Belldandy spoke with a face calm as still water, her scepter steady as a winter pine, without a tremor of doubt.

“Odin, perhaps this is Urd’s fate,” Urd said, her voice light as falling snow. “We who read the past must always bleed for the future. A thousand years ago, and now the same. Leave it to us with an easy heart.”

Urd smiled, and pure white light swelled like a rising tide, engulfing her and the altar in a seamless halo.

Had Aphelia known what was happening in the waking world, she would’ve thrown herself like a storm against it; it was a replay of Enkidu, a wound reopened.

To Aphelia’s own mind, the thought stung like ash on the tongue—what right did she have to demand a goddess of fate die for her?

But she couldn’t stop it. There was no stopping it. Under the vast force of Urd’s self-offering, the Artifact Spirit gestating in the Crimson Fire finally took shape, like iron drawn from a blazing forge.

Urd’s figure thinned and faded into that white glow. In the instant she vanished, Skuld and Belldandy’s minds blurred like glass struck by frost. Through the radiance, a storm of images flashed in Urd’s eyes like constellations in fast-forward.

“So that’s it...”

She breathed it as she dissolved, a sigh drifting like mist.

“No—!”

Odin shoved Belldandy aside and charged the altar like a thunderclap, but Urd had already scattered into the air. In her stead, the Crimson Fire at Aphelia’s brow flared like a sunrise about to break.

The Crimson Flame detonated with a roar. A shockwave like a tidal bore hurled even Odin through the air. Scorching fire ate the altar beneath Aphelia in a heartbeat, and her garments turned to gray ash like moth wings in a candle.

That force split even Niflheim, tearing a rift like a wound in ice; through it, the dead beyond stirred like a hive waking.

Even so, Odin and the others could do nothing. The Scarlet Inferno around Aphelia was too fierce; a stray lick of it made Odin feel his soul would char like paper.

“Aphelia!”

Seeing the dead mass toward invasion, Odin stopped caring for anything but the breach. Azure Aether surged through him like a cold river, and he shouted as he moved to plug the crack, to drive back the endless dead.

The call struck something in her. Nearly merged with the crimson sea, Aphelia jolted awake, her muddled mind rung like a bell.

“Gather!”

The crimson sea poured back into her arms like rivers to their source. Around two emerald lights, it bound itself into brand-new Bracer Gauntlets with a hiss like quenched steel.

The faces on the metal were no longer ghost or man. Instead, two utterly different designs clashed like sunrise and dusk. The right arm ran wild, with blade-bright side fins; the left arm held steady, rounded and spare, as if offense and defense wore separate skins.

Silver-white armor wrapped Aphelia’s body like moonlight on steel. Crimson tracery coiled over it like roaring dragons etched in flame.

And more startling still were the two girls floating behind her, alike yet opposite as twin mirrors. They wore deep-crimson Eastern robes, and hovered silent by her side, delicate as lacquered dolls and cold as temple incense.

While the others stared at Aphelia’s new stance, an undead squeezed through the rift like a rat through a crack. The whole of Niflheim seemed to hitch, a string drawn taut.

“Bastard—”

“Get out—”

Before their words found breath, the Crimson Flame had already reduced the intruder to ash, a moth in a furnace. The rift sealed under the hands of the two girls behind Aphelia, their fingers stitching light like needle and thread. Work done, they drifted back, eyes closed, heads dipped in a quiet nod.

“No need to tense up... It’s handled.”

Aphelia smiled at the two stunned faces, lifting a hand to wave before their eyes like leaves in a breeze, testing for any reaction.

“W-wait! Miss Aphelia, how did you do that?!”

Before Odin could speak, Belldandy surged forward, scepter raised like a spear, wariness sharp as frost.

“Hey, easy. I only burned a dead thing...” Aphelia lifted both hands, palms open like an empty sky, no hostility shown.

But the two girls in crimson snapped their eyes open, a twin glare like drawn blades, fixing on Belldandy as if to strike.

Seeing the air tighten like a bowstring, Odin forced down shock and grief. He stepped between them, prying the moment apart with both hands.

“Belldandy, rein it in! Urd didn’t lay down her life so you could run wild!”

“Aphelia, you calm down too. Your... your Artifact Spirits. Ask them to stand down...”

Just awakened, Aphelia looked between them, utterly at a loss, like someone shaken from a deep dream. She hadn’t erred, not truly. But so soon after Urd’s sacrifice, suspicion was a wildfire the others couldn’t stamp out.

“Fine. Something must’ve happened while I was out cold. Odin, tell me everything, start to finish.”

Aphelia sighed, helpless as a leaf in wind. This wasn’t the time to posture; they weren’t enemies.

Belldandy gave a cold snort like a snapped string, turned on her heel, and left without a word, a back of stone and winter.

“Great. What did I do to be hated this much…”

Aphelia could only swallow the bitterness. Thankfully, Odin took her arm and led her toward the roots where Skuld wove threads like spider-silk, and began to recount what had just unfolded, word by heavy word.

“So... that’s how it is,” Aphelia said at last, her breath heavy as rain. “For that so-called future, their sister—goddess of the past—cast herself into your Crimson Fire. No wonder she’s like this. They’ve lived a thousand years side by side; that’s family by any other name.”

She couldn’t understand it. Those who saw futures, or time’s other shores—why did they throw themselves into the fire for her? Was she strong now? Yes, like a blade freshly tempered.

With the Artifact Spirit, Aphelia felt it clearly. She’d stepped far past the level of a True God. Not just her weapon—her body and soul had both been hammered and honed. She even felt she could trade blows with Sigdrifa now, and not flinch.

Her master, Mist Bloom—the woman who bore the name of Valkyrie, and yet was no Valkyrie—who was she really?

Why had she given Aphelia the Crimson Fire? Her return from death, this overwhelming strength—so much of it owed to that fire tempering her soul like steel in coals.

In fog this thick, what had Urd and Enkidu seen that made them willing to die for her? Enkidu had spoken of the coming age of man. But Urd? Was it to reclaim the Asgardian Realm?

It sounded tidy, like a lance set straight. Yet something in her heart balked like a horse at the cliff’s edge.

“She gave up her chance at the wheel of rebirth,” Odin said, his voice rough as gravel. “From now on, aside from the two remaining goddesses and the two of us, no one in this world will remember Urd. At the world’s Origin, the part that belonged to her—she erased it herself. What she bought with that was the two Artifact Spirits behind you, human in all but name.”

He looked at the girls floating behind Aphelia and sighed, the sound hollow as a spent bell.

From the power leaking off them like heat haze, they were no weaker than Aphelia herself. Whether they held Runes or other rare gifts, who could say? Odin preferred to believe they did; their very existence ran against the grain of common order.

“I see... I’m sorry. I don’t know why Urd would die for me. It may sound cruel, but if I’d been awake, I would’ve stopped her...”

“No need. It isn’t your fault. I know that, and so does Belldandy. We’re only venting our grief, weak and useless as smoke.”

Odin gave a crooked smile and shook his head, the corners of his eyes bright with unshed frost.

“Did Urd leave any wish behind? If it’s the revival of the realm—”

“Yes, the realm must rise again,” he cut in, brisk as a campfire spark. “But that can wait. Come with me first. We’ll finish why we came to Niflheim.”

He strode toward the riverbank, quick and loud as marching boots.

By the Rhine’s edge, not far away, Belldandy stood with her scepter, silent as a shadow, staring into the clear flow. Her face was dim, a lamp turned low, grief pooling where Urd had gone.

Seeing her like that, Aphelia stepped back on instinct, as if from a shrine—this wasn’t a moment to intrude. She felt like the culprit carved into the doorframe; to ask for anything now would be like courting lightning.

Odin didn’t seem to care for such lines. He walked up and patted Belldandy’s shoulder, a touch light as frost.

“Belldandy—”

“You’re here for the Golden Ring, aren’t you?”

Her voice came out hoarse, like reeds in winter wind. In that breath, she felt not young and bright, but worn and late, a withering that stole all green from her.

“...Yes. I’m sorry, but necessity drives us.”

At her state, all Odin’s prepared words dried up like leaves. He spoke plain. What use was grand duty to someone who’d just watched kin fall?

“Fine... I’ll give it to you.”

Belldandy bent slowly, hands cupped like a chalice, and dipped into the glassy spring. With a susurrus of cold whispers, as if a thousand reeds murmured under ice, she caught something unseen and lifted it above her head.

Niflheim lay under a fierce sun in that moment, hard and bright as hammered gold.

Light poured down like spears. The awful whispers shattered like frost, gone to nothing. Under the sun’s gaze, a blaze of gold raced through Niflheim, so radiant eyes watered shut.

“This is... the Rhinegold...”

Bathed in that glow, Odin murmured the words like a prayer, eyes wide as dawn.