New to this land, Brynhildr didn’t rush; like a hunter stepping into fog, she held her breath.

The Aether coordinates had yanked her into this world like a hook from the deep, so she hid in shadow.

She thought it would be days, yet the hiding sank into nearly a century, like a stone under snow.

She was grievously wounded, her body like cracked porcelain, and she had to heal.

With no options, she raised a hidden house inside the mines, like a fox burrowing into blue rock.

She never expected the wounds to drag her into the deepest coma, like sinking to a trench.

Her mind, to protect her, laid her into a long hibernation, like a seed in permafrost.

Her own Aether, guided by instinct, wrapped her like a misted cocoon, keeping the world at bay like a warding tide.

A century isn’t long for non-human beings, like old stones counting seasons.

In Asgard, many such races live for centuries, like pines on a cold ridge.

The price is thin birthrates, like sparse stars in a winter sky.

Some, troll-kind and the like, see only three or four offspring in a hundred years, like dew on a blade.

If a Plague of Beasts hits, it falls like a scythe; for many, it’s a shattering avalanche.

Some unlucky races vanish entirely in those tides, like tents swept from a shore.

So they keep bloodthirsty, vigilant habits, like wolves with bared fangs at dusk.

If they don’t stay sharp, their bones become driftwood in the beast tide.

To most people, non-humans seem strong and terrible, like storm fronts on the horizon.

Within the Asgardian Realm, if they don’t provoke the Aesir, they could move mountains and drain seas, and no one would step in.

So long as they hold the line of not harming the Asgardian Realm’s citizens, they fear little but beast tides, like towers that only dread earthquakes.

Brows drawing tight like storm clouds, Aphelia asked, “Aren’t Asgardians weak? If they haven’t grasped the essence of power, how do they deter anyone?”

She had met Odin; he was human in shape, like a man carved from wind and grit.

The Rune power reforged his body, yet he was still a stronger kind of human, not a different species.

When giants hunted him, if he had been non-human, they’d have sought alliance, not blood, like wolves circling a kin scent.

“Of course,” the girl who resembled Brynhildr said, shaking her head like a willow in wind.

“The Aesir are still human, yet they’re too strong, like peaks cut off by cloud from the plain.

Once they started calling their mother race ‘mortals,’ they’d already stepped away from being human, like a boat slipped from its moorings.”

She had dealt with the Aesir far more than Aphelia had; their deeds were stains on snow to her.

She held no fondness for these self-crowned ‘gods’ who severed their roots, like trees sawed from their earth.

It was natural: strong as Brynhildr was, when she rose again on a wasteland Earth, she never abandoned humans, like a lamp kept lit in ruins.

Though among humans there were the vile, the weak, the treacherous, she never forsook those who were still human, like a shepherd counting every lamb.

“Even if he’s a sinner, he’s still human. His sins should be judged by humans; no alien hand should stain the scales… Lady Brynhildr said so.”

The girl blinked, knowing and bright, like a star winking from thin cloud.

Aphelia felt a knot of doubt, like a pebble in a shoe, yet she held back from dousing the warmth.

After crossing time and space, she had questions about Brynhildr and Sigdrifa, like shadows under noon light.

“It’s very much her style,” she murmured; then the thorn pricked.

“Are humans truly that important to Brynhildr? Why do I see only brutality in Sigdrifa? What are they to each other?

If they’re two faces of one person, that’s easier to swallow, like a coin with two sides.

But now Sigdrifa lends a hand, and the coin spins.”

If Sigdrifa now moved to save humanity, what shift turned her wind?

If Brynhildr stands for patient love toward humans, then Sigdrifa might be their extreme hatred, like night answering day.

Aphelia knew people aren’t only black or white, yet at Brynhildr’s height, knots become a single breath.

Kill, or don’t.

Guard, or break.

When Brynhildr stood on the side of conscience, Sigdrifa seemed drawn onto the line of chaos, like twin lotuses from one root blooming opposite colors.

It felt as if fate had planned this, like two rivers splitting around a rock.

“You’re too bound to the surface,” the girl said softly, her voice like rain on leaves.

“It’s no wonder. Lady Brynhildr wouldn’t tell you.

She feared becoming a burden to people like us, like a snow-laden branch bending low.

She hid her past and the details of herself whenever she could.

From the start, she never meant to treat us as vessels; more as her children, like seedlings beneath her cloak.”

The beautiful girl lowered her head; in those black eyes lay loneliness and longing, like night water.

The memories with Brynhildr were carved deep, like chisel marks in stone.

Even as she spoke to Aphelia, the hope in her gaze shone through, like dawn threading a thin fog.

Awkwardness prickled Aphelia like nettles.

She kept a smile and bore the girl’s heated stare—and that near-identical face—like a mirror misted with breath.

Being watched by someone who looks like you unsettles anyone, like a ripple over still tea.

“So Brynhildr slept—a hundred years at once,” Aphelia cut in, shifting the wind.

“What then? When she woke, what happened next?”

“Ah—sorry, my mistake.”

The girl blinked, smiled, and went on, like a bell resuming its chime.

“She built that shelter for concealment, tucked in the mines with her Aether as a shield, like fog lacquered over iron.

Most non-human races couldn’t get near; even if they did, the mountain turned them around, like a maze of pine and stone.

Humans stood even less chance; they couldn’t approach the mines at all, like ants halted by a river.”

As the girl spoke, Aphelia slowly saw the old human plight, like a map surfacing from soot.

Those who ascended with the Aesir, or gained their shelter, lived within the Asgardian Realm, like birds inside high walls.

Because the Aesir and the non-human races kept a baseline of non-aggression, humans inside Asgard were unusually safe, like seeds stored in jars.

But outside the realm, it was different, like wind beyond the gate.

Years of beast tides pushed non-humans to dodge extinction, like herds pressed by winter.

They didn’t cooperate like humans; each race’s own defenses made alliances grind, like stones in a sack.

Even so, they carved out a vast territory in the Great Forest, set champions to guard each tract, a sieve to thin the beast tide, like dikes lacing a flood.

Meanwhile, the human nightmare began, like night falling over an unlit camp.

“Lady Brynhildr said the first to do it were the dragons,” the girl whispered, like ash dropping from a torch.

Aphelia’s face went pale as frost; her slim knuckles popped like breaking ice.

She had never thought the relatively rational dragonkind would sink so low, like kings turned carrion crows.

Human fertility had long ensured survival, like grass forcing up through stone.

Short lives, yes, but each generation birthed many children, like fish in a warm stream.

Non-human races with wit watched and marked them, like wolves behind a fence.

Then came the atrocity, like a stain spreading in snow.

“Brynhildr woke to a sky-shaking surge of resentment, like Thunder rolling up from graves.

I don’t know exactly what she felt, but her words and face said enough, like soot clinging to a hearth.

I can guess why she used Thunder and wrath to erase dragonkind from peak to egg, like a storm scouring a nest.”

Imagine waking to see your kin raped and degraded, turned into breeding tools, tortured, living day to day on a cliff edge.

What would you think, standing under that sky?

The dragons did exactly that, like serpents in crowns.

They didn’t dare touch the stronger human clans; if those went for mutual ruin, dragonkind would bleed out, like glass smashed on stone.

So they raided small tribes at will, used human women as wombs, like thieves planting in stolen fields.

The result was heartbreak: for many non-human races, human hybrids raised the chance of offspring, like oil added to a dim lamp.

The Aesir even helped in the dark, just to erase the human clans they despised, like shadows guiding a knife.