Before either of them could react, Odin yanked hard. Their bodies slammed together, balance shredded, weapons knocked askew. They pitched forward over her crown, chests and bellies bared like fish hauled over a gunwale.

The cerulean spear had waited like a cold star. It shot up without a heartbeat’s doubt.

In that squeeze, even Siegfried and the burly giant couldn’t split apart by borrowing each other’s force. The reason was simple: the cerulean nodes seared into their skin. Thumb-sized marks, yet a tidal pull roared between them, Aether dragging them into one crushing knot.

Desperation hit first. The giant thrust his right arm into the spear’s path, choosing the break instead of the heart. The result was never in doubt. A burnt-skin stench bit the air as the thunder lance punched through his forearm. With a wet rip and a bone-scrape screech, Odin tore the impaled arm clean off.

Yes—tore it off.

His scream rattled the dead ranks. The two who dodged death flew back, flung like rag dolls, and crashed heavy into the legion of the dead.

“Tsk. Thought I could cripple at least one.”

That node trick was something Odin had forged in her mindscape. Cerulean Aether nodes, drawn to each other—no force outmuscles Aether itself. Not even human titans like Siegfried and that giant.

But the giant’s bitter choice saved them both. An arm for a life. If the lance had cored the heart, not even the World Tree would’ve hauled him back.

She couldn’t spam the nodes either. Each use compressed a flood of Aether and slammed it into the target. Aether was not bottomless, especially while she kept pounding the dead legion.

She didn’t get to think longer. A shape burst from the dead like an iron arrow.

Siegfried hit first.

His brass-bright blade came again. Faster than before. Fast enough to almost break her guard.

“Thunder—tsk!”

Before the word became a weave, the brass blade flickered twice in one blink. It kissed past the thunder lance and scored her cheek, a fine red line burning there.

Odin whipped her Aether spear across her front. Bolts of Thunder walked up the air, crowding Siegfried back. She caught a breath that tasted of iron.

“Hah… hah—hmm?!”

The legion howled like a mad beast.

Something rose from the endless dead—a towering brute, godlike in violence. Any corpse near him tore apart at once, rended by an unseen force. His plates split and fell, revealing knotted muscle like cables beneath.

The charred stump of his arm began to grow.

“Damn it!”

Odin cocked her arm to hurl a spear—and Siegfried was on her again. His blade-work turned savage, a viper’s rhythm. Blood-red veined his eyes. He stared at her like a hunter at prey.

“Hmph… beyond human already? Fine. Come on. Round two.”

Thunder cracked off her shoulders. She gripped twin spears and dashed in.

Higher up, another battle went bad to worse.

Crimson Flame and pure-white crystal gnawed at each other, and their wielders did the same. Aphelia most of all. She fought like she’d thrown her life on the fire, trading wound for wound. Each time her flesh split, Crimson Fire poured in to fill it. For a time, that bought her edge.

Two girls in crimson pressed the flame with both hands, giving Sigdrifa no space to slip. But the foe was a goddess seasoned by war, who once shared a Valkyrie’s memory. That meant equal craft, equal scars, equal cunning.

“Sigdrifa!”

“Eh~ I’m right here.”

Aphelia’s fists blurred till sight failed. Sigdrifa kept catching the odd angle. A parry here, a tap there, a cut laid in return. Aphelia never flinched.

Bone-deep pain, lover-torn grief.

Anger. Pain. Hatred. A pyre of fuel. Crimson Fire roared higher. Her body thickened with power, her force climbed like a tide under the moon. If there’s a power beyond gods, Aphelia was spending her life to find that edge.

Every time the fire flared, a shard of memory blew wide in her skull. Pain replayed sharper, harsher. Then it cooled into a blade in her hand, born to cut her enemy down.

Even gods gutter and die.

Sigdrifa’s body wore a net of wounds, yet her eyes had already seen Aphelia’s core flame. Too hot, too absolute, a fire that wants to burn the world. Drag this out, and that fire burns its vessel. The win will be hers.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!”

Heat hammered the sky. Air seemed to char. Space around Aphelia trembled, warped, like glass near a forge. The same twist gathered in her palms.

By now, she moved on pure instinct.

Can’t land a hit? Then kill the distance.

But closing in on Sigdrifa wasn’t that easy.

Both held the line. Aphelia kept trying to crash the gap. Sigdrifa slid away on strange footwork and long-earned habit. If Aphelia used only Crimson Fire, a purity of white crystal bloomed from thin air to answer it.

Experience, Sigdrifa owned in spades. But battle sense? Since her soul fused with the Crimson Fire—no, with that enigmatic Primordial Flame—Aphelia’s instinct turned feral, beyond any primate.

That sense near-read the next second.

If she couldn’t shorten the gap, she’d erase it.

Within arm’s reach, space itself burned under Crimson Fire, broke in an instant, then stitched back together by the same flame. Hitting once wasn’t enough. She needed cover too.

She punched, then snapped back to the starting place in the same breath.

If Sigdrifa wanted first strike, she had to hit Aphelia’s original spot. But Aphelia had only skewed the distance. As the attack came, she punched again. When Sigdrifa threw her first, Aphelia’s second was already falling.

Wound for wound. Life for life.

Even Sigdrifa’s eyes lit, a predator’s gleam.

Shatter space, then mend it. She could do that, but she wouldn’t have thought to. That was why their fight had stayed a bare-knuckle brawl this long.

“To grasp a higher art mid-fight… interesting!!!”

Her grin went wild. She ate Aphelia’s punch on purpose. Pure-white crystal stepped across space and sealed the seam where Aphelia would heal it. Sigdrifa threw her own straight.

Right fist locked? Then throw the left.

Crimson Fire sliced the air. The left Bracer Gauntlet, built for guard, became a heavy shield, slamming head-on into Sigdrifa’s punch. Metal to meat—looked decided.

Next beat, Aphelia got hurled back.

Even armored in crimson, that simple straight from Sigdrifa sent a deep ache humming up her bones. Her right side was wide open.

“You’ve lost, Aphelia!”

Pure-white crystal burst from Sigdrifa’s knuckles. In a blink it became a knight’s great lance, driving for Aphelia’s heart.

“Don’t—”

“—keep dreaming!”

Two girls in crimson finery flashed in again. A wall of blaze rushed from their palms and hammered the crystal lance.

Crimson Flame and white lance crossed in midair. Both sides burned everything. Power detonated into a mad storm, like it meant to sweep all Niflheim. The pull from its eye wanted to tear bodies in half.

In that heartbeat, Aphelia’s sense of space slipped out of place.

“What are… these things?!”

Shards of broken Niflheim surged toward her. Countless memories burst into her mind—before Niflheim had a name, before the three Fates were born, when another god ruled this realm.

Back then it wasn’t called Niflheim, yet it was still the Land of the Dead.

“Right. The Reaper… that wasn’t an illusion!”

She saw the black-robed figure. Pain split her skull like an axe wedge, and she clenched her teeth until they sang.

The figure felt like death itself. Just remembering it hurt. Nothing living can look straight at Death as a concept. If any can, they’re dead already—only those who dwell in the Land of the Dead can stomach that sting.

Aphelia stared into that concept anyway. Her head swelled fit to burst. The black robe sharpened in her mind, edges hardening, weight gathering, as if it stepped into flesh.

“Mm… interesting. Too interesting. Aphelia, Aphelia—I never imagined you had power like this.”