“Tempting terms. I’ll take the deal—but with one more condition. If your Valkyrie squad is that strong, then after I save them, I want their help returning to my era to reclaim my homeland. Deal?”
“Deal, of course! Then I’ll—”
Fenrir’s joy flashed like dawn on frost. She lifted a hand to trigger the transfer, but Aphelia caught her wrist like a gust pinning a loose banner.
“Wait. You said that thing can’t be spoken of. Fine. But at least tell me what kind of enemy wiped you out in Asgard, so I can prepare. If the enemy is that power, I need to know whether you can pull us back, in numbers, from that era.”
Panic pricked first, then sense steadied her like a rock in a river. Being blindfolded into a jump was a good way to die. She had no idea what kind of force could erase Valkyries as bright as comets, or a being like Brynhildr, a mountain among peaks.
Worse, Fenrir had called it “It,” and even the word felt like ash on the tongue. If speaking its true name triggered chains like falling dominos, then its shadow reached like winter over every fire.
“Right. I actually meant to send you a bit earlier in time,” Fenrir said, voice low as wind under a door. “Move the Valkyries before Its power seeped in. Strictly speaking, they fell right after the beast tide was driven back. I can’t describe more.”
The admission came like steam from a cracked seal. She had been too excited, her words spilling like beads from a snapped string. She had watched too many worldlines, waited too many winters, to miss the one branch where Aphelia appeared.
“So you can’t be more specific… because of It?” Aphelia’s chest tightened, then the questions spilled like rain. “Then at least tell me how I contact them. And Brynhildr—won’t my return to that timeline affect her? In my line, Sigdrifa’s arrival almost erased me.”
The fear came first, like cold breath on the nape. Aphelia was separate from Brynhildr, yet born from her—a splinter of possibility. A gulf that wide forced the weaker to flow into the stronger, like a rivulet into a sea.
“It won’t,” Fenrir said, calm as moss on stone. “That Brynhildr is complete. If anything’s missing, it’s Lady Sigdrifa. You don’t need to worry about that. As for the return, come discuss the method later. Your companions up top must be anxious. Two days have passed since you descended.”
Fenrir gathered power like sap in spring. A door of deep green light opened at her side. The breath beyond it was the Earth Vein, steady as a buried drum. Through the threshold, Aphelia felt Hrok’s presence like a familiar campfire.
“Two days?” Aphelia blinked, a thought sparking like flint. “If rescue is urgent, how can we wait? Does time there pause when we move here, or is the Asgardian Realm broken somehow?”
“Your guesses could fit,” Fenrir said after a long pause, words measured like stones. “But not quite. You’ve touched timelines, but you don’t command time. If I hand you that knowledge, your future crossings will snarl like tangled silk. Put simply, time doesn’t flow continuously.”
She chose her phrases like stepping stones in fog. The rules were a net of thorns; even a wolf like Fenrir bled if she pushed too far.
Aphelia understood enough to feel the knife-edge. When she had shaped the word “It,” cold seeped in like night water. Only her own strength, veiling her presence like a drawn hood, had kept those eyes from finding her.
If the rules were that thorny, the bargain needed weighing like gold against grain. She needed the Valkyrie squad’s might. To face Sigdrifa’s legions in her era, she needed an army with iron in its bones.
She pictured the black-armored knights, a midnight tide under a moon of iron. She bit a nail, a habit slipped in like a weed through stone, and noticed only after.
“Fine. Send me back to the Earth Vein first. I’ll take Hrok to the surface. I’ll leave an Aether mark. If things rot past saving, call me through the mark. I’ll come.”
Resolve settled like a blade into its sheath. She had wandered time before and lost her tracks like footprints in surf. Why fear another crossing now? With Uroboros beside her, she could split a time channel like splitting bamboo.
Fenrir brightened, emerald flaring like a forest set alight by dawn. Before Aphelia could brace, the world flipped. They were flung to the cave’s rim, tossed onto daylight like dice on a board.
“So you got hurled out and your power got muffled for a breath?” Uroboros drawled, a smirk curling like smoke. “With your body, a fall like that wouldn’t even scuff the paint.”
“Laugh it up,” Aphelia shot back, heat first, words after. “If I die, you go with me. Anyway—do you remember that battle Fenrir mentioned? Those races, those forces… In this world, I’ve got no clear memories. When we fought over the body, power ran wild. I only saw a blur.”
She swung with a playful slap. Uroboros giggled, unraveling into black mist like ink in water. Aphelia’s palm hit emptiness, and the mist coiled back behind her. Cool fingers kneaded her shoulders like rain on parched earth.
“Nope. If Fenrir saw it, it was a parallel me,” Uroboros said, tapping her temple like a knuckle on a bell. “If I’d fought someone that strong, I’d remember. Or it’s buried in the foggy drawer upstairs.”
Strength had brought memories back in flakes, like bark peeling from an old tree. But the ages were long, and much had sunk into silt. Without fusing with another self from another stream, answers hid like eels in the mud.
“Forget it, then. It’s not the most urgent problem,” Aphelia sighed, a hand to her brow like shade against harsh sun. “Fenrir says this planet has five Earth years before it collapses. We need a choice, go or stay. That’s the real headache.”
Weariness came like a tide under the skin, even with Uroboros working the knots away. She was strong now, strong enough to face Sigdrifa, maybe even the power of Origin.
But before that nameless It, a chill crawled her spine like frost up a window. Good and bad in one omen. Sensing that will meant she could stand on that shore. Feeling fear meant the waves could still drown her.
“Enough. Let’s go back and talk it through,” she said, breath long, gaze lifting like a lantern. “Whatever we choose, we need the lay of the land first. Uroboros, you keeping that look?”
She raised her eyes to a sky of dark silk pricked with cold fire. Beneath the indigo canopy lay a quiet, broken wasteland. Humanity’s factories had burned out in the wars against Daemon Beasts. With no towers to cage the horizon, even the flat earth held up a bowl of stars.
