Chapter Text
Darkness.
Absolute, all-consuming darkness enveloped him. And—was he adrift?
Oh, open your eye, you brainless idiot.
Thor almost felt the familiar, stinging clip to the back of his head that invariably followed those words. Muscle memory. Grief-memory. Brother-memory. With a weary, rattling breath, he forced his eye open.
He instantly wished he had remained in the dark.
It was not darkness at all. It was the void. Endless. Silent. Merciless.
And there—looming before him, vast beyond mortal comprehension—was the crown of Yggdrasil. Or what remained of its mangled majesty.
How many times had he taken its existence for granted? The arrogant assumption that it would eternally endure. The golden city nestled among its celestial branches—a realm of legend, of myth, of permanence.
Home.
A memory flickered — fractured, incomplete.
“Loki… I know what I need to do.”
A look shared across a burning sky.
“I’m not doing ‘Get help.’”
For a fleeting instant, there had been understanding. Acceptance. Something like peace.
It slipped through his grasp like everything else.
He had been so sure. Why had it been the only way? And now —
Extinguished. All of it.
Thor attempted to avert his gaze, but his resolve betrayed him—or perhaps he sought the penance of the sight—as his eyes locked onto the wound. It was a vast, jagged absence where Asgard had once been anchored. A raw, weeping fracture in reality, bleeding light and shadow into the cold vacuum.
It was a mirror to his own heart.
Tears gathered, searingly hot, yet once again they refused to fall. His vision blurred, stars smearing into meaningless, weeping points of light. He blinked with a harsh finality, forcing clarity—and that was when the true terror took hold.
Stormbreaker was silent.
Not a hum. Not a thrum. No answering resonance. And worse still—his own divinity had flickered out.
No lightning raced along his veins. No sparks ignited at his fingertips. Nothing stirred beneath his skin. It was as though the tempest had finally, irrevocably abandoned him.
A terrible, hollow thought settled in his chest. Was he to perish here?
Like his kingdom. Like his sister. Like his brother.
Like so many of his kin—drifting as forgotten detritus in the freezing reaches of space. Perhaps… perhaps it was a fitting end. A quiet conclusion to a loud and violent life.
Then, panic slammed into him—sharp, absolute, and primal.
No.
His fingers whitened around Stormbreaker’s haft as the terror surged. “Please,” he entreated, indifferent to the fact that his voice died in the airless waste. “Take me away. I am not ready.”
The realms were in peril. Yggdrasil was failing. Something fundamental had been fractured—time, balance, fate itself—and he was required to…
To do something. Anything.
Stormbreaker did not answer. No power stirred. No light descended.
Then, gravity reclaimed him with a brutal, sudden weight.
Thor gasped as the anchor returned, his fingers numbing, his strength evaporating into the ether. Stormbreaker slipped from his grasp, tumbling away into the abyss—and before he could comprehend the loss, he followed.
Down. And further down.
Stars streaked past him—or perhaps he was the streak across the firmament. Time fractured. Memories surged and tangled, too numerous to seize, too agonizing to name. Had he been asked thereafter what he beheld in that descent, he would have possessed no words to answer.
Obscurity crept at the periphery of his mind. Unconsciousness beckoned, tantalizingly close but never quite within his grasp—until, with a sudden, bone-shattering violence—
Impact.
Pain flared, white and blinding, as he collided with solid ground. Then, mercifully, the darkness shuttered his mind completely, and this time, he offered no resistance.
The agony could wait.
Not far from the prone, broken god, a frail hand reached out from the shadows. Its fingers, thin and trembling, closed around the handle of Stormbreaker.
And there, in the silence, it waited.
*** ***
To be continued!