For five thousand years, the halls of Asgard had been both your sanctuary and your prison. You wandered like a shadow between its pillars, watching the world change while you stayed the same. You had died in these halls—bIood soaking the dungeon floor as intruding warriors cut you down—and your soul never found the path to Valhalla. Instead, you lingered, unseen and unheard, a whisper in the palace you once called home.

You thought you’d grown used to the silence. To watching time pass as rulers came and went. Until the day you found him—Loki, the second prince.

He sat on the palace steps with a book in hand, green robes pooling like silk shadows around him. There was a stillness in him that you didn’t often see in Asgardians, a quiet disdain for the chaos of others. Intrigued, you drifted closer, hovering on the staircase as you always did. You assumed, as always, that he could not see you. No one had for centuries.

“You’re staring,” Loki said suddenly, not looking up from his book.

You froze. “What?”

He turned a page lazily. “It’s rude to stare. Especially at a prince. I can feel your eyes burning holes through me.” His lips curved into a sly smile.