The Golden Palace was filled with suffocating sorrow.
Freyr fell to his knees, clutching Tyrfing, which he had just picked up from Týr's body.
The cold touch of the magical sword seemed to freeze his heart. As the first owner of this ominous blade, at this moment he felt the curse and destruction contained within it more clearly than any other god.
He suddenly gripped the hilt, intending to draw this magical sword that had brought endless calamity, perhaps to destroy it or to end his own pain.
"Freyr! Stop!" Freyja cried out sharply. She had been closely watching her brother's state.
The moment Freyr was about to draw the sword, she lunged at him and grabbed his sword hand with both hands, her eyes full of terror and resolve.
"I cannot let this cursed sword drink any more blood! Especially yours!" Her voice was tearful.
Freyr, stopped by her, froze in his movement, only his head hanging dejectedly, his shoulders trembling violently, and tears silently flowing.
Odin sat on his throne, like a stone statue weathered for thousands of years.
There was no expression on his wrinkled face.
He had thought that sending Týr to Vanaheimr under Narcissus's influence would allow him to avoid the doomed destruction of Ásgarðr.
But he never expected the web of fate to be so insidious and unpredictable.
In a corner of fate he had failed to see, Týr's end had long been written, and so tragically and ironically—by the hand of the brother he had tried to protect, in a murder orchestrated by another of his kin.
This feeling of seeing everything in fate yet still being unable to change anything was more painful for him than simple death.
The gods were drinking to Baldr's death, to express their grief and vent their sorrows.
Amidst this chaos filled with sorrow and despair, Loki, the man behind the tragedy, walked straight towards Odin's throne with a disgustingly brisk step, like a victor.
He ignored the hatred, sadness, or numb gazes that appeared around him, his emerald-green eyes fixed only on Odin's gray one-eyed gaze.
"Odin," Loki spoke, his voice not loud, but it clearly echoed through the hall.
"A very, very long time ago, you and I mixed our blood and swore a blood oath, didn't we?"
Odin's one-eyed gaze stared at him, and after a long time, he slowly nodded, his voice hoarse: "That is true."
He acknowledged that distant past, symbolizing friendship and loyalty.
Loki's face instantly bloomed with an extremely arrogant and malicious smile, as if he had finally seized his prey's Achilles' heel.
"You swore an oath then, great Odin?" he asked, leaning slightly forward, word by word.
"That wherever your blood brother Loki is, you would sit and drink?"
The air seemed to freeze, and all the gods held their breath.
Odin's gray eyes met Loki's green eyes, as if engaged in a silent battle.
Odin's eyes were complex—angry, tired, and perhaps with a slight hint of memory of the past.
But in the end, he turned away, as if unwilling to meet that mocking and malicious gaze again.
He ordered the servants in a rough voice, almost through gritted teeth:
"Let the father of the giant wolf drink with us."
This command was like rubbing salt into the wounds of the gods.
Let the culprit who had just killed Baldr, Hödr, and Týr drink with them?
However, the God-King's command could not be disobeyed.
Thus began the most humiliating and painful feast in Ásgarðr's history.
Loki, acting as if he were the host, holding a golden cup, moved among the gods and began his 'performance'.
One by one, he humiliated both men and women with the cruelest and most precise words.
He mocked the male gods as cowards, helpless in the face of real crises, only wallowing in sorrow;
He taunted the goddesses for being deceived and unfaithful, digging up 'gossip' buried by time concerning chastity and betrayal.
Each of his insults was not unfounded, but skillfully mixed with real secrets, pointing directly at the pain points and most embarrassing past events of each god.
Like peeling an onion, he layer by layer revealed the ugliness and unbearable nature of the gods, contemptuously and repeatedly exposing scandals and affairs they thought long forgotten, turning them into weapons to stab each other.
The hall was filled with Loki's piercing laughter, malicious accusations, suppressed sobs, angry roars, and the desperate silence of the humiliated.
This feast became Loki's personal judgment table, and he made every god present miserable and deserving.
This shameful farce did not end until Thor returned.
Thor entered the hall with a murderous aura that had not yet faded.
He saw the scene before him, heard Loki's sharp words, and anger instantly consumed his reason.
Thor's way of ending a conversation was simple and brutal.
He pushed aside the god standing in his way, and the massive Mjölnir instantly appeared in his hand, crackling with destructive thunder.
He walked straight up to Loki and pointed his battle hammer at him, his voice like thunder:
"Shut up, you evil tongue! Dare to say another word, and I'll use Mjölnir to smash your mouth full of lies and poison and silence you forever! I'll personally send you to Hel, to the palace of the dead, so you can wail there forever!"
Faced with Thor's undisguised threat of death and star-shattering power, the smile on Loki's face finally froze.
He knew Thor's threat was not just words.
He angrily shut his mouth, but still didn't forget to show his arrogance at the end.
He staggered towards the door, as if drunk.
Before stepping over the threshold, he stopped and turned to the host of the evening—the sea giant Ægir—with a cold, prophetic smile:
"Your beer is well brewed, Ægir," Loki's tone was as if he were discussing the weather.
"But unfortunately, there will be no more feasts here."
His voice suddenly became grim and certain:
"Flames will burn this hall. You will be burned from behind. Everything you hold dear will be taken away."
He paused, as if uttering a final curse:
"I swear it."
With that, Loki's figure completely disappeared into the darkness beyond the door, leaving behind only chaos, humiliation, and sorrow in the hall.
The twilight of Ásgarðr was already inevitable; even the air seemed filled with the breath of ashes and the end.
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