NOVEL NEXT Chapter 509: Ragnarök 1
The rainbow bridge's collapse behind him was nothing compared to the destruction Adam brought to Asgard itself. As his feet touched the golden realm's crystalline streets, the very air began to shimmer with chaotic energy. The eternal light that had bathed this divine city since the dawn of creation flickered and died, replaced by the writhing shadows of chaos incarnate.
Adam walked forward with measured steps, each footfall leaving cracks in the pristine crystal that spread outward like spiderwebs of corruption. The golden spires that had gleamed for eons began to tarnish at his approach, their divine radiance consumed by a hunger that could never be satisfied. The scent of ozone and burnt starlight filled the air as reality itself began to warp around his presence.
The first god to challenge him was Vidar, the silent god whose legendary boots could withstand any force. He approached without words, as was his nature, but his intent was clear in the grim set of his jaw and the way his indestructible footwear pounded against the crystal streets like thunder. His massive form moved with surprising grace as he leapt high, seeking to crush Adam beneath the soles that were prophesied to survive even Ragnarok itself.
The silent god's shadow fell across Adam like the wings of death, but the Dragon Emperor merely raised one hand with casual indifference. His fingers closed around Vidar's throat mid-leap, stopping the god's tremendous momentum as easily as catching a falling leaf.
Vidar's eyes went wide—not just with surprise, but with the dawning horror of one who suddenly understood that prophecy meant nothing in the face of overwhelming power. He tried to speak, to break his eternal silence with some final words, but only strangled gasps emerged from his crushed windpipe.
Dark energy pulsed through Adam's grip, and Vidar's divine form began to crumble. First his skin turned grey, then black, then simply dissolved into ash that scattered on winds that carried the scent of burning gold and dying dreams. The boots that were meant to outlast all things cracked and fell to pieces, their legendary durability meaningless against the entropy that now consumed their wearer.
Power flooded through Adam's being. Not just strength, but the weight of silence itself—the burden of one who had observed without speaking, who had carried secrets too terrible for words. It all became part of him, another layer added to the chaos that burned in his body.
His eyes grew brighter, swirling with deeper shadows and more violent storms.
More gods came, drawn by the death of their fallen brother. Vali arrived first, his berserker rage driving him forward in a fury that had once been channelled toward avenging Balder's death. The god's muscles bulged with divine strength as he swung a massive axe in an arc that could have cleaved mountains in half.
Adam sidestepped the attack, his plasma blade materialising in his hand as he moved. The weapon carved through Vali's torso in a diagonal slash that opened the god from shoulder to hip. Golden ichor fountained across the crystal streets as Vali's bisected form toppled backwards, his berserker fury extinguished in an instant of perfect silence.
The divine essence flowed into Adam like water into a drought-stricken riverbed. Another god's power, another fragment of cosmic authority absorbed into his growing strength. His chaotic energy writhed with new intensity, fed by the accumulated might of Asgard's defenders.
Hodr came next, the blind god guided by loyal Einherjar who wept as they led their lord to his death. The god of winter and darkness raised hands that sparkled with frost, his sightless eyes somehow tracking Adam's movements through senses beyond the merely physical.
"I know what you are," Hodr said, his voice carrying the chill of endless nights. "I have walked in darkness since birth, and I recognise a shadow touched by it when I encounter one."
"Then you know how this ends," Adam replied, his voice carrying neither mockery nor pity—only the cold certainty of inevitable death.
Hodr's response was to unleash the fury of winter itself. Ice erupted from the crystal streets, seeking to entomb Adam in a prison of eternal cold. Snow swirled through the air like a living thing, each flake sharp enough to cut divine flesh. The very air rumbled around the blind god's form as he channelled the primal forces of winter.
Adam walked through it all as if it were a gentle summer breeze. His chaotic energy consumed the ice before it could touch him, turning the frozen water to steam that hissed and writhed around his form. He reached Hodr in three measured steps and placed one hand on the blind god's forehead.
"Your darkness was borrowed," Adam said softly. "The one I endured in the abyss is absolute."
Hodr's scream shattered the remaining ice as Adam's touch unmade him at the molecular level. The god of winter dissolved like snow in a furnace, his divine essence joining the growing storm of power that raged within the Dragon Emperor's being.
The golden halls of Gladsheim erupted in flames as Adam's burned their very foundations. What had once been gleaming structures of pure light now burned with dark fire. The walls screamed as they melted, their surfaces bubbling and running like wax exposed to the heart of a star.
Inside the great hall, the Einherjar—those chosen warriors who had died gloriously in battle and been brought to Asgard to fight in the final battle—took up arms against the intruder. They came in waves, thousands of the greatest warriors from across human history, their forms blazing with the valor that had earned them a place in Valhalla.
They died like wheat before the scythe.
Adam moved through their ranks like a force of nature, his plasma blades carving through armor and flesh with equal ease. Viking berserkers, Roman centurions, Celtic champions, Saxon thanes—all of them fell, and all of them fed the chaos that burned within him.
The training grounds where these eternal warriors had honed their skills for millennia blazed brighter than the sun at its zenith. The practice weapons that had rung with the sound of endless combat now melted into slag, their metal running like rivers of molten silver across ground that had been sacred since the world's youth.