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Things moved quickly.
With Hela out of the picture, Anna, now the Goddess of Death chosen by Hawk, quickly got to work. Her first task was to find staff for her Underworld.
Hawk thought she would head straight to the prisons and pick her enforcers from the damned.
But instead, Anna ignored the torment cells and went to the fields of Elysium, where the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents now lived in peace.
Hawk was surprised at first, but then he understood.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in Elysium were the best of the afterlife, especially compared to the miserable souls in the prisons. They were a handpicked team.
And most importantly—
Anna had been a top-tier Hydra operative. But like most high-level Hydra operatives, she had also been a capable S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
So it was only natural that she would recruit from the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D.
When Anna pitched her offer, the agents didn't hesitate. They agreed on the spot.
They were already dead. Old rivalries, grudges, loyalties to acronyms—all of that had faded. Plus, they knew that the only reason they were enjoying eternity in Elysium, and the only reason Anna was standing before them as the Goddess of Death—was because of Hawk.
Anna was the Goddess Hawk had chosen himself.
So why not work for her?
Lounging around Elysium with nothing to do, not needing food or sleep, got boring after a while.
It was especially dull for the agents who had died single.
The ones with families had something to look forward to; they could wait for their wives and children to join them eventually. But the single guys didn't even have that.
So joining the Goddess of Death's new administration seemed like a good gig.
Hawk watched Anna build her forces and chose not to interfere. He observed quietly before leaving the Underworld.
He had said it before: If you don't know how to do something, you learn.
He was giving Anna full autonomy to build her underworld empire and maintain the balance of life and death across the planets under her jurisdiction.
If the results were good, everyone wins.
And if she bungled it? No big deal... He'd hit the reset button, format the drive, and generate a new set of Eight Realms.
After all, the World Tree was a happy accident. An unexpected bonus.
The Phoenix Universe was, and always would be, Hawk's true foundation.
This was the perfect setup.
He could let Anna use the World Tree as a training ground. By the time he manifested the Phoenix Universe, his Goddess of Death would be a seasoned veteran, ready to take the helm on day one.
She wouldn't even need orientation.
A solid plan.
Just like his promise to make the Ancient One his God of Time.
Hawk watched Anna shaping the Underworld to her vision, a faint smile on his lips. After a while, he turned away, deciding it was time to check out the World Tree's hidden DLC map: Valhalla.
Yes.
Valhalla.
The halls were meant to serve as the final resting place for the honored dead of Asgard.
If Helheim was the World Tree's Hell...
Then Valhalla was its Heaven.
At first, Hawk had assumed Valhalla must have collapsed alongside the rest of the World Tree.
But then he reconsidered. It was unlikely.
Because Hawk remembered the post-credits scene from Thor: Love and Thunder. Jane Foster, having died as the Mighty Thor, had opened her eyes to find herself standing before the gates of Valhalla.
And Heimdall had been there to welcome her.
So Valhalla had to still exist somewhere.
And since he couldn't leave the World Tree to return to Earth anyway...
True, his Cosmo energy had healed the World Tree, restoring it and elevating it into the Parasol World Tree.
But the Parasol Divine Realm—the new domain forging itself from cosmic dust to replace Asgard—was still evolving.
Until that new realm was complete and stable, the Parasol World Tree remained vulnerable. There was still a chance, however small, that the primary universe's timeline could find a crack and slip through.
Hawk operated on the principle of better safe than sorry.
He hated sitting around waiting. Doing nothing made him restless, and the anger he had been holding down would start burning again.
So, after leaving the Underworld, Hawk teleported, reappearing in Vanaheim.
Vanaheim appeared as a shattered world... The once-imposing palaces and architecture were now scorched, crumbling ruins strewn across the ground.
The realm was deserted, with neither living beings nor corpses. It appeared more like a realm of the dead than his own Underworld.
Hela hadn't just slaughtered everyone in Vanaheim. She had ground them to dust and scattered their ashes to the wind, leaving nothing behind.
'Well, that saves me a lot of cleanup.' Hawk thought to himself, taking in the devastation.
If there had still been Vanir alive when he took over the World Tree, he wouldn't have known what to do with the citizens of the old regime.
Now that Hela had wiped them out? Problem solved.
After all, the living are almost always more troublesome than the dead.
Hawk chuckled softly, then extended his senses. He detected the faint energy signatures of two pocket dimensions tethered to Vanaheim. He moved toward the nearest one.
This wasn't Valhalla.
This was—
"The Witches' Domain."
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"This is where I grew up."
"..." Hawk opened the entrance to the abandoned dimension and listened to the voice beside him. He turned to look at the woman he had brought with him from the Underworld.
The Queen of Asgard!
Frigga.
As everyone knows, Frigga had died by the hand of Kurse, Malekith's enforcer. But because she had been murdered rather than falling in battle, her soul hadn't ascended to Valhalla. Instead, she had been cast down into Helheim, which at the time was still sealed away with Hela.
When Hawk had absorbed the souls from Helheim into his own Underworld, he had assumed Hela had tortured Frigga out of existence years ago.
He hadn't expected her to still be alive.
She was battered, her spirit frayed, but yes—Frigga had survived.
And now, under the restorative power of Hawk's energy, she had recovered.
At this moment.
Dressed again in a flowing white gown with golden embroidery, her golden hair swept up, Frigga stared into the Witches' Domain. Like Vanaheim outside, it was a graveyard.
Hawk's Seventh Sense swept across the barren dimension. He felt the lingering remnants of Hela's cruelty and despite himself, he felt a sudden kinship with the Goddess of Death.
He didn't think Hela's ruthlessness was wrong.
You cross me? Fine... But you'd better make sure you kill me, because if you don't, I'll make you pay a price so terrible you'll beg for death.
The commitment to disproportionate retribution.
Hawk knew he operated on the same frequency.
But—
Because Hela was like him—holding grudges and demanding blood for blood—he could respect her, but he could never let her live.
Hawk knew himself too well, which meant he understood Hela.
Even if Hela had surrendered, maybe she wouldn't make a move for a year, a decade, or even a century. But the moment she saw an opening, she would stab him in the back.
So Hela had to go.
Hawk pulled his thoughts back and looked at Frigga.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thank you." Frigga averted her eyes from the wreckage of the Witches' Domain—her childhood home, completely destroyed by her stepdaughter. Her face showed a maternal expression, hiding her grief. "I can only hope they found their way to Valhalla."
"Uh... I'm afraid they aren't in Valhalla." Hearing her hope, Hawk hesitated, then waved his right hand through the air.
Like a reflection in rippling water, the residual soul fragments scattered throughout the dead dimension started to swirl and dance, forming into spectral images. It seemed as if time within the Witches' Domain was flowing backward.
But this wasn't temporal manipulation.
Hawk didn't have that power.
Because he had already given away the power over Time.
The Ancient One was his God of Time.
Hawk had promised her the position, granting her the authority to weave and manage the timelines of his universe and all the lives within it.
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The scene playing out before them, like a film in reverse, wasn't the work of temporal laws. It was a reconstruction, formed by the fragmented memories trapped within the lingering shards of the witches' souls.
Soon, the replay reached the moment of their massacre.
Hela's Necroswords rained down. One by one, the witches, overwhelmed by her undead soldiers, fell in pools of their own blood.
Hela hadn't just taken their lives.
She had shattered their souls.
Forget Valhalla—these souls hadn't even made it to Helheim.
The same fate had befallen the Vanir in Vanaheim.
Frigga watched her people's destruction. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand, letting out a choked sob.
Hawk looked at her and offered his condolences once more.
Frigga struggled to stay calm and made herself look away from the replay of her people's last moments.
Hawk waved his right hand again. He gathered every shattered soul fragment in the dimension and tossed them into his Underworld.
Frigga watched him, her confusion breaking through her grief.
Hawk smiled. "Perhaps, over the course of countless reincarnations, these fragments will find each other and become whole again."
"...Thank you!"
Frigga's eyes widened as the weight of his gesture hit her. She thanked him again.
But this time, her words meant something deeper.
Hawk waved his hand without saying anything.
A wave of the hand wasn't a dismissal. It meant no thanks were needed.
Soon, Hawk and Frigga left the empty Witches' Domain. They crossed Vanaheim to the entrance of the second pocket dimension connected to the realm: Valhalla.
As soon as Hawk touched the entrance, he sensed a difference between this place and the Witches' Domain.
Simply put, the Witches' Domain felt artificial, like an extra pocket dimension attached to the World Tree. Valhalla felt natural, like a fruit the World Tree had grown but never fully developed into a real realm.
A moment later, with a flash of white light, Hawk and Frigga disappeared from Vanaheim.
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