Echoes of Hollow

In the great hall, a realm beyond Midgard, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, and even Asgard. The place where life originated. A place where great warriors unite after death, where the gods themselves welcome them. Silent steps are taken.

Calm and unhurried, each step is made slowly toward the center of the grand hall, where runes surround the space, runes carved into the walls and columns made of the purest, most radiant gold.

Large jewels are embedded in the enormous columns that rise toward the ceiling, as if they had no end.

At the far end of the hall, a throne. The brightest, most beautiful, and majestic in the entire place. The seat where the All-Father, on days of celebration when brave warriors arrive, makes his presence known.

In the center, surrounded by massive silver benches and tables, tables adorned with various golden horns—dragon horns, so they say—and platters made from the same material as the furniture, all of which, like the benches and tables, bear their own runes, is a great altar where the strongest and most beautiful purple flame of the entire realm burns, the flame of life, the heart of Ymir.

The figure extended his hand toward the flame.

"Don't do it, brother."

A firm voice, brimming with power—an electrifying power that seemed to course through his entire body in an instant—stopped him.

"Brother...?"

His long black hair shifted as he turned his head. He faced his brother, his green eyes meeting the blue ones ahead.

"Father is wise and merciful, you know that. If you stop now, he'll surely forgive what you're doing and even what you caused in Asgard."

"Forgive? He will forgive me?"

Placing a hand over his mouth, he tried to stifle it, but he couldn't. His laughter echoed throughout the great hall. His eyes gleamed.

"That trash isn't in any position to do something like that. He never has been."

"How can you say such things about our father? What has he done for you—no, for us—besides giving us the best upbringing a god could receive?"

"So you don’t know... No, how could you? You, who care about nothing but fighting. The god of thunder, so proud of his divinity, yet just as pathetic as any mortal, nothing more than a dog for Father."

"What..? Loki, you...!"

"Forgive me, brother. The conversation is good, but I still have something to do. However..."

"Loki..."

Blue lightning illuminated the entire hall. Thunderbolts took over the space.

"Take your hand off the flame. This is my final warning."

The rune-covered hammer in his hand crackled with even more powerful lightning. His body was cloaked in electricity. His eyes glowed. There, a blue light, which for many, signified certain death.

"Tell the old man that the end is near, and there’s nothing he can do. My revenge," he sneered, "will be to take from him what he loves most."

"If you even think of doing anything else to Asgard, Loki, I swear..."

"Asgard...?"

Loki laughed again. But the gleam in his eyes did not return. They seemed dead—lifeless eyes.

"You really don’t know him, or are you pretending not to? Tell him that the one who will now hold the distinction of the world in his hands will be me, and no one else."

"What are you..."

Thor tried, but it was too late. The flame had vanished, and Loki was no longer there—at least, Thor could no longer find him.

"Until next time, brother. Though it’s a shame—the next time will also be the last..."

"Loki!!"

Lightning tore across the skies. Even outside the great hall, the light was visible. The result of a god’s fury unleashed all at once.

***************

With the purple flame in one hand and a small sphere emitting a faint blue glow from its octagonal, prismatic faces in the other, Loki appeared in an immense sea of ice.

"Even a portal wasn’t fast enough to escape that lightning... Truly, a god of thunder."

Smoke drifted from the left side of his face.

His burned flesh and destroyed eye slowly regenerated as he raised one of his hands.

The sphere rose toward the sky, its glow intensifying more and more. The blue light covered the entire sky. A magnificent, yet terrifying sight.

‘He spoke with such certainty, that this little toy would indeed work... To think that something created with a mere flick of the hand could contain an entire pantheon... If one of them is so monstrous, imagine their creator. I understand now why everyone accepted that ridiculous game without question. Even though they are also participating...'

After a thunderous crash, light followed by lightning coursed through the entire force field created by the sphere.

"They arrived much sooner than I expected."

After the first strike, there was no pause. More lightning, birds turning into black smoke as they hit the force field, and dozens of other attacks created a simply spectacular sight for those inside the dome.

"Are you really going to do this?" questioned the woman who appeared at his side.

One side of her face was as beautiful as any goddess, but the other looked corroded, as if it were in a constant state of decomposition. She wore a long black dress that extended past her feet.

At no moment did she touch the ground.

"There’s no turning back." Loki glanced to the side, meeting her eyes briefly. His long black hair swayed with the wind. "You know this. All of you know."

A little farther away, watching everything unfold from behind, two colossal beings remained crouched.

A serpent with glowing green eyes and scales, so massive that its body stretched to the edge of the energy dome, coiling around itself at the end.

The other, just as colossal, was a wolf with black fur and red eyes, flames constantly flickering within its gaze. Its curved paws, in size, resembled the icy mountains around them, and even while lying on the snow, its ears easily touched the dome that reached the sky.

"From this moment on," Loki spoke, his eyes sweeping the surroundings, "for all those in Asgard, your long-awaited Ragnarok is declared."

As the attacks on the barrier continued, hundreds, thousands, no, millions of beings emerged from the icy desert that surrounded the place.

Some were as large as mountains, others had stature and features similar to humans.

Some, though not even close to the originals, resembled dragons—smaller, certainly, much smaller.

Their bodies, more radiant and resilient than the purest crystals, stretched, along with their wings, to dozens, some to hundreds of meters: they were very different from true dragons, indeed, whose eye irises, even in the smallest specimens, were so vast they could contain countless stars.

The creatures roared as they gazed at the spectacle above them, causing the glow on the bodies of those in the front lines to intensify, revealing the markings etched into their bodies. Instead of fear, they felt a strange thrill at seeing the lightning explode before their eyes.

***************

"What?!" exclaimed a young man on the phone. "It's barely been a week since you left home, and now you're talking about marriage?!"

"Don't ask me," replied the devastatingly beautiful girl. "I was just as surprised..."

Something fell beside the bench she was sitting on. The wind whipped her hair to the side.

"Seriously, Lior...?" As she fixed her hair, she pocketed her phone. "What are you doing here? And looking like that too."

"Marriage...?" The young man straightened his clothes, which had been messed up by the wind during his flight, and sat beside the girl—his sister. "That's insane!"

"I know..."

"Who's the idiot marrying you?"

"What? ...Repeat that."

"No... I meant you never mentioned this before. I didn't even know you had a boyfriend."

"And I didn't."

"So who...?" Lior glanced around as people gathered around where they were. "Uh, Alyia, are you wearing your mask?" he asked.

"Seriously? You didn’t even look in the mirror after you woke up and just flew over here?"

"Oh, right... Your call hit me harder than I thought... I guess I forgot."

People stared at them with a look of desire, their longing to possess them clear in their eyes. Especially Lior. To those people, he didn’t appear human, or even like a man. To some, he was nothing more than a large, juicy piece of meat, something they'd do anything to have. To others, he was an enormous, gleaming treasure, the most precious of all, that should be kept away from everyone and protected forever.

Alyia sighed.

With a simple wave of her hand, the people around them collapsed, falling unconscious in seconds. In a snap, she and Lior were no longer in that small park.

Sighing, the boy looked ahead, admiring the view through the massive glass windows that spanned the front of the grand apartment they were now in. He walked across the room, heading toward its center.

"Now that I think about it... Did you say 'didn’t have'?" Lior lay on the large couch, crossing his legs and resting his head on Alyia's lap. "What do you mean by that?"

"Exactly what you're thinking. I have a boyfriend now."

"Is it the same guy from the marriage thing?"

"Yes." Alyia began gently running her fingers through Lior’s white hair, whose roots were showing black. "I was a bit curious about how he’d react when he saw me, and also about something else..."

"Even though the mask works, it doesn’t make us look hideous like you’re implying. Even with it on, you’d still be irresistible to 99.9% of the world’s population, so it’s not strange that he’s attracted to you."

"Really?" Alyia smiled. "Are you in that 99.9%?"

Grinning, Lior replied, "Why do you think I said 99.9%?"

"You..." she lightly tugged on her brother’s hair and sighed. "But it's not just about attraction... Well, when you see him in person, you’ll understand why I was curious."

Lior looked confused. He opened his eyes, studying Alyia, trying to grasp what she meant.

"And besides, I don’t think that marriage proposal was voluntary." she added.

"So you forced him to ask?"

"Don’t be stupid!" With her free hand, Alyia flicked Lior on the forehead, gradually turning his hair golden like hers, and even shifting his features to something more... ordinary. "I don’t know why, but every time he sees me, he seems to freeze up, like he can’t think straight. For me, the proposal was just a result of that."

"Did you see each other while you weren’t wearing the mask? That would explain his reaction."

"No. I had the mask on, and the first time we met, I was soaking wet, but even then, the effect was the same."

"I don’t get it. Does water make you uglier? Do you melt like ice? HaHa!"

"Are you serious?"

"Sorry, but..." Lior sat up and faced Alyia. "I still don’t understand how he went from someone who was apparently paralyzed to proposing marriage. And I'm also curious how you ended up with a boyfriend out of all this. I should've brought Teodoro along—he’s the mind reader, not me."

"The most powerful and capable man alive, huh... well, forget that. Go deal with that rat for me."

"No, it doesn't look like that's necessary. But since you clearly don’t want to go, I’ll open the door myself."

"...What’s he coming here for?"

"What do you think? You knocked out an entire park full of people."

"...He wouldn’t come all the way from China to Korea just for that. I thought you guys were busy. At least Teodoro seems to be."

Getting up from the couch, Lior walked across the room toward the large white door.

"Ah, long time no see, Yang Kai," he said as he opened it.

"We saw each other last week," replied the tall young man with long, spiked black hair. "And is this yours?" he asked, holding a limp, unconscious man by the neck.

"Seriously?"

"Just kidding." As the man’s neck was released, he began to vanish slowly as he fell toward the ground. "I came here for another reason. I need a little favor."