In the center of the hall of mirrors, the golden sphere was only the tip of the horror. As they approached, Jormund and Siegfried saw what lay beneath, half embedded in the very fabric of reality: the body of Chronos.
The Titan was now nothing more than a mass grave of concepts. Colossal limbs, as large as mountain ranges, floated in a state of luminous decay. Here, a bronze hand whose fingers still clawed at the void; there, an open chest from which pure gold vapor escaped.
The power emanating from these remains was so violent that Siegfried's armor began to turn blue under the effect of an invisible heat.
"Jormund, stop!" cried Siegfried, his broken sword vibrating with fear in his hands.
"Don't come any closer." Even in pieces, what remains of him can wipe out your lineage before it even begins. His presence is poison to all that is finished.
But Jormund did not listen. His obsidian feet cracked on the mirrored floor. He felt not fear, but recognition. He was made of the same substance: primordial rebellion.
Suddenly, the silence of the abyss was torn apart. It was not a voice coming from a throat, but a vibration rising from the depths of time.
"So... the Anomaly survived the Mother..."
Jormund stopped. His telluric eyes lit up.
"Do not be surprised, child of stone," continued the voice of Chronos, resonating in every obsidian cell of Jormund.
"The Styx did not drown you. It carried you. It is the matrix of all that the Gods fear to name. She saw in you the void I left behind, and she used her mercury venom to forge your body."
A colossal, sad laugh shook the pit.
"Do you think you are a miscalculation? No. You are the return of the repressed. By sculpting you thus, the Mother gave you back what the Gods stole from us: the nature of the Jötnar. You are not a man, you are not a shadow. You are the blood of the mountains, the heir of the Giants who walked before the first sun was lit."
Jormund raised his black hands, looking at them as if for the first time. He then understood why the divine chains had bent. It was not just brute force. It was the superiority of Primordial Nature over Ordered Magic.
"Come closer, my last son," whispered the dying Titan.
"The Gods threw you into the abyss to suffocate you. They only succeeded in bringing you home. Take what remains of me. Become the hammer that will shatter their glass heavens."
Siegfried took a step back, struck by the magnitude of the scene. Jormund was no longer trembling. He stepped forward toward the Titan's beating heart, ready to accept the legacy that would make him the nightmare of Asgard and Olympus.