A new wind touched the broken shrine.
Not warm.
Not cold.
But ancient.
Ash still drifted in the air around Daant Parvat, glowing from where Astha's sword had split the skull of the god-eater Tamsaha. The trio sat beneath the shattered prayer tree, silent now, recovering from battle — when a feather fell, black as void, and landed between them.
"That's not a bird," Naira whispered.
"No," Astha replied, standing slowly.
"That's a warning."
The feather twitched.
It opened its eye.
And it spoke.
"The All-Father sees you, Flameborn. The Skies of Yggdrasil stir. The eyes of the Raven fall next."
---
The feather dissolved mid-air — and from the swirling void stepped a figure cloaked in wolf fur, a jagged spear slung over one shoulder.
He was lean. Pale. Eyes a pale blue-gray like moonlight over snow. No crown. No godlike arrogance.
"My name is Hrafn, son of Muninn," he said calmly.
"I come not to judge… but to understand what you are becoming."
Lightning twitched in the sky above him — as if Thor himself hesitated to descend.
"He's not here to fight?" Naira asked quietly.
"They're scared," Luv said. "They want to learn what they're up against."
Astha tilted his head.
"You can watch," he said.
"But you'll see nothing you can return with."
Hrafn gave a grim smile.
"You underestimate how long ravens remember, Flameborn."
---
As the tension thinned, Naira wandered toward the ruined temple to look for supplies. Astha kept watch near the edge of the cliff.
Luv sat alone, arms draped over bent knees. The silence stretched.
"Astha…"
"Do you ever dream of what you lost?"
Astha didn't answer. Not immediately.
So Luv stared at the cracked sky and let himself remember.
---
Swarnalok. Centuries ago.
He was a child then. Skin like soft clay, hair shorter, always falling into his eyes. His father had been a Devic librarian — a man who smiled through lies, who believed peace was truth.
But Luv had heard the thunder before anyone else.
Felt it, pulsing in his blood.
And one night, it roared from him.
In a sacred temple, while prayers were being sung to the Devas, Luv's palms erupted in silver arcs of divine lightning — unblessed, uncontrolled.
The priests gasped.
The worshipers screamed.
And his father... had stepped away.
"This is not divine. This is corruption."
He was locked beneath the temple for three weeks. His wrists still remember the chains.
But the thunder never stopped whispering.
Not once.
---
"They feared me before I knew what I was," Luv muttered to Astha, who had sat beside him now in silence.
"But you… you never flinched when I first struck lightning."
Astha stared at the ash-drifted sky.
"Because I never flinched when I burned."
He glanced sideways.
"You and I… we don't belong in their temples."
"No," Luv said. "We're here to burn them down."
---
A sudden roar cracked across the valley.
Not divine. Not beast.
But spatial — the kind of sound that came when realms rubbed against each other. Hrafn raised his spear.
"You've angered the World Tree," he said softly.
"Now Yggdrasil will respond."
Behind him, a colossal rift opened — not like the ones Hermes used. This was a vertical wound of runes, frost, and blood.
From within it stepped a creature with antlers of bone and ice, a mouth stitched shut, and a body crawling with whispering glyphs.
"What in the—" Naira gasped.
"That's… not from mythology. That's from something older."
"A failed god," Hrafn whispered.
"A trial from the roots of Yggdrasil itself."
Astha cracked his neck.
"Then I'll bury it back under."