Thor heard Loki's words—the threat to return to Earth and hunt Jane—and something inside him snapped. It wasn't the righteous fury of a prince anymore; it was the raw, protective instinct of a man who had finally found something worth losing. Without a second thought, he lunged, the weight of Mjolnir leading the charge.
Loki met him halfway, raising Gungnir to block the strike. The impact was sickeningly loud, the gold of the spear clashing against the uru of the hammer.
Inevitably, Thor's superior physical mass won out. He tackled Loki to the ground, and the two brothers began a desperate, ungraceful wrestle across the bridge. It was a bizarre sight: a God of Thunder and a Master of Illusion engaging in a back-alley brawl. They weren't aiming for killing blows—not yet. It was a chaotic scramble of limbs, where one would throw the other into a stone pillar only to be dragged down into the dust a second later. It was like watching two mages who had run out of mana trying to finish the fight with bayonets.
In a final burst of kinetic energy, Thor used the flight of Mjolnir to propel both of them out of the spinning Rainbow Bridge launcher. They tumbled through the air, crashing onto the narrow energy transmission pipeline that fed the bridge.
Loki skidded toward the edge, his boots finding no purchase on the smooth, iridescent surface. He slipped over the side with a sharp cry, one hand desperately clutching the rim of the abyss.
"Thor!"
Thor scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs. He rushed to the edge and looked down at his brother. Loki's eyes were wide, bright with a sudden, heartbreaking vulnerability.
"Brother, please..." Loki pleaded, his voice small against the roar of the void below.
Thor's expression softened. Despite everything—the lies, the Destroyer, the invasion of Jotunheim—this was still Loki. He crouched down, extending his left hand to pull him up. But the moment his fingers brushed Loki's skin, the figure at the edge dissolved into a mist of green light.
A phantom.
"Too easy, Thor!"
The real Loki appeared behind him, his face twisted in a mocking grin. He thrust Gungnir forward, using the spear like a high-voltage stun baton. He could have shoved Thor into the void right then, but Loki's cruelty was always more personal. He stabbed the spear into Thor's side, the energy discharge dropping the God of Thunder to his knees.
Suddenly, dozens of Loki's illusions materialized in a circle around the fallen prince. They all laughed in unison, a discordant, haunting sound that echoed off the golden spires of Asgard. Every single one of them raised their spears, ready to pin Thor to the bridge like an insect.
"ENOUGH!"
Thor roared, raising Mjolnir high. A massive, 360-degree burst of lightning erupted from the hammer, a tidal wave of electricity that shattered the illusions instantly. The real Loki was caught in the blast, sent tumbling across the bridge surface several meters away.
Thor stood up, his breathing heavy. He walked over to the dazed Loki and did the one thing that would end the physical fight: he placed Mjolnir firmly on Loki's chest.
Loki gasped, the weight of the hammer pinning him to the floor. He was physically trapped by the enchantment of worthiness, unable to move an inch.
Thor didn't look back. He turned toward the Rainbow Bridge launcher. The machine was screaming, spinning at a rate it was never designed to sustain. The collision had damaged the external housing, and the energy from the Casket was overloading the core. It was a ticking time bomb, and the beam was still carving through Jotunheim.
The gravitational pull of the rotating device began to tug at Thor, trying to draw him into the vortex.
Loki, pinned beneath the hammer, let out a jagged laugh. "Look at you! The all-powerful God of Thunder! What good is all that strength now? You can't stop it! You can't even get close!"
Loki tilted his head back, staring into the golden sky of Asgard, his voice reaching a hysterical pitch. "Do you hear that, brother? That's the sound of a world dying! And there isn't a single thing you can do!"
Thor looked at the bridge, then at the horizon toward Earth. He knew what he had to do. He reached out his hand, and Mjolnir flew from Loki's chest back to his grip.
He didn't fly toward the launcher. Instead, he raised the hammer and smashed it with all his might into the transmission bridge beneath his feet.
CRACK.
A spiderweb of fractures appeared on the transparent energy plate.
In the royal palace, Odin's eyes snapped open. The Allfather was awake.
Thor struck again. And again. Every blow sent a shockwave through the city.
Loki's arrogance vanished, replaced by a look of sheer, panicked incredulity. "What are you doing? Thor, stop! If you destroy the bridge, you'll never see her again!"
Loki knew his brother. He knew Thor's heart was bound to that mortal girl, and even in his madness, he couldn't comprehend Thor choosing duty over his own desires.
"Forgive me, Jane," Thor whispered.
He delivered the final blow.
The energy transmission belt shattered. The interruption of the massive power flow caused a catastrophic explosion. The blast sent both Thor and Loki flying through the air as the Rainbow Bridge launcher, deprived of its anchor, broke apart and began to plummet into the endless void at the edge of the world.
The fierce winds at the edge of the abyss swept Loki downward. Without hesitation, Thor jumped after him. He caught Loki's hand, and Loki grabbed the shaft of Gungnir. They were both falling, drifting away from the ruins of the bridge.
Just as the void was about to claim them, a hand clamped onto Thor's ankle.
Odin stood at the broken edge of the bridge, his face weary but his grip as strong as a mountain. He had arrived just in time to save his sons.
Loki looked up at his father, his eyes welling with tears, his voice thick with a thousand years of unvoiced grievances. "I could have done it, Father! I could have done it for you! For all of us!"
Odin looked down at the son who had just tried to commit genocide in his name. His voice was soft, but it carried the finality of a death sentence. "No, Loki."
Two words. That was all it took. Loki watched as Odin's expression remained indifferent, the same stoic, judging gaze he had seen his entire life. It was the final rejection. The coldness in Loki's heart finally turned to ice, and his grip on the spear loosened.
"Loki, no!" Thor screamed, reaching out with his free hand.
But Loki let go.
He fell into the darkness, disappearing into the swirling mists of the void. At the same moment, the energy node blasted open by the bridge's destruction collapsed, and the portal to the stars vanished.
Back on the New Mexico Gobi, the four of them watched the sky. The purple clouds dissipated, the unnatural winds died down, and the sun began to beat down on the red sand once more.
Darcy looked at the clear blue sky. "It's... it's gone."
She looked at Jane, who was standing perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the spot where the bridge had been. Darcy sighed and began walking back to the van. Erik followed, placing a comforting hand on Jane's shoulder before joining Darcy.
Jane lowered her head. The silence was deafening. He hadn't come back. The man who had promised her the stars was gone, trapped on the other side of a broken door.
Leo remained standing in the sand, looking at the spot where the energy had vanished. He felt the absence of the Bifrost like a physical weight. 'The power to destroy a world... and the power to lose everything,' he thought.
The van pulled up beside him. Darcy poked her head out. "Leo? Come on, let's head back to the lab. We've got work to do."
Leo turned to them, his mask reflecting the desert sun. "You all go ahead. I have something else to take care of. Don't worry about the gear; Coulson will have it all back in your lab by tonight."
"You're not coming?" Jane asked, her voice hollow.
"I need to move fast," Leo said. "I'll see you around, Jane."
He watched the van drive away, then looked down at the circular teleportation pattern etched into the dirt. With a wave of his hand, the metal particles in the soil surged, churning the earth and erasing the last physical trace of Asgard from the site.
'I have a little over a year before the big one hits,' Leo thought, his mind racing. 'I need to speed up.'
Inside the van, Jane sat in the back, staring at her notebook.
"Jane? What's the plan?" Darcy asked.
Jane looked up, her eyes no longer sad, but burning with a new kind of scientific fire. "We go back. I need to record every frequency we just saw. I need to map the energy discharge. If he can't get back to us, I'll find a way to get to him."
High above the desert, Leo shot into the sky. He reached a cruising altitude where the air was thin and cold, his golden wings cutting through the atmosphere at Mach 3. He pulled out his phone, checking a map of the African continent.
His earpiece crackled. It was Coulson.
"Leo? Thor's gone. The bridge is down. We're picking up the pieces here, but it looks like our 'god' is off the board for the foreseeable future. What's your status?"
"I'm heading out, Phil. You've got your robot scraps and your data. I'm going to find something more interesting."
"Always on the move," Coulson sighed. "I'm heading back to HQ myself. We just got a report of something incredible buried in the ice in Antarctica. Fury wants me on the ground for the extraction."
Leo smiled behind his mask. "You'll definitely be very happy with what you find there, Agent. Give the Captain my regards."
Leo hung up the phone. He banked hard to the east, the sun reflecting off his golden wings as he pushed his speed toward the limit.
Destination: Wakanda.
The era of gods had begun, but Leo knew that the real war for the planet was only just getting started. He needed to be ready. He needed to be more than a boy with wings.