For reasons she couldn’t name, Urd—usually serene—felt her life shorten whenever she faced Odin. Rage clawed up; she wanted an axe, a berserker’s howl, to hack Odin to scraps. Veins throbbed beneath her long hair.

Odin heard it and shut her mouth, words swallowed like sparks into snow.

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

Urd shook her head, drew a silken thread of fate, and unfurled a mirror before Odin like moonlight on still water.

“Humans won the giants with a stranger—someone who could grant Valkyrie legacy and break the World Tree. They plotted this before you left a century ago. The Aesir grew comfortable; humans hid knives in their sleeves.”

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

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

Odin got shut down and went awkwardly quiet, the protest dying like a candle in wind.

Savoring a small win, Urd folded her arms and eyed Odin’s sulky look, a soft hum slipping out.

“See? If you hadn’t thrown a fit, we could’ve reached you. But you plucked out the second Seed of the World Tree—no one in this world could find you.”

Odin scratched her head, embarrassed, the truth landing heavy. Her whim had left her crucial second Seed in the Golden Palace; no wonder the giants hunted her like wolves in winter.

It was why she became ruler of the realm: her Seeds were purer—and she had one more. That extra Seed burned her power and divinity far beyond the common Aesir, like a second sun in her chest.

Young and stubborn, after being “banished,” she’d left the second Seed in the Golden Palace, sulking, cutting every divine line to her like severed kite strings.

She’d wondered if not doing that could’ve saved the Asgardian Realm. In the end, the answer was a hard, cold no.

“But losing that Seed let me grasp Aether. If I’d kept it, Aether would’ve burned me to ash.” She forced a bitter smile, hand over her heart like holding down a storm.

“That’s true… Your Aether is a wild variable. Even Skuld’s sight saw no such dazzling branch of fate. But every such branch comes from…”

“Aphelia, right?” Odin connected the dots. Urd nodded, eyes like dusk.

Aphelia was sent to this era by Enkidu through the power of time. She isn’t of this world. In short, she stands outside the Three Realms, beyond the Five Elements—an unquantifiable anomaly no sight can pin down. Even if Aphelia herself doesn’t realize it, her existence says it all.

“Among humans, there’s one with Valkyrie-like power. Even we can’t see her face. She seemed to appear from thin air, became their strongest trump card, and she held the World Tree’s conduit open.”

Urd’s face tightened; her meaning was sharp as a blade.

“You mean… that person is Aphelia?”

“Not so. We considered it, but her power is utterly different from Aphelia’s. She’s ruin made flesh; her strength exists to destroy. Do you know why the gods of the Asgardian Realm lost all resistance at the first breath?”

“Why…”

Even with giants and humans allied, the Asgardian Realm isn’t made of paper. Before Odin returned, they should’ve held the line. Yet when she arrived, most of the Aesir lay dead across the realm like fallen stars.

“She came straight to the third stratum of the world. With a single strike, she killed over half of the Aesir…”

“Impossible!!”

“The Aesir aren’t soft fruit you can squeeze. The realm is warded by runes of countless sages; many bound their lives to the World Tree. Slaughtering half in an instant is like shattering most of the Tree itself.”

“Fact is, she did it in one blow. We don’t know how. She detonated half the Aesir’s hearts—your sisters included. They were taken by that unknown person. After that, even we can’t see a trace.”

Urd’s face folded into apology. She hated saying it, but truth doesn’t blink. Better a clean cut than a lingering ache.

“So that’s why I couldn’t find them… They really died…”

Tears brimmed in Odin’s eyes. Singular among the Aesir, she still had sisters—less gifted, yet they had held her through the long years like lanterns in snow.

“Why take them? She’s that strong—what use are the Aesir to her?”

“I don’t know… Maybe only when Aphelia wakes will you get that answer. From the power that stranger used, she seems to wield your same source—the force called Aether.”

Urd waited for Odin’s storm to ease, then spoke, steady as stone. She needed Odin’s mind clear for what came next.

As a former ruler of the realm, Odin felt joy, rage, sorrow—but her control was iron. She knew only by finding that culprit could she demand the price, blood for blood.

“Aether… How deep must one master Aether to crush half the Aesir’s hearts in a single breath? Uroboros—perhaps her avatar—showed terrible power, but nothing this outrageous.”

On the Golden Plain, even Uroboros had to become a jet-black serpent and lurk long in the giant ranks. Only when her coils enclosed them did she unleash that reaper’s sweep.

Yet in Urd’s records, the stranger needed no setup—just a flick of the wrist, like brushing dust from a sleeve.

“On that, we know far too little. The Aesir have never touched Aether—how could we understand it?”

Urd shook her head. Even fate goddesses aren’t omniscient. Before Aether, our all-seeing hits a thick fog: we feel its might, not the why.

“That’s why Aphelia is priceless.” Urd rose, moved to her side, and lightly brushed Aphelia’s cheek, as if soothing a sleeping flame.

“She doesn’t belong to our world, yet ties to it run deep. More precise: her bond is with Aether itself. For us fate goddesses, it’s the first time facing a presence we can’t grasp at all.”

As her words fell, the Crimson Flame at Aphelia’s brow flared higher, like something about to be born from embers.

“Strange, isn’t it? Fate goddesses, yet blind to one person’s fate.”

Urd gave a bitter laugh. A thread of Rune power lit her palm; she slit her wrist. Scarlet blood dripped around the altar like a quiet rain. The strange runes kindled and streamed toward the Crimson Fire at Aphelia’s brow.

“Odin, if you can, never make her your enemy. The source of Aether points to Aphelia. Only with her do you have a chance against that stranger…”

As she spoke, a pure white glow gathered around Urd, like dawn wrapping snowfields. Her blood, pulled by some force, poured endlessly toward Aphelia’s Crimson Fire.

“Urd, what are you doing!! Why are you feeding your Rune power into her? Stop—this will kill you!!”

Odin cried out at the madness, but Belldandy stepped in front of her, staff leveled like a barred gate.

“Belldandy, what are you doing!! Move!”

“Stand down, Odin. This is the future Skuld saw. It’s fated.”

“Odin, maybe this is Urd’s fate… We who read the past always sacrifice for the future—so it was a thousand years ago, so it is now. Trust us.”

Urd smiled as the white light swelled, wrapping her and the altar, like a cocoon of dawn sealing a vow.