From behind the giant, a muscle-carved elder drifted out like a shadow from stone. White hair, white beard, yet he stood like a war-banner, tiger-eyed and fierce. Just standing there, he felt like a granite cliff, and gazes slid off him like rain.

He folded his arms. A map of scars crossed his skin like dried rivers, telling of a hundred wars and a butcher’s calm.

“Siegfried... I never thought you, the self-styled moderate, would join an unjust war!”

Unjust war? What a joke. Across the world’s long river, no war rides pure virtue; every war is tribe for tribe, for mad expansion or desperate survival.

Odin’s shout was a hammer on the mind, nothing more; she wanted to shake the old general’s heart like wind against a banner. In the three-tiered worlds, Siegfried’s name meant moderation. But once you stand in the battlefield’s eye, words are leaves in a storm.

To come here is to choose frenzy, to wade into a sea of blades.

Siegfried gave a cold laugh, dry as iron on frost. He slid the greatsword from his back. Its blade shone ice-pale, a winter sun that made even Odin’s gaze harden.

“Odin, Odin... Lord of Gods, is this all you’ve got—lip and wind?”

The axe-bearing giant barked a laugh like falling rocks. The legion of the dead rolled with it, a graveyard tide.

“Sure, it’s all lip and wind. Wanna try me?”

Odin didn’t blink. Frontline taunts were sparks on wet stone. Belldandy stood at her side like a quiet moon. By any measure, they were at a disadvantage, bare against a storm.

The giant and Siegfried weren’t prey. They were wolves from the Second Layer, forged by years of war, their skill as deep as Odin’s. Old hands held sharp steel; that meant a brutal fight.

Without Belldandy, Odin felt she could cut down both, clean as lightning through black cloud.

She angled the blinding spear of Thunder, the Azure Aether circling her like a pale cyclone. She was ready.

Seeing Odin level the spear, both stopped talking. The ironclad giant whirled his axe and leapt like a falling meteor. He chopped down from the sky. Siegfried had Belldandy marked from the start; he shot for Odin’s back like a hunting cat.

“Thunder...”

Red lips moved like a spark catching tinder. A sea of lightning spilled open like a storm-torn ocean.

“...Fury!!”

The vast sea of Thunder burst wide, no chains, no mercy. The target wasn’t the two charging in; it was Niflheim below, cold as underworld snow. Odin took the risk of being carved apart, and turned the Aether around her into a thunderstorm. She poured it onto the dead like rain on a burial field.

Boom!!!

The first to reach Odin wasn’t the leaping giant; it was Siegfried. His brass-bright blade cracked onto her spear of Thunder, a bell struck by lightning. Azure Aether ran down the sword like a river and blew in the air like a thunderhead.

Siegfried didn’t chase. One hit, then retreat, nimble as a fox. The giant almost brushed him as he fell, axe slamming onto Odin’s spear like a landslide. The raw weight forced Odin a step back; her heel skidded like a stone on ice.

Great strength came with a shadow—slow feet, heavy as swamp.

A blinding bolt flashed before the giant’s eyes. It wasn’t a kill strike; it was a feint like a swallow’s wing. The spear that bore the axe suddenly pulled away. Odin moved like lightning, heel turning into a pivot. She dipped low and spun like a top, then drove the spear for the giant’s eyes like a diving hawk.

You’re not guarding. You’re hunting! The thought hit the giant like cold water. The thrust was too fast. He only had time to raise a palm, flesh against storm. Against an Aether-forged spear, meat was wet clay.

Clang!!!

Siegfried’s blade cut in from the side, catching the thrust like a door slammed in a gale. Edge and spear scraped, shrieking like iron on ice.

“Hmph! Still the same little tricks, Odin!”

Light pulsed along Siegfried’s blade like a heartbeat. He moved to reverse-cut, a scythe swing under moonlight. Odin, still low, showed a cold smile. Her left hand opened, five fingers splayed, and she yanked as if hauling an unseen net.

“Yeah. I still live on little tricks.”

The world paused, a held breath before thunder.

Azure Aether knotted into nodes, each a thumbprint of storm, all leashed to Odin’s five fingers like threads of lightning. Needles of light ran through the air like quicksilver. Matching nodes lit on Siegfried and the brute, right where Odin’s Azure Aether had marked them before.

Before they could react, Odin jerked her hand. Their bodies slammed together like colliding boulders. Balance shattered. Their weapons crossed wrong, leverage lost, and they pitched forward above Odin like toppled statues. Their chests lay bare like exposed earth.

The Azure spear had waited like a coiled snake. It punched up without a blink.

In that bind, even if Siegfried and the brute tried to split apart and share force, they couldn’t. The reason was simple: the Azure nodes branded on them, tiny as thumbprints, heavy as mountains. They crushed the two together like a vice.

Panicked, the brute threw out his right arm and met the thunder-spear head-on, a tree against flood. The result was certain. With the stink of scorched skin, the spear burned through his forearm. Bone and muscle tore free under Odin’s pull like torn roots.

Yes. Tore free.

Bone squealed on bone like chalk on slate. The brute howled like a wounded bear. The pierced arm ripped off. The two, spared a heart-shot, were flung away like broken dolls and crashed into the dead like stones into a bog.

“Tch. I thought I’d at least cripple one.”

Those nodes were a trick Odin hammered together in her sea of mind, a forge under night. Through Azure Aether’s own pull, nothing hit harder than Aether itself, not even human titans like Siegfried or the brute.

But the brute’s hero’s cut saved them from the grave, a wolf chewing its own leg free. He only lost an arm. If the spear had taken his heart, not even the World Tree would bring him back from that winter.

Odin couldn’t spam the nodes. Each use meant smashing a mass of Aether down, compressed like a spring, and driving it into the enemy. Aether wasn’t endless water. She was still raining Thunder onto the dead.

Before she could think further, a figure burst from the graves like fire from ash.

Siegfried led the charge, a hawk stooping on prey.

The brass-bright blade came again, faster than before, a wind slicing reeds. He almost cracked Odin’s guard.

“Thunder—tsk!”

Before Odin could chant, the brass blade seemed to swing twice in a blink, a phantom stroke. It scraped past the spear and grazed her cheek, a red thread of blood.

Odin swept her Aether-spear across like a storm broom. Several bolts of Thunder leapt in, snakes of light, and forced Siegfried back. She stole a breath like a diver breaking the surface.

“Huff... huff... Huh?!”

From within the dead, a beast’s snarl rose, rough as rocks grinding.

A figure like a savage god stood up from the endless dead, tall as a pine in winter. Any corpse near him shredded in a heartbeat, torn by an unseen gale. His armor cracked and fell away like ice, baring cable-thick muscle.

The char at his severed stump began to regrow, a black bud sprouting new flesh.

“Damn it.”

Odin drew back to hurl her spear like a comet. The brass blade came again, a snake in long grass. A ruthless, shadowed style pressed her back. Siegfried’s eyes swam red as blood-lit water. He locked on Odin like a wolf on venison.

“Hmph... no longer human, huh? Then come. Round two.”

Thunder rose in a sudden squall. Odin gripped twin spears and rushed in like a storm-front.

Elsewhere in midair, another battle burned like two suns at war.

Crimson Flame and pure-white crystal hammered each other like hammer and anvil. Their wielders did the same. Especially Aphelia, who fought like there was no dawn, trading wound for wound. Every time a cut opened, Crimson Fire poured in like molten lacquer. For a time, that bought her an edge as keen as frost.

The two girls drove the flames with everything they had, a bellows over a forge, leaving Sigdrifa no room to slip like smoke. But their foe was a battle-seasoned goddess, iron under silk. She once shared memory with a Valkyrie, which meant she held the same killing craft and war-scarred experience.

“Sigdrifa!!!!”

“Eh~ I’m right here.”

Aphelia’s punches blurred like rain on slate. Sigdrifa always found a wicked angle, a needle-thread in a gale. She even parried now and then, carving fresh lines on Aphelia like knives on bark. Aphelia didn’t care; she walked through pain like fire through dry grass.

Torn sinew pain. The grief of losing love. Both were salt in an endless wound.

Rage, pain, hate—every dark emotion was perfect fuel, oil on the Crimson Fire. It burned higher, a forge wind roaring. Her body hardened like tempered steel. Her power climbed like a tide under a red moon. If there was a force above gods, Aphelia paid with her life to reach it, coin by coin.

With every blaze, a shard of memory in Aphelia blew up like a flare. The hurt replayed sharper, a knife twisted, then hardened into the blade in her hand, existing only to cut the enemy like wheat.

Even gods burn down to the wick; even suns dim at dusk.

Sigdrifa’s body was a map of scars now, silver lines under blood. But she saw the fire in Aphelia, a furnace ready to eat the world. If she dragged this out, patience like winter, the victory would be hers.