Hrok had slung her old spiked mace across her back. Against these giant, swarming beasts, a one‑handed counter weapon was dead weight. She switched to a weighty warhammer. Every two‑handed sweep unleashed blinding Thunder and ravenous flame, flooding out like a storm-burst.

With Hrok in motion, the giants stopped being a problem. Their strength was immense, but only strength. No tricks, no sorcery. Beyond their mind‑scarring looks, they were just oversized predators, hides and fangs under a bigger moon.

“Damn this black mire—what a plague, like soot that won’t wash off!”

Hrok’s Aether burst wide, a gale that tore the descending mire like storm wind parting a filthy curtain, buying the refugees a few more breaths.

Just as she thought, these hulks weren’t the real threat. They weren’t even as menacing as a Daemon Beast. Years of hunts had taught humans that big game bleeds the same. The true threat was the ceiling of mire that kept pouring down like a poisoned monsoon.

That mire carried feral power, built to unmake living flesh like lye on silk. Weaker Valkyrie cadets had already warped into snarling abominations. Luckily, most of those things held no Aether, hollow shells under a sick sky. The sturdier cadets could still duck the rain and trade blows, fighting between drops.

Even so, plenty slipped and were swallowed, remade as new monsters. Human numbers drained like sand in an hourglass. The mire never thinned; the scales kept tipping. The weak fed the sludge; the strong Valkyries ended up as lone torches in the dark.

Even Hrok bore fresh wounds. Years of battle had left her skin unmarked, yet the mire burned a livid brand across her back, a comet of pain. She grunted; her fingers slackened on the hammer for a heartbeat.

The mire didn’t stop at flesh; it bit the soul like frost through bone. Even Hrok’s focus blinked out for an instant. Mortals fared worse. Armored units only bought a little time. Tanks and jets went silent, their shells fizzing away like sugar in acid, their crews gone with the steam.

Some even pinned hopes on rockets. The boosters hadn’t cleared the air before the mire ate them clean, a candle snuffed in a gust. The people inside had no better end. Under that black rain, hope thinned to a thread.

“Look out!” The cry snapped Hrok back from the kill. A tide of monsters was already crashing in, whitecaps of teeth and claws. Above, a roof of black mire tipped and fell, a coffin lid sealing her in.

Panic spiked—no way out. Hrok felt it; so did Violet, who’d shouted. Even if Aether could blast the mire aside, this blanket was too thick, too heavy. And the beasts were closing from every quarter, walls of meat and hate.

These things didn’t fear death. They would throw bodies into a rampart and stop her for a blink. Hrok wasn’t built for speed; cutting through a sea of bones was a dream in quicksand.

Her despair lasted only a heartbeat, a black wave that rose and broke.

If she couldn’t get out, then she’d die taking the world with her clenched in a fistful of teeth. She’d never asked why she lived. She just followed iron instinct—forge the weapon, break the beast. Even so, an oath sat bright in her chest like a coal.

Hrok’s body became a roaring furnace. She drove her Aether backward, a self‑burn that overclocked the forge. A vessel built for one measure now took several, rivers poured into a cup. Familiar flame climbed her skin. In the next breath, runaway Aether would erase her. Her fire would scour monsters and mire to ash for dozens of miles, a sunrise that burned all.

“Don’t, Hrok!” Violet screamed. Her blood‑red spear burst into sprawling brambles, and in one breath she reaped monsters like wheat. It still wasn’t enough. Most of these corpses‑born things had been ordinary Valkyries; their once‑mighty bodies now formed a barricade of sisters, thorn and burden on her path.

So this was the nearness of death—the cold clarity before snow. Hrok’s mouth bent in a bitter smile. She let her eyes fall shut and waited. The monster‑roars went distant, like surf behind fog. The scorched air smoothed. For a breath she stood in a familiar place and tasted peace.

“Hey. Who said you could die?” The teasing voice cracked her calm. Hrok’s eyes flew open. “Brynhildr!” “Wrong—Lady Sigdrifa.”

A familiar silhouette split the void. Not Aphelia’s ink‑black hair, but a waterfall of silver in a high tail. Blue and silver armor. A wolfish gleam in her eyes. The face matched Aphelia’s, but the first glance named her. It was Sigdrifa, the one who had vanished into the void.

Silver‑white Aether poured into a colossal blade. Under it, those hulking monsters were brittle ants on ice. In Sigdrifa’s slender frame, pressure built like a mountain storm about to break.

“Long is the age‑old night. Only life endures.” As her chant rang like a hymn, the greatsword pried the mire apart, then shattered into a thousand Aether blades. The massive spine turned into a giant trunk, and the spreading Aether unfurled like boughs, roofing the world.

When the Aether‑tree drove roots into the earth, a flood of life surged out. It fell as dew and rain, washing over the wounded Valkyries. The stronger they were, the more the spring seeped in. Hrok’s backlash wounds mended seven or eight parts in a breath, the red cooled to pink.

Violet didn’t lower her guard, but her cuts knit before her eyes. This life‑force was clean as first snow—purer even than the vitality she stole with blood.

“I caused this?” Sigdrifa’s laugh was dry. Her silver‑gray eyes lifted to the black ring hanging in the sky. “I’m not nearly that talented.”

Aether blades kept fanning out, nailing every monster they met like stakes through shadows. If this world’s Valkyries held a drop of Aether, Sigdrifa held an ocean. She could quilt the planet in blades, and her reserves would refill faster than she spent them.

“These black mire weren’t your doing—and those Eldritch Gods in orbit…?” Hrok was stunned. Sigdrifa’s hand was the last she’d expect. They should have been fire and ice; fighting shoulder to shoulder felt like a joke the stars told.

“Of course not. How many times do I have to say it?” Sigdrifa waved, impatient as a cat in rain. “Do I need a whole play to pose as your savior? I’m not Brynhildr. I don’t need useless companions. Faster to cut you down than juggle your thanks and doubts.”

She brushed past Hrok and Violet and rose above the Aether‑tree, staring at the black ring. By now the tree canopied half the Earth; its silver boughs—countless Aether blades—speared into the high air and kissed space. From orbit, a silver‑white veil would show, stretched over the world and forever unweaving the falling mire.

“Brazen, aren’t you? Think no one lives on this star?” In her sight, pale‑cyan streams kept rising from Earth into the ring. She snorted. A silver blade bloomed in her hand, and she cut.

The black ring felt it too late. Busy drinking those pale‑cyan currents, it couldn’t guard. It took the strike head‑on. Mighty Aether drew a blazing arc across the void and split the ring clean through.

The ring’s solid shadow shuddered. The tremor wasn’t just a ripple of light; it rang out to the edges of the cosmos. Countless worlds turned to powder, glass spheres imploding without warning, broken from the core outward, nothing left but drifting dust.