lies the concept of ‘Weapon’ itself.”

“The concept of Weapon?”

Aphelia’s brows drew together like twin bows. If it was a concept, then Hrok had stepped into the power of a True God. To wield a concept was a True God’s work.

“Yes. It’s her exclusive armament, the pure embodiment of ‘Weapon.’ If she wills it, any armament comes forth. Pair that with her craft, and she’s a butcher on the field. Few can chase her shadow in that domain.”

Odin sighed, a reed bending to wind. Strong, but too one-edged.

“Like her nature—all steel, easy to snap.”

“If not for the Valkyries watching over her, she might never have grown this far. By the way, Aphelia, did you know them? You sound familiar with them.”

Aphelia stiffened, a deer at a twig-snap, then smoothed her smile like hands over silk.

“In the memories I’ve recovered, there’s some of them. We might’ve crossed paths. I don’t know as much as you.”

She waved it off, a light flick of the wrist. Odin’s words were threads; they might stitch more memory together.

“If it helps you remember, all the better. But now’s not the time to reminisce. The sky’s about to dim. We need to move.”

Aphelia and Uroboros frowned. They lifted their faces to honey-bright sunlight, checked their own heads felt right, then looked at Odin.

“Don’t look at me like that. I mean it.”

Odin’s smile turned wry as she led them toward a far ridge, feet sure as a goat on stone.

With her taking point, the other two couldn’t lag. They followed, confusion like mist around their ankles.

“This is the Land of the Dead, a world born at dawn and dead by dusk. Even as chief of the Aesir, I must obey the RhineFairy’s rule. If we don’t reach the Rhine before night, I’ll be folded into death’s law.”

Plainly, finding the RhineFairy came first. But Uroboros caught on something and raised a hand, stopping them short.

“Odin, you said this world lives at dawn and dies by dusk, right?”

They were about to sprint when black power rose around Uroboros like ink boiling in water. She watched the ahead woods with the patience of a snake.

“That’s right. Daylight flips life and death. The living return for a span. Night belongs to the dead, a long night without breath. Each exists only in their own time.”

“Then it looks like the rule’s broken.”

Uroboros laughed cold, and her power knitted into sharp arrows, aimed at a shape that hid like a frog under a stone.

Even with her shout, nothing moved in that direction. The silence was a slap.

She sneered, and the arrows streaked out. Before they landed, a steel giant of a coffin tore from the ground with a grinding wail. If Uroboros hadn’t sprung back, it would’ve smashed her jaw like a hammer.

“Ha. Odin, take a good look. Is this your dawn-born, dusk-dying Land of the Dead?”

She shaped her power tighter, stalking the distant skeleton, her smile all thorns.

“This… a RhineFairy puppet? No, impossible. It should be a dead one…”

The silver-white giant coffins glittered like frost-bitten towers, and Odin’s eyes caught some telltale mark. But the skeleton surprised her more. Azure Thunder wrapped her spear like rain on blue steel. She was ready to let her hands speak.

The skeleton wasn’t dull. As they moved, ice-blue witchfire kindled in its hollow sockets. It loosed a shriek, a saw through bone.

Though it had no throat, the sound hit like a gale and spread rime. Frost crawled over everything like white moss, and all three had to brace with full force.

“What is that?!”

Crimson Fire rose around Aphelia like a crimson peony in storm, and she stared at the frost hissing before her. Her fire, usually sovereign, only held the chill at bay. The weird ice locked with the blaze and wouldn’t yield.

“Leave it to me!”

The sky cracked with Thunder. Odin vanished like a flash behind clouds.

In the next blink, her spear flew with all her might, a black bolt through air. Odin herself rode Thunder to the skull’s crown, palms wrapped in Azure Aether, and hammered down.

Uroboros didn’t stand idle. Her black power writhed out like tentacles, slid under the ice, and bound the skeleton tight, maggots on bone, so it couldn’t twitch.