In the instant that skeletal ranks surged like a tide of bones, all three saw them. They didn’t ease up; their blows swelled like a storm front. Before those monsters could drag them under, they meant to smash that bone frame first.

They likely didn’t notice it themselves, but their motions had already aligned with old symbols, like masks sliding into place.

Blinding Thunder thickened into a thicket of thorns. The black serpent rose and crossed like a gallows. The Crimson Flame became divine wrath, a furnace for sinners. Another trial played out under a red sky.

Aphelia seemed to become that very Crimson Flame. She sealed the skeleton inside a burning seal, a brazier clamped shut. The assault took hold; that iron-hard frame began to slump like wax.

She poured in more power. The Crimson Flame climbed and spread, a veil that threatened to swallow the sky. The skeletons that had leapt upward halted midair, as if pinned. The Crimson Flame made them feel honest terror.

“Stop!!”

A clear shout cut out from deep in the forest just as the bone frame was about to melt away. Aphelia and the others didn’t release. They leaned in harder, teeth bared.

When the trio refused to stop, the voice’s owner gave a cold snort. The world hitched, like a reel snagged on a nail. Something changed that had no words.

When they caught up to the moment again, the skeleton hog-tied in midair was gone without a trace.

“Stop!!!”

Odin was the first to obey the danger. She forced blinding Thunder back into her body, a storm swallowed by a lung. Aphelia bit down on the backlash and bled off the Crimson Fire at her sides. But Uroboros, already bearing parts of both attacks, couldn’t pull out in time. The black coils were about to strangle Aphelia where she hung.

Odin moved to intervene, hands snapping up. Azure Aether detonated beside her like a blue blossom exploding. A white figure flashed in and barred her path.

“It’s you! Move—”

“Think I’ll step aside?”

The figure sneered. A staff hung from their hand, then swung for Odin like a falling icicle.

Aphelia felt the noose tightening. Nine deaths, one life; it crowded in like frost. Uroboros couldn’t stop. She tore herself free of the black serpents, tried to rein them, and only scattered them like shards.

She wanted out. But everyone had gone all-in, power hooked into power like chains. She couldn’t slip the pull.

She breathed out. Then shut her eyes, choosing silence over thrash. She reached back to the forest, to the moment she’d broken a giant while injured, when she had fused with the Crimson Flame and become a piece of fire.

If she could redo that, she could slide the knot, slip the kill.

Remember. What did I feel when I went into the Crimson Fire?

Anger. Despair. A hollow that screamed.

“…Huh? What happened?!”

Heat reached like a hand from behind. The white figure halted mid swing, head snapping back.

Within Uroboros’s crushing loop, Aphelia’s shape was gone. In her place, sprawling crimson filled the vault like blood in water. A wraith of flame hovered in it, quiet, watching him.

The shadow of Crimson Flame didn’t hesitate. It rushed for the white figure standing before Odin, a comet on a red wind.

“Hmph!”

His snort cut the air like a bone whistle. The sky bloomed with heavy ice flakes, a pall that met the Crimson Flame head-on.

His staff rose high. A towering ice storm ripped up from the ground. Even the other skeletons fled back to their silver coffins, hiding from friendly cold.

He met a quasi-Aether head-on with this world’s power. The last to try that were two giants with divine weapons. They turned to ash in this Scarlet Inferno’s field.

Aphelia—no, the wraith of Crimson Flame—laughed, a warped chuckle that curled like smoke. She slipped back into the fire domain. The endless sea of flame that had stained the sky vanished in a blink.

The ice storm slammed into emptiness, a white hammer finding no nail.

The white figure struck his staff against the air. Niflheim itself seemed to answer, space shuddering like frozen glass under a blow.

Odin and Uroboros had to raise their Aether, bodies braced. They steadied themselves against the spatial churn, lest they be spit out of Niflheim. Even with the tremor, Aphelia did not reappear.

“Guardian! Don’t push it!!”

Odin’s voice cracked like a whip. Azure Aether descended again, blue rain over iron.

“I’m pushing it?”

The white figure—Guardian—turned slow, a winter moon turning on its rope.

Before Odin could move, spears of ice burst from all sides, a hail aimed to finish her in one stroke.

“Hmph! You’re not the only one with that trick!”

Her Aether swelled and became Thunder, a concept more than a bolt. It rushed out and shattered the ice into powder, a sandstorm of frost.

She didn’t press. Her voice stayed cold.

“Guardian, I came to see the RhineFairy, not a dead man like you.”

“See the RhineFairy? How does a traitor of the Aesir dare say that!”

Like a nerve got ripped, the white figure screamed, voice braided with man and woman. Veins rose on the hand gripping the staff, fury climbing like cracks in ice.

Before he could vent, laughter slid to his ear, taunting and low.

“Traitor, not traitor—what’s it to you?”

The sound howled like a ghost from the hells. The white figure’s back went cold. Instinct moved his arms; his staff whipped backward.

The blow cleaved the crimson wraith cleanly. Yet the figure’s smile stayed wrong, slicing a line of unease through him.

From that split shadow, a sea of fire gushed out like floodwater, rushing to drown his sight. The heat wrapped him. His vision turned all red.

He raised both hands to block on reflex. But once the flame enclosed him, no heat touched his skin. Cold held behind his eyes.

“Damn it, mocking me?!”

He judged it an illusion. He didn’t know how those two giants died in this sea.

He lifted his staff to scatter the fire, ready to ring up a space tremor and break the trick with a tap.

From the side, a crimson claw thrust out from the surf, straight for his chest. Air peeled with a keen whistle.

He threw up a block. His staff shifted, and ice-blue Rune sigils lit the air before him.

“Another illusion?!”

An ice wall rose and stopped the crimson claw. In the instant after, the claw vanished into nothing, as if it had never existed. The whistle died out with it.

He shed his scruples. His staff rang like a bell. Ice-blue Runes swarmed him like a flock, and the air temperature plunged to the bottom.

“Heh, heh, heh…”

The crimson sea laughed again, a sound like wet embers. Countless crimson claws reached out from all directions, swarming him like a storm of hands.

Outside the fire sea, Odin and Uroboros moved back into combat. Aether-forged weapons shone in their grip. They tangled with the bone frames swarming in.

An azure spear of Thunder carved a clean lane in the air, forcing back a forming ring of skeletons.

“Tch. They’re stubborn. What in the world are these things?!”

Uroboros’s black snake-whip blocked strike after strike. The two stood back-to-back, breath quickened, voices tight.

They had smashed this skeletal host once already. But after they fell, more bone frames crawled out of the silver coffins, armed with mismatched weapons and fiercer intent.

“They’re… they’re Niflheim’s wardens!”

Azure Aether fell as a thunderstorm, bolts cracking from above. In a flash, Odin blasted the encircling skeletons to pieces. She drew a long breath before answering.

“They were dead to begin with. Those silver coffins are portals. Every time they die, they revive inside the coffins.”