Through his perception of spatial power, Ethan Drake could clearly sense the existence of the Nine Realms. They were not arranged like ordinary planets in a star system, nor were they linked by simple physical distance. Instead, they were bound together through a far more profound structure, woven into the framework of reality itself like worlds hanging from the branches of a single cosmic tree.
That tree was Yggdrasil.
With the Space Stone amplifying his senses, Ethan quickly understood the true nature of Asgard's existence. Earth was the only realm among the Nine Worlds that properly existed in conventional physical space. The others were closer to pocket dimensions—self-contained realms layered beside reality rather than fully embedded within the same universal plane. That was why Asgard could not easily be detected by ordinary means in the known universe.
But ordinary means had long since stopped mattering to him.
The Space Stone tore away illusion, distance, and dimensional concealment as if they were nothing more than fragile curtains. In Ethan's vision, the hidden structure of the Nine Realms became exposed in full, and his gaze soon settled on Asgard itself. It was there, brilliant and ancient, suspended beyond the reach of mortal science but completely visible to him.
All it would take was a thought.
With a single act of will, he could descend directly into Asgard.
Yet just as he prepared to move, he paused.
His attention had drifted elsewhere, drawn toward another realm—one far dimmer, buried beneath deathly silence and old, forgotten power. Compared to Asgard's radiant majesty, this world seemed dusty, abandoned, and utterly devoid of warmth. There was no trace of living breath within it, only a suffocating stillness that pressed against the senses like a grave sealed for eternity.
Helheim.
According to legend, this was the land where the souls of the dead resided. It was a place wrapped in cold, bitterness, and a despair so ancient that it felt older than history itself.
More importantly, Ethan could sense something else there.
A seal.
The entire realm had been blocked by Odin's power, locked away so that whatever was inside could never escape.
That made Ethan's eyes narrow with interest.
"Something Odin personally felt the need to seal away?"
A faint smile touched his lips, and the amusement in it carried a sharp edge.
"Now that's interesting."
His original destination changed in an instant. Instead of stepping into Asgard, Ethan took a single stride downward through space itself, crossing dimensions without resistance. He did not fall into the golden realm of the gods. He descended directly into the land of death.
Odin's seal, formidable though it might have been to others, had no effect on him at all.
The moment Ethan arrived in Helheim, an icy wind swept across his body. The cold here was not the ordinary chill of snow or winter. It was a dead cold, the kind that seemed to pierce through flesh and settle in the bones, as if the realm itself were trying to remind all intruders that they did not belong among the dead.
The wind howled strangely across the empty land, and hidden within it were faint screams that sounded almost ghostly. They were distant, thin, and warped by the air, but unmistakably human in their misery. It was not the kind of place a living being could endure for long without their sanity beginning to fray.
"As expected of the land of death."
Ethan stood still for a moment, letting his senses spread outward. Everywhere he looked was a vast field of pale emptiness. The world was colorless, barren, and so devoid of life that even the horizon seemed wrong. Nothing moved with purpose. Nothing breathed. Nothing belonged to the realm of the living.
At his feet, half-buried in white dust, were unknown skeletons scattered like forgotten relics. The powder blowing through the air looked less like sand and more like ash, as though this entire realm had been ground down from the remains of the dead themselves.
He glanced around again, and the faint smile on his face became more obvious.
"It's almost impressive. Stay in a place this empty long enough, and anyone would go insane."
The words sounded casual, almost like idle commentary.
In reality, he was speaking to someone.
Someone who had already been watching him.
A sharp black blade suddenly tore through the air from the side, moving fast enough to split the wind with a shriek. It flashed straight for Ethan's body with lethal precision, aimed to cut him down before he could even turn.
Ethan did not dodge.
He merely stood there, expression unchanged, as though the attack had never been worth reacting to.
Bang.
The black blade slammed into his arm.
There was no burst of blood. No torn flesh. No sign of injury at all.
Instead, the weapon gave way first.
With a brittle crack, the blade shattered against his body as though it had struck an indestructible wall of divine metal. Broken fragments scattered through the dead air and clattered uselessly to the ground.
A startled voice came from the side.
"You…"
The speaker was a woman.
She wore a black headdress shaped like a crown of twisted thorns, and her face carried both cold beauty and obvious shock. The fingers of her right hand trembled faintly from the numbing force of the impact, and her eyes were fixed on Ethan's arm as if she could not process what she had just seen.
What kind of body was that?
Even the hardest metal she could conjure had broken on contact. Worse, it felt as if he had known exactly where and when she would strike. The ease of it unsettled her more than the failure itself.
Then the instinctive warning arrived.
It crashed through her mind so violently that her entire body shuddered.
Danger.
No—something worse than danger.
The pressure radiating from the man in front of her was so terrifying that for one brief instant, it dragged an old memory to the surface. The feeling was even more overwhelming than what she had once experienced facing Odin himself.
Ethan finally turned his eyes toward her.
"Hello, Hela."
The simple greeting nearly froze the goddess of death in place.
Hela did not answer. She retreated at once, stepping backward again and again, every instinct screaming at her to create distance. For all her pride, for all her status, for all the blood and death attached to her name, she felt in that instant as though she were staring at some ancient beast that stood outside the natural order of gods and monsters alike.
The warning had been right.
He moved.
A crimson beam sliced through the air.
It came too fast.
Hela's eyes widened, and all she could do was scream as the red light struck her body head-on. The force hurled her backward, and a spray of blood burst into the air. A hole had been burned clean through her torso, and her body flew like a torn sack thrown by a giant's hand.
Before she could stabilize herself, before she could reclaim even a shred of control in midair, a shadow appeared above her.
Ethan.
He had crossed the distance by teleportation so seamlessly that there wasn't even a ripple of spatial fluctuation to mark the movement. One moment he was below. The next, he was already over her.
Then he stepped down.
"Don't—"
Boom.
Her body crashed into the ground like a falling meteor. The impact tore open a massive crater, and the surrounding earth erupted beneath the force. Cracks spread outward through the white dead soil of Helheim, and dust geysered into the air.
As Hela lay buried in pain and shock, Ethan's voice drifted down to her from above.
"Again. Are you ready?"
To her ears, it sounded less like speech and more like a devil whispering beside her soul.
Then he fell from the sky.
He did not punch.
He did not kick.
He simply dropped, using that terrifying body of his as a weapon, descending toward the crater with enough raw mass and force to make the land itself tremble.
Boom!
A violent blast exploded from the impact point, and the shockwave rolled across the ground like a rising mushroom cloud. Dust and ash filled the air, and Helheim's pale earth split under the blow.
Hela had barely escaped in time.
She threw herself out of the crater at the last possible second, avoiding the center of that catastrophic strike. Even so, the aftershock ripped through her body, and she knew with certainty that if she had been hit directly, she would have lost most of her life in a single blow.
She was the goddess of death.
But even the goddess of death feared pain.
"You dodged."
Ethan's voice came again through the storm of dust and ash.
"Good. Then next comes twenty percent."
The wind raged all around them, yet every word entered Hela's ears with terrible clarity. Worse than that, the sound seemed to bypass her hearing altogether and sink directly into her spirit.
Her scream tore from her throat before she could stop it.
She sensed him approaching, but it didn't matter. She couldn't escape. She couldn't defend. She could barely think.
Bang.
A cloud of blood exploded from her waist.
Hela's vision blurred at once, and her body nearly went limp. She was blasted away and crashed hard onto the distant ground, broken and twitching. For a moment, she could not move at all. She couldn't lift a finger. She couldn't command her limbs.
She was on the edge of death.
And yet, as she lay there, the two halves of her body slowly began reconnecting. Blood-red threads stretched and wove themselves together, knitting flesh, muscle, and bone with grotesque persistence.
Ethan walked toward her without hurry.
"You really are durable."
Normally, that regenerative power would be considered a blessing. Against Ethan, it was only another layer of torture.
His foot came down again.
Crack.
The waist that had just barely recovered shattered once more. Blood splashed out across the pale ground, staining Helheim's white earth a vivid red.
"You… just kill me…"
For the first time, the goddess of death begged.
She truly could not take this kind of torment anymore.
A smile appeared on Ethan's face, calm and almost amused.
"It's said your life is bound to the land of Asgard. Asgard exists, so you don't die. That's how it works, right?"
Still trembling, Hela shrank back in fear. She looked at him with wide, unsteady eyes, her pride breaking apart under pure instinct.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"The one who's here to save you," Ethan said.
"Save me?"
The word sounded absurd to her. She stared at him in disbelief, almost hysterical. What kind of salvation looked like this? What kind of savior killed someone over and over until they begged?
Her glare briefly sharpened with the last fragments of her arrogance, but the fear in her body quickly smothered it again.
Ethan laughed softly.
"Thousands of years ago, Odin sealed you in this world. Don't you want to take back everything that should have been yours?"
Hela's breathing turned ragged.
"I told you," Ethan said, looking down at her with a faint smile. "I'm the one who came to save you. Come with me, and let's go take Asgard back."
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