When the whole worldline knotted into chaos, even the RhineFairies who swore by non‑interference couldn’t sit on their high dais anymore; like moonlight on deep water, they could only watch. Yet they were fated never to step in themselves. So the three—Uroboros, Odin, and Aphelia—became lifelines to them, like three lamps in a storm.

Uroboros didn’t buy it. She shook her head with cool disdain, like frost dusting steel. Calm had returned to her; even with most of her body gone like ash in wind, she wouldn’t accept Urd’s offer.

“Urd… that’s what they call you, right? Even as a fragment, do you think I’d agree to that?”

Uroboros was Uroboros. Body or avatar, her pride stood like a blade under a winter sun.

After a long hush, Urd answered, voice like a drop into a still well. “No…”

She knew it in her bones, yet she had to try. A god who reads the current of time always reaches for that one‑in‑a‑billion glint, like a fisherman casting for a mythic fish.

Now the entire world hangs by the World Tree, like three worlds threaded on one spine. Every being across the Threefold World is bound to it; their fates are already knotted, tangled on the spinning thread of destiny, a dead knot in time with no loose end.

Even if this Uroboros was only an avatar, she belonged to the Reaper—that one who holds the concept of death and walks outside the clock’s circle. As a RhineFairy guarding Niflheim, and as a goddess of fate, Urd had never met that Reaper. Yet from the river of time, she’d glimpsed a silhouette, like a shadow passing over snow.

Because of that glimpse, she believed this world still hid a hairline crack of possibility, a splinter of chance to tilt the future.

“Then that settles it. Take care of Aphelia. My life ends here…”

With those last words, Uroboros laughed softly, like a bell under water, and drifted apart within Niflheim. Before every watching eye, she thinned into fine black power, like soot rising into the dark.

Urd watched her fade and let out a heavy sigh, like wind through pines. She turned to leave.

“Odin, take Aphelia to the World Tree’s roots. Uroboros’s avatar is gone. We can only pin our hopes on Aphelia now…”

She didn’t finish. Odin seized Urd’s shoulder and yanked her back, like thunder grabbing a peak.

“Urd. Start to finish. Explain. Now.”

Azure Aether leapt around Odin like cold flame. Unlike Aphelia, she wasn’t one to allow lies to swim past. Her face was stern, her gaze a blade, authority rolling off her like a winter gale.

“Sigh. Let go… If you still want to save your realm, and this world, then get Aphelia there. She’s your last hope.”

Seeing that look, Urd could only sigh deeper. She slapped Odin’s hand away herself and walked toward the massive roots, steps measured like a metronome.

Skuld, who was weaving, never looked up. As if none of this touched her, she calmly plucked her spindle, drawing threads from the air like moonlight from mist. She gathered them into bundles and sent them into the void, like birds disappearing into cloud.

“Odin, let me ask you. Do you truly grasp the situation?”

At the base of the colossal trunk, Aphelia already lay upon the altar, like a candle waiting for flame. Countless powerful souls piled beside it, ready for her to absorb, like coals to be fed to a furnace.

Odin and Urd sat before the altar. Urd looked genuinely vexed and pressed her brow, like staving off a headache.

“I’ve got the gist. Humans paid some price to sway the Giants. They damaged the World Tree and went for the topmost layer…”

“Ha…”

Urd shook her head, grief and exasperation mixing like rain and dust.

“You’re the leader. Could you try being mature? You’re only skimming the surface.”

“Then give me something that’s not surface. I returned from wandering and got hunted like a stag. I’m desperate too.”

She pointed at her chest, voice low and taut.

“If not for Aphelia, I wouldn’t have escaped at all. If you plan to keep playing coy, we’re done talking.”

Faced with that stubborn stance, Urd couldn’t keep scolding. Odin’s wandering had spite in it, sure, but mostly it was to broaden her horizon, like sending a bird to learn the wind. The Aesir’s high elders had agreed before “banishing” their leader.

She came back to a butchered kin, an ambush that drove her from the Asgardian Realm… Who would’ve done better? In truth, Odin was simply too young for a throne forged of storms.

“That’s on me. I overlooked it… Let’s start with their invasion. That should make you feel how vital Aphelia is…”

“She’s always been vital.”

“Can you not bicker with me here?”

For reasons unfathomable, the ever‑composed Urd felt her lifespan shortening whenever she faced Odin; an axe‑itch grew in her hands, the urge to go berserker and cleave her in two. A vein throbbed under the fall of her long hair.

Odin shut her mouth at once.

“Sigh. I should’ve thrown you out for a few more years…”

Urd shook her head, then pulled a single thread and stretched a mirror before Odin, like water turning to glass.

“Humans got the Giants to ally with them thanks to a mysterious figure. Someone who can grant Valkyrie inheritance. Someone who can break the World Tree. They’ve planned this since before you left a century ago. Compared to the Aesir lulled by long comfort, humans cut deeper and think colder.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me at the start…”

“Aren’t you the unmatched master of hiding? No one could find you.”

That stuffed the words back into Odin’s throat. She shut up, awkward as a child caught stealing figs.

Urd crossed her arms and hummed softly, a small victory bright in her eyes.

“See? If you hadn’t thrown a tantrum, we could’ve reached you. But you plucked out your second World Tree Seed. No one in this world could find you.”

Odin scratched her head, embarrassed. It was fair. If she hadn’t been willful and left her crucial second World Tree Seed in the Golden Palace, the Giants wouldn’t have hounded her like wolves.

That extra seed was why she could rule the realm. Compared to others, she’d received a purer World Tree Seed—and even one more than most. That extra seed gave her power and divinity far beyond an ordinary god, like lightning bottled in bone.

Back then, in her immaturity, she left that second seed in the Golden Palace the moment she was “banished,” cutting off every strand by which a god could reach her, like slamming a door on the wind.

If she hadn’t, could she have saved the Asgardian Realm?

She’d asked herself that. The answer landed like a stone: no.

“But precisely because I lost that seed, I found the power called Aether. If the second World Tree Seed were still in me, the Aether would’ve burned me clean.”

She gave a bitter smile and pressed her chest, as if steadying a restless flame.

“That’s true… Your Aether is a wild variable. Even Skuld’s gaze into tomorrow never saw something this dazzling. But all those possibilities are…”

“Are brought by Aphelia. Right?”

Urd nodded.

Aphelia was sent to this era by Enkidu through the power of time, like a leaf carried by a different river. She isn’t a native of this world. To say it simply: she stands outside the three realms and beyond the five elements. A being like that is a living variable. How could any sight net her easily?

Even if Aphelia herself doesn’t realize it, her existence shouts it like thunder across a plain.

“In the human race, there’s someone with Valkyrie‑like power. Even we can’t see her face. She appeared as if out of thin air, became their strongest trump card. She’s the one holding the World Tree’s passage together.”

Urd’s face hardened, like stone under frost. The meaning was clear enough to cut.

“You mean… that person is actually Aphelia?”

Popping up from nowhere. Valkyrie‑level power. Anyone would tie that to Aphelia after hearing Urd. Odin did too, instantly.

“She isn’t. We considered it, but her power is nothing like Aphelia’s. She’s destruction made into a tongue. That power exists to break. Do you know why the gods of the Asgardian Realm lost the will to resist in the first instant?”

“Why…”

Odin clenched her fists, knuckles white as frost. That question gnawed at her like a rat at the roots. Even with Giants and humans allied, the Asgardian Realm isn’t paper. Before she returned, they should’ve held.

Yet when she arrived, most of the Aesir lay dead across the realm, like fallen stars.

“She stepped into the Threefold World and, with one strike, killed more than half the Aesir…”

“That’s impossible!!”

Odin shouted. The Aesir aren’t soft fruit for any hand to squeeze. The realm carries Runes left by ancient sages like mountains carry snow. Many gods tied their lives to the World Tree. To kill over half in an instant is like breaking most of the World Tree itself.