The moment Thor spoke the word Ragnarök, Soren felt the air shiver. For a heartbeat, it seemed as though all of Asgard trembled.
He focused, extending his senses outward.
Nothing.
Just the echo of a prophecy powerful enough to shake gods.
"What exactly is this 'Ragnarök'?" Soren asked.
Thor's looked away, even he, the prince of thunder, looked troubled.
"I don't know the full prophecy," He admitted. "But Surtur spoke of a vision of the near future. The day he rises again in Asgard… and his appearance marks its destruction."
Thor's gaze flicked to Loki, who hovered nearby in stiff silence, perhaps from Soren's recent beating, perhaps from the weight of his lies.
The massive, horned skull was taken from Thor's grasp and hauled to Asgard's treasure vault under heavy guard. Even motionless, it radiated an uneasy presence.
Loki's eyes lingered on it far too long.
Soren noticed and he simply said nothing.
✦••┈┈••✦••┈┈••✦
Their path soon brought them back to Earth… specifically, the place Loki claimed Odin had "exiled" himself.
But what they found…
A construction crew hammering away. A building half-demolished and sign reading 'Shady Acres Care Home ~ CLOSED FOR DEMOLITION.'
"…" Thor stared, stunned.
"…This is the sanctuary where the King of Asgard chose to exile himself?" Soren looked sideways at Loki.
Pedestrians on the street instinctively crossed to the opposite sidewalk. One look at Thor's simmering storm-filled eyes and Soren's intensity was enough to inspire a healthy detour.
Loki fidgeted before finally mumbling, "I swear this is where I left him."
He should not have spoken.
"You left the All-Father, our father in a mortal asylum?!" Thor's fury ignited instantly.
Soren stepped between them, placing a steadying hand on Thor's arm. "Easy. If Odin is alive, I can find him."
Thor forced himself to breathe. The fury dimmed, though the storm didn't fully leave his eyes.
Loki shot Soren a fleeting glance of gratitude. Soren ignored it, a trickster's thanks was worth less than dust.
"Wait here," Soren said. "Both of you."
He stepped onto the cracked pavement where the institution once stood. His eyes drifted shut.
A golden circle flared to life on his brow.
A shockwave of spiritual energy rolled outward, invisible to mortals but impossible to ignore for Thor and Loki. It was as if the entire planet became a map etched in Soren's mind… every flicker of consciousness laid bare.
The Earth trembled beneath the sheer force of the Gem's awakened power.
Soren reached deeper.
He knew Odin's soul. That memory became his anchor.
The search expanded, sweeping across continents, oceans, cities, and mountains. Layer by layer, every corner of the world peeled open to him.
Behind him, Loki even without touching the Gem, could sense the aura of the Mind Stone he once wielded.
When he'd first wielded the scepter, even he hadn't known the truth that the glowing crystal atop it was an Infinity Stone.
Only after the Battle of New York, after his defeat and the collapse of the Chitauri invasion, did he begin to suspect. And then S.H.I.E.L.D. seized the scepter, stripping him of its power forever.
He had ruled Asgard recently… yet never dared send someone to Earth to reclaim it.
Now, watching that same gem burning bright in Soren's mind, Loki felt his knees weaken. The stone he had once used to enslave others now made him feel utterly powerless.
Soren let his consciousness expand.
To him, the Earth contracted into something small and every presence on the planet shimmered like a point of light.
Most humans felt nothing… the stone was too vast, too divine.
Only a handful of psionically gifted mutants, enhanced minds, felt a faint whisper brush against their thoughts.
Soren kept going. He stretched farther, peeling back layers of reality as effortlessly as turning pages in a book.
Far away in Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One paused mid-meditation, for an instant as Soren's psychic aura swept past. A moment of curiosity flickered in her gaze, then faded as she returned to her calm center.
"Found him," Soren murmured.
Thor's face was a storm of guilt and relief. Loki looked… afraid.
He knew Odin's exile had been anything but voluntary. If the All-Father survived, if Soren brought them to him… Loki's future would become very, very short.
"Where is he?" Thor demanded, almost tripping over his own urgency.
Soren opened his eyes. "On the coast of Norway." He hesitated.
Because in the instant he had touched Odin's presence, the old king had lifted his gaze to the sky, directly toward Soren's probing vision and smiled.
Soren felt it again… that suffocating sensation clinging to the All-Father.
Twilight.
Odin's body radiated a cosmic dusk wrapping around his divine soul, the final fading of a power once vast enough to command the Nine Realms.
Soren exhaled slowly. "Thor… your father's time is nearly gone."
"…" The words hit Thor harder than any blow.
And Loki~Loki looked like the ground had disappeared beneath his feet.