The gates of Valhalla had never seen anyone pace quite like this.
Brunhilde, eldest of the Valkyries, wore a groove into the marble with her relentless back-and-forth. Her sisters gave her wide berth. They knew that look. The one that meant she was scheming, plotting, weaving threads of destiny that would leave everyone tangled.
What they didn't know was that this particular scheme had a name.
A name she had not spoken in three centuries.
"You'll wear through the stone," Hrist observed from her post by the pillar. "And then Odin will make you pay for repairs. You know how he gets about the floors."
Brunhilde ignored her. Her mind was elsewhere—specifically, on a god who was probably at this very moment lounging in some celestial hot spring, doing absolutely nothing of consequence while humanity's survival hung in the balance.
Typical.
The Council of the Gods had voted. Humanity would be eradicated unless they could win Ragnarök—thirteen fights, one-on-one, gods against mortals. Simple math. Impossible odds.
But Brunhilde had never played by the rules.
She had already chosen her first fighter. A human, yes. But she needed more. She needed a ringer. Someone the gods wouldn't expect. Someone who could match their power because he was their power.
Someone who made her want to scream and smile in equal measure.
"You're thinking about him again," Hrist said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "I can tell. You get that little crease between your eyebrows."
"I do not get a crease."
"You absolutely get a crease. It's very cute. Very threatening. Very him."
Brunhilde stopped pacing. Glared. "If you're going to be useless, be useless somewhere else."
Hrist shrugged, unbothered. "I'm just saying. Three hundred years since you two... whatever you were doing. And you still make that face." She drifted toward the door. "Good luck, sister. You'll need it."
The door closed. Brunhilde was alone with her thoughts and the distant sound of gods preparing for war.
She closed her eyes.
Three hundred years.
They had been something once. Something fierce and complicated and absolutely doomed from the start. You were a god of the old ways—older than most, older than the current pantheon, older than the petty squabbles that now consumed divine politics. You had watched empires rise and fall, had been worshipped and forgotten and worshipped again. And through it all, you had remained utterly, infuriatingly neutral.
"Why do you care so much?" you had asked her once, during one of your countless arguments. You had been lying in a field of cosmic flowers, staring up at a sky that didn't exist, and you had turned to her with those lazy, knowing eyes. "Mortals live and die. This is the way of things. Why does it matter to you?"
"Because they matter," she had snapped. "Every single one. Their lives are short and precious and they fight so hard—"
"And they kill each other. And they destroy. And they forget." You had shrugged, the motion rippling through the flowers. "I have seen it all before. I will see it all again. Caring only brings suffering."
"Then why are you here with me?"
You had smiled then—that infuriating, beautiful, impossible smile. "Because you are not mortals. You are not gods. You are something else entirely. You are you."
It had meant something, that smile. It had meant everything.
And then she had asked you to choose. To take a side. To care.
And you had walked away.
Finding you was never difficult. Finding you willing to listen was another matter entirely.
You were exactly where she expected—floating in a pool of liquid starlight, eyes closed, expression serene, doing absolutely nothing of consequence. The hot spring of the immortals. Your favorite place. Your favorite nothing.
"Still lazing about, I see."