Odin looked keenly interested in Urd’s words, like a hawk catching a glint on a river.

This “cycle of fallacy” likely pointed to the world’s laws, a wheel grinding under heaven, yet Uroboros had been aberrant from the moment she surfaced, like a star out of orbit. To Aphelia, their so‑called fallacy felt one‑sided. The cosmos’ laws are born alongside the Origin; if a fallacy exists, it’s simply a mask those laws can wear.

Against the giants, Odin’s Rune power was always limited, a blade dulled by frost. What lets her move so calmly now is the Aether Aphelia gave when she hauled Odin back from the abyss of death. Whoever handles Aether brushes a rule of the world, or becomes a rule, like a mountain turning into the skyline.

Power that widens a gap in concept can crush giants like reeds before a flood. But Uroboros? When she appeared, her dread strength broke the usual scale, like night swallowing the moon. Odin remembers clearly the sky‑swallowing serpent over the Golden Plain, where Uroboros devoured half the giants’ legion like a sea eating cliffs.

And in the end, Aphelia only offered a vague “my helping hand,” a misty answer that waved it all aside.

Now that Urd had spoken her name, it wasn’t going to be so simple, like a knot tightening in the dark.

“Of course, of course. Easy now.” Urd’s voice went soft as silk. A silver flash crossed her bright eyes like moonlight on steel. Then she said, “What if the you standing here isn’t you, Ouroboros?”

To Uroboros, that was laughable, a cracked bell. She drew breath to retort, but Urd spoke first. Only then did Aphelia truly see what had changed in the scene. The goddess of fate who’d always claimed sacrifice for all—her body was now threaded with the power of the Origin, like roots drinking from the source.

Aphelia can see essences now, as if the world were glass. Strip away Urd’s skin, and she’s a soul wrapped in the emblem of her nature. Yet unlike Odin and the Aesir, Urd carried no Rune glow. What ran through her was pure Aether, a clear river through stone.

The Aesir should be insulated from Aether, like oil from water. Even Odin only bears it because Aphelia once bestowed a portion on her, which turned her inner Runes and birthed that pale‑cyan Thunder Aether, a storm with a new hue. Urd is one of the three goddesses of fate—there’s no reason she should wield Aether.

So another question rose like mist: was Aphelia watching a memory, or standing inside the past? It’s not that she can’t separate false from true. Both memory and past time are real things, like twin rivers under the same sky. You can spot a fake at a glance, sure—but what about truth?

If it’s truth by itself, then seeing through illusion means nothing to it, like wind over stone. These aren’t someone else’s memories. They’re Aphelia’s own, lived and breathed. No one can fool her with a stranger’s memories. With her own, unless she’d broken her mind, how could a fallacy be born?

Wait. Doesn’t my situation sound a bit like what Urd just said?

The thought leapt up in Aphelia’s mind like a fish breaking water. She turned her gaze to Urd. But Urd’s eyes never crossed hers, two stars that refused to meet, and confusion tugged at Aphelia like a cold draft.

Across her travel on the timeline, every step had purpose, a compass set by storm. Sometimes it was a cry for aid. Sometimes a history that demanded her hand. In those currents, high or low, people always spoke to Aphelia.

Then this should be a memory.

Aphelia made that first call. If the point was to let her sink into pain by watching it again, this scene held no sting at all. She felt nothing, a winter lake without ripples. So why was the Origin laying it out before her again?

She couldn’t see the end of it. Better to watch and wait, like a hunter in fog.

“How did you die, and how did you step back into this world—do you remember? Why did you stay by Aphelia’s side in this form—do you remember?” Urd didn’t know Aphelia’s thoughts turning. She pointed at Uroboros’s heart, one word after another like rain on eaves.

“Hmph. I obviously—” The words died. Uroboros froze.

Her black pupils filled with a sudden fear, like ink spreading in water. The sentence she’d shaped lodged in her throat. Her earlier confidence fell away like a broken banner.

Seeing that, Urd knew her words had struck home. She went on without hurry, a steady tide. “Do you remember the real reason you stand by Aphelia? O revenant’s shade of the Reaper’s making.”

“No. No!!” Uroboros’s face went stiff as frost. She dropped to her knees in pain, clutching her head as if to hold it together. She denied Urd again and again, a drumbeat of refusal, yet memories sprinted through her mind like lightning, and each flash confirmed Urd’s claim.

It’s coming. The humans will invade soon.

Aphelia watched the “false” Uroboros collapse in agony, and she didn’t move to help. If this was a straight replay of her memories, then the next beats wouldn’t change. The false Uroboros would vanish completely. The true Uroboros would wake within Aphelia’s body like a serpent uncoiling.

Was there something wrong with this stretch of memory? By cause and effect, the false one’s death triggered the Reaper’s meddling with space, which let humans outside Niflheim find a breach into Niflheim. But seen the other way, it was too neat, like dice that always land the same. Too coincidental to trust.

If Urd hadn’t stripped Uroboros bare, the false one’s end wouldn’t have destabilized the Land of the Dead, and the humans wouldn’t have found their chance. If Urd stood with the humans, would wrecking Niflheim profit a fate‑goddess born with Niflheim itself?

If Niflheim perished, the gods entwined with it would perish as well, leaves burned with the tree.

Odin saw the turn and knew it was bad. She moved to stop Urd, but Urd shook her head. She walked to the kneeling Uroboros, slow as dusk, and bent to whisper in her ear.

“Pawn of the Reaper, your task is over.”

At those words, Uroboros clutched her brow and bowed low, a small, helpless moan slipping out like wind through reeds. Power peeled off her body into thick black mist, rising into the air like smoke after rain.

The sentence hit like a final hammer blow and shattered her last defense. Or rather, the one evaporating wasn’t the true Uroboros at all. The force that sustained this remnant had been unraveled by Urd, so collapse was the only end.

“Cough… cough… I see. I see…” Uroboros seemed to recall something, and murmured as if tasting an old flavor. She rose slowly and looked at Aphelia with a lingering gaze, like a traveler at a harbor.

“Your task is over. The Reaper sent you to guard her, didn’t he? Her whole life is wrapped in fog, and the Reaper values her this much. Isn’t there something you want to leave behind? I can sustain your existence…” Urd stepped in to persuade, offering a hand like a bridge.

Truth be told, she had already seen the past and knew the lay of it. With her sisters’ foresight of the future, she came ready to bargain with Uroboros. It looks like that. But if she could see the future, was the future worse if the false Uroboros remained?

Aphelia faced that possibility. If the false Uroboros wasn’t erased, would a greater disaster come? If so, why didn’t Urd say it then? Was it that she couldn’t say it, or didn’t dare?

Aphelia remembered Urd once speaking of the RhineFairies’ rules. Yet when the whole world‑line falls into chaos, even the RhineFairies, who keep to non‑interference, can’t sit high and distant. Because of their nature, they’re fated not to act directly. So for them, the three—Uroboros, Odin, and Aphelia—were vital, like keystones in an arch.

But the false Uroboros wouldn’t bite that bait at all. In truth, Uroboros’s nature would never accept a RhineFairy’s bargain. She shook her head with cool disdain. Calm had returned to her eyes. Though half her body had already weathered away, she refused Urd’s offer.

“Urd… that’s your name, isn’t it? Even if I’m not the original, do you think I’d accept that? Do you perhaps misunderstand what the being called Ouroboros is?”

Uroboros is Uroboros. Whether body or fragment, she holds her own pride like a blade. She’s a rule evolved at the world’s birth—grand words, perhaps, but the truth all the same.

After a long silence, Urd answered. “No…”

She knew that answer in her heart, yet she still had to try, like a gambler watching one last star. Because she is a goddess who surveys time, she longs even more than mortals for that one‑in‑a‑billion chance. Even as a RhineFairy, she can crave a mist‑thin future like a common soul.