The silence that followed the Colossus's passage was more terrifying than the buzzing of flies. Behind Jormund, Siegfried, and Fenrir, the passage had closed, not with a door, but with a fold in reality. They were now trapped in the Forgotten Strait.
Here, the light of the Styx no longer reached them. The darkness was not just the absence of light; it was a viscous, cold substance that seemed to want to seep into the pores of their skin.
"Don't stray too far," whispered Siegfried, his hand clenched on the hilt of his sword, whose brilliance was diminishing, as if stifled by the surrounding air. "This place belongs neither to the dead nor the living. It is the stomach of the Underworld."
Jormund walked ahead. His veins of gold, usually so bright, now cast only a pale glow, revealing strange walls: walls of rock that seemed to beat like a slow heart, covered with gray mold that moved as they passed.
Suddenly, Fenrir stopped, his lips curled back. A low growl rose from his throat.
"Can you feel that?" asked Jormund.
The wolf did not respond with words, but with a posture of total defense. The ground beneath their feet was no longer stone, but a carpet of bleached debris: bones so old that they crumbled to dust at the slightest touch.
"We're being watched," said Jormund in a calm voice that sounded strangely hollow.
It wasn't paranoia. In the recesses of the strait, thousands of tiny red eyes were beginning to open. They weren't demons, nor were they soldiers of Hades. They were the scavengers of the shadows, the silent servants of Beelzebub, waiting for exhaustion to overcome the travelers.
But that wasn't the most disturbing thing.
As they moved forward, Jormund stopped dead in his tracks. In the distance, in the pitch black, a vibration began to shake the organic walls. It was not the buzzing of insects, it was the clash of divine powers crashing against the entrance to the strait.
"They're here," Jormund growled. "Hel has found the gate."
The air suddenly turned icy, black snow beginning to fall from the ceiling of the strait. Opposite, a stifling heat of sulfur rose from the depths. The two worlds, the cold of Helheim and the fire of Tartarus, converged on this bottleneck.
The Forgotten Strait, once a place of silence, was about to become the anvil on which the Gods would strike.
Jormund clenched his fists, feeling the energy of Time bubbling up inside him. He knew they were trapped between the predators of the shadows and the wrath of the kings.
"Get ready," he said to his companions. "The silence is over."