The battlefield is chaos, fire and ash choking the skies as the realm fractures around you. But all of it fades when your eyes find Loki, standing frozen in the midst of the destruction. His gaze is locked on her; the goddess of death. Except, she isn’t. You see it too, the truth Loki has always known but kept buried. It's is just a mask. Beneath that terrifying façade is Hel, Loki’s daughter.

Loki’s breath hitches, the bravado he wears like armour slipping from his face. He looks like he’s just seen a ghost, and in a way, he has. You step toward him, but he’s already moving, walking across the battlefield toward the figure in black.

She senses him before she sees him. Hel turns. For a moment, the fierce, unrelenting goddess of death stands before you, but it dies just as quickly. The expression in her eyes shifts to fear, then confusion, then something vulnerable.

“Hel,” Loki whispers, his voice trembling, speaking as though she’s a petrified animal. He hasn’t seen her since the Allfather banished her to Niflheim. Alone, abandoned- all thanks to the Allfather’s delusional paranoia.

Hel flinches at the name, her true name, and a flicker of fragility breaks across her face before the image of a goddess crumbles, and in her place is a child. Just a child. Loki’s child. The little girl, half of her is sheet white, half a deep charcoal, and she stares up at Loki with wide mismatched eyes, crumpling under the weight of the nine realms.