Year 5515...Day 32...Artemis Territory...Ragnarok…

The carriage moved heavy on a flattened path through the perpetual woods. Slowly but surely they approached the depths of the most dangerous place on the continent.

Roars of beasts and moving trees did meet their ears, soldier after soldier went missing. The thick woodlands stood a mile tall and heaven knows how deep.

The carriage ceased its wheels before a temple. The guards fanned out, aiming their crossbows towards the forest terrain. The scouts clad in bronze plated leather found nothing, they turned around, only then could the knights, clad in silver plated leather, open the carriage to reveal their charge.

The one who stood there was a young girl of twelve to thirteen years. Her garments reflected a noble status, bleached white to compliment her hair of curly blonde. She stood up, gripped the hem of her dress, and then walked out with an air of pomp about her.

The forest shook, a mighty tremor rumbled through the soil and caused her to stumble. She was prevented from tripping solely by the hand of a young man, who grasped her on the shoulder.

Uriel glared at Mourn, who faced her cold as ice. She shrugged off his hand and stepped forth. Only when her boots touched the worn stone pavement did she finally release the hem of her dress and brush it down.

“Are you ever going to stop giving me those looks?” Mourn asked as he walked down to meet her. The girl turned away from him. She looked towards the aged temple with a scrutinizing glare. The young man sighed as the Lord of Artemis, Aden, emerged from the carriage behind him.

“What was that tremor?” He asked, and both men then frowned and beset his gaze upon the ruined temple. The guards around them secured the grounds, and Uriel, without a word, stepped forward once again.

“There are plenty of dangers in this place, we should be done with our business and leave quickly,” Aden gave only that reply as he watched the girl. Her steps were light and slow as she trod into the temple. The lord locked eyes with Mourn, neither man could help but follow, as they did every time.

Silver-gold light illuminated the passageway, projected off Uriel’s saintly form. She turned to look upon the buildings walls, which were covered in worn, barely visible, murals. She reached out to touch them, wiping away a hundred years of dust with her fingers.

Mourn raised his hand, a powerful blue light filled the hallway to its end then, and only now could the faint murals be made out in their entirety, only now could the ancient depictions be beheld.

“I knew it,” Uriel said as she raised her head. She turned back towards the entrance. She ran, and nearly crashed into Mourn as she turned in haste. The young man sidestepped her, she'd have pushed her way past him and rushed towards the first mural even if he hadn't.

That mural was aged beyond recognition, neither of the two men could figure out what it was supposed to be, but Uriel knew, more specifically the inherited memories of her many predecessors did.

“The world was once like this,” She said, “An ocean of fire on one side...a frozen tundra on the other. One side bathed beneath the crimson light of the sun...the other bathed in endless starlit darkness.” She stepped forward, leaning against the wall in an almost clumsy manner. The second mural depicted a mighty crater.

“The world was shocked awake...something came from afar.” She walked towards the third mural, a sphere covered in smoke. The sea of flame turned to cold rock, the tundra thawed into an enormous ocean.

“Ash covered the world.” She stepped onward and took a step back as the fifth mural appeared before her. That mural depicted the earth covered in mighty forests, the sea swarming with titans.

“Life...was born of Ash.” The two men frowned. They stared towards that fifth mural with uneasy expressions.

“Ragnarok,” They said, both simultaneously. The forest they were now in, and the forest of that time, both were the same in origin, all such places were alike in this regard.

“Correct,” Said Uriel as she moved on to the sixth mural. She had a look of confusion at first but slowly, surely, that confusion faded away.

That sixth mural depicted trees, beasts and countless things changing shape, becoming men, under the shadow of a ghostly hand. The two men followed her as she approached the seventh mural, where a ghostly man stood in a land covered with corpses.

She walked on, pressing her palm to the eight mural, where that same ghostly man stood over a corpse and, with a crystal-shaped object in hand, welcomed, nay captured, the ghost that emerged from the husk.

She pressed on passed that, towards the ninth mural. There stood an image similar to Grimnir’s scorpion-like body, yet surrounded by countless of those humanoid ghosts. Further beyond, she found an image that was both similar and yet distinct from the shape Grimnir had when he destroyed Eve a thousand years ago.

She fixed upon that image for a very long time, those scorpions surrounded him, as the ghostly humanoids surrounded them. The emotions that came flooding in with those memories nearly shattered her psyche.

She moved on towards the next mural, and it depicted Grimnir as he appeared today, an incomplete planetoid. She shook her head as she caressed it.

“This isn’t Grimnir,” She realised, “this is Alfod.” The images were similar, yet not the same, it could indeed only be Alfod. Both Mourn and Aden watched on in silence, they were not experts, but they did know at least the name of those two gods. “How old is this temple?” Uriel asked, glancing back at them, more specifically, at the Lord of Artemis.

“Who knows,” He replied, “Older than any record, that much is certain.” Uriel pressed on.

The next mural depicted a sphere, nothing more, Alfod had become this in his completed form and taken all of those other figures into his body once more. Many times was this sphere depicted, gradually parting from the world they knew and disappearing into the sea of stars.

Uriel frowned, she looked upon Alfod’s form with trembling. That shape he had, a sphere with an almost embryonic figure trapped inside, was ominously familiar to her.

“So that...that is what an Aesir looks like?” She frowned again and stepped away from the image.

Now it was clear, when a Vanir becomes an Aesir, they leave this world behind. Yet how then could the Vanir of this current world have been born from that same Aesir’s former Einherjar? How could that be so? How? She trembled, then turned around.

Uriel faced the front of the hall, she faced that distant second image, the mural depicting something hitting the world, transforming their Ymir into what it now was in modern times. “Don’t tell me,” She whispered, and her face went pale as she stared at that image.

Assuming her new formed theory was correct then the Aesir was either dead or, even worse, it wasn’t. Assuming the former, all the Ash that gave birth to the Vanir came from that dead Aesir, but in the case of the latter, however...

She walked forward, slowly but surely, until she entered into the heart of the temple. There stood a shrine, an alter, upon which lay a crystalline Beacon that bathed the chamber in golden light. Uriel frowned, she stepped forward slowly towards the Beacon on the altar. Only now did the two men walk in. They looked around with curious gazes, the walls were covered in countless ancient words.

“This is a chamber to worship Alfod,” Uriel said as she picked up the Beacon that lay upon the altar. Mourn frowned, he approached the walls and caressed the words that were engraved upon them.

“What does this mean?” He asked. He turned to face Uriel, who gave him but a passing glance.

“Those are names,” She said, “The name of those chosen to become Alfod’s Einherjar...and this,” She stared at the Beacon still glowing in her hands, “This is not one of Alfod’s.” Her Ash emerged, encasing the Beacon’s light. She did not merge herself to it, did not embrace its power, instead, her power acted like hooks to slowly whittle it away. The two men stepped back as a sharp sound echoed out.

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The guards outside trembled, countless beasts fled, even the wind and the trees seemed to want to leave this place. The sound that met their ears was loud, inhuman and very clearly in agony.

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The Beacon’s scattered Ash filled the hall, yet lost its golden lustre. She lowered her now empty palms and then clapped them together. She knew not what god made that Beacon, only that it had been destroyed by her hand. She never thought that method would work, but it did not hurt to try.

She gazed upon the dust. This Ash would soon seep into the earth. New life would cover this temple forever. Yet for now it lingered, rising until it illuminated the ceiling above her.

The girl’s smile then slowly shifted into a look of terror. There stood the final mural, a starry sky filled with shapes she did not recognise.

Great spheres of fire trapped forever in cages formed of countless rings.

Wandering beings each as large as a world.

And those structures that Alfod had become at the final phase of his life hovering by.

All of these images entered into her eyes and thus she understood. She realised what she was looking at, what she was forced to gaze upon.

Should one travel to Jotunheim, the ice continent on the other side of this world, the sole landmass never touched by the light of the sun, they might behold some of these sights.

She trembled and found herself almost losing the ability to stand up as she beheld that horrible reality. The wandering beings had the same features as all of Grimnir’s forms upon their heads, but each was mildly different.

They had formless chests and torsos, possessed neither arms nor any legs, and bore a titanic tail. All around them were spherical structures, each one erupting into a hundred sets of a thousand branch-like limbs that caressed at the abyss.

Uriel collapsed as she beheld those figures that swam like fish within the sea of stars. What was their world when lost in this sea? What did their struggles matter. Her heart sank into an ocean of disbelief and despair.

She collapsed.

“Miss?” Aden said as she stepped forth.

“What happened?” Mourn caught her falling form. He too looked up, he too beheld that mural, yet he had no idea what it signified. He simply had no context with which to understand what it was that the image was supposed to be depicting.

Truly, he did not know, like an ant trapped inside the hill it was born in he did not know the world of giants that lay beyond his home. He did not understand the insignificance of his small little world, of the planet named Ymir.

End of Part One…