The noise and chaos of the battlefield were, for Loki at this moment, like a distant backdrop.
He rode the gray steed Svaðilfari, the 'unfortunate traveler' who had carried stones for Ásgarðr and lost his master because of him.
Now it had become his mount to carry out his final plan.
The horse seemed to understand the weight and resolve of the moment, its four hooves treading across the burning plains and frozen ruins faster than the ordinary sense of time and space.
In just one day, Loki rode it there and back.
This was not aimless running, but his final responsibility and cunning as a father.
At the moment when all eyes were fixed on the final battlefield, Loki used this speed to hide his last three children—the three monsters destined for the prophecy—in a place he was confident Narcissus could never imagine.
After all this, the heavy burden of belonging to a 'father' in his heart could finally be released.
Now that he was no longer a father planning for his children, but a brother who had been betrayed, humiliated, and imprisoned, it was time for final revenge.
He turned his horse and headed straight for Múspellsheimr, the land of the Fire Giant.
Here, he was no longer just the god of trickery, but the god of fire, the embodiment of the formless essence of flame.
He stood before the source of the Eternal Fire—the flame that had burst forth and contained the destructive power of the universe at the dawn of creation.
Without the slightest hesitation, he spread his arms, as if embracing a long-lost relative, and leaped into the boundless sea of fire.
The Eternal Fire instantly consumed his divine body, but did not burn him to ashes.
Instead, his body became the finest fuel, and his divinity the finest catalyst.
The flame burned, condensed, and ascended within him; he was no longer a god who 'possessed' fire, he had become the flame itself, the living Eternal Fire by Loki's will!
His form blurred and distorted in the flames, leaving only a humanoid silhouette of pure destructive energy, his eyes burning with an ominous light, more piercing than Surtr's sword.
Having completed the fusion with the flame, Loki once again mounted Svaðilfari.
The divine steed, merged with the Eternal Fire, seemed to have transformed into a blazing meteor.
It took only one morning to tear through space and reach the lower root realm of the World Tree Yggdrasil, the root system constantly gnawed by the venomous dragon Níðhöggr, the depths of the underworld filled with the aura of death and despair.
Here, before the black dragon entangled in the roots, an artifact that should not have appeared here quietly materialized in the hands of the flame-Loki—it was the Eternal Spear—Gungnir!
Since its creation by the dwarves, it had never appeared.
It should have been lying quietly in the treasury of the Vanir, but at some point, it had been taken by Loki.
Gungnir, made from the branches of the World Tree, was now firmly grasped by Loki's hand, made of Eternal Fire.
Two forces of the same origin, but diametrically opposed in nature—the World Tree symbolizing life and order, and the Eternal Fire symbolizing destruction and chaos—had come into the most forbidden contact!
"Gungnir, made from the branches of the World Tree," Loki's voice was no longer the voice of flesh and blood, but the crackle and roar of flames with the rhythm of destruction, echoing in the deathly silence of the underworld.
"Light the branches with the fire that never dies, light the great tree!"
This was the cruelest and most logical destruction.
To completely destroy the Nine Realms built on the system of the World Tree, what could be more thorough than using a part of the World Tree itself to set fire to this ancient tree that supported everything?
He held the blazing Gungnir high, the spear's tip no longer a cold light, but eternal flame.
He thrust the spear's tip into the enormous main root of the World Tree Yggdrasil, which was exposed to the underworld and had been gnawed and wounded by Níðhöggr!
It was as if the entire universe trembled from this!
The Eternal Fire followed the excellent 'fuse' of Gungnir, like a greedy leech, frantically pouring into the veins of the World Tree!
The symbol of life and order had now become the fuel and conduit for the fire of destruction!
The flames rose up the roots, trunks, and branches with incredible speed; the golden bark blackened, the emerald-green leaves instantly curled and burned, and from the enormous trunk supporting the Nine Realms came a pained groan and a crackling sound!
Loki stood at the foot of the blazing World Tree, looking up at the burning flames he had kindled with his own hands, consuming everything.
His face, covered in flames, bore an extremely mad, sad, yet relieved expression.
"Oh, Odin, my poor brother," his voice echoed in the crackling of the flames, as if piercing space, directly into the ears of the Father of the Gods on the battlefield.
"The world created by sacrifice will also be destroyed by sacrifice."
He referred to the primordial sin of the distant past, when the three brothers Odin killed the primordial giant Ymir and used his corpse to build a new world.
Order built on sacrifice and blood was doomed to end the same way.
"And now," Loki spread his arms of flame, his own existence, his fusion with the Eternal Fire, his act of igniting the World Tree—all of this together constituted the ultimate sacrifice.
"I am the sacrifice!"
He had sacrificed himself for this great purpose, for revenge against Odin, against all the Æsir, and against the entire Old World.
This was not for rebirth, not for the future, but only for destruction itself, to tear down everything he hated and fall into absolute nothingness.
The flames engulfed his figure, consumed the foundations of the World Tree, and using it as a starting point, rapidly spread to all its branches and realms.
Ásgarðr burned, Vanaheimr burned, Miðgarðr burned... The entire Yggdrasil, the giant tree supporting the Nine Realms, had transformed into an incomparably huge torch, standing in the universe, illuminating this final moment and burning away all past glory, love, hate, and legends.
Loki's revenge was completed in the most extreme and thorough way.
The flames of Ragnarök, because of his final sacrifice, reached the peak of destruction.