“The first thing you’ve got to know is that every single world born out of the Ginnungagap has been influenced by Muspelheim and Niflheim,” said Solana.

“Worlds, as in, over nine?” asked Lukas.

Solana snorted. “Dozens. The Ancients claimed an entire belt of worlds, connecting the Frost Realm with the Fire Realm. One that spawned creatures of its own; creatures that were large and mighty, both in strength and spirit. A race of warmongers that could not agree on anything except war.”

“The jotunn,” Tanya murmured.

Solana nodded. “The everlasting flame blessed and cursed the jotunn worlds closest to them, turning the jotun into fire-breathing, twisted caricatures of themselves — the muspels. Niflheim’s eternal winter had a reverse effect, transforming them to himthursars, the frost-giants. There are many stories about how Nidavellir, that’s the realm of the svartalfars, and Alfheim and Vanaheim came to existence, but there is one thing all stories agree on.”

“Which is?”

“Midgard. A cluster of tiny world-lings, breeding two-legged beings that were neither Flame nor Frost. Creatures of Spirit but lacked the essence that made the vanir special. Beings whose lifeforce were like flickering candles compared to a jotunn. A race of prey. A civilization of the weak.”

She looked Lukas in the face.

“Bremetan,” she said. “The lesser-born. Living in a lesser world.”

“...”

Lukas didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Barely two months ago, he had sat around, listening to Olfric preach about the brilliance and the might of the Asukan Empire. The treatises from Zuken’s library had mentioned how the world had snapped into existence by the whims of the Primordials Izanagi and Izanami — the First Man and First Woman. There had even been artistic depictions of how the world was crafted by the primordials as a gift for their children and given to them to rule. Bremetans, made in the image of Izanagi and Izanami themselves, were the crux of all potential, ruled by Empress Amaterasu, and her kin Tsukuyomi and Susanoo, the children of the primordials.

And now, Solana was showing him the flip side of the coin. A different tale of genesis, featuring the nine realms of the Yggdrasil, with the bremetans being the lowest of the low, the bottom rung of the ladder. You could literally step over their rung. Again, it ought to be questioned how the lowest rung became the highest, but that was neither here nor there.

The surreal part about this was that the characters, the races, the worlds were all real. Elena was a changeling, born of a ljósálfar and a bremetan. Maude had been a vanir prior to her corruption. Zuken, Olfric, they were all bremetans, and he, Lukas, was literally shacking up inside a yokai camp. Odin was a real thing, and the other Norse Gods existed. The Empire existed on the edge of Amaterasu’s blade, and Tanya…

Tanya, who was apparently a Yūki-onna.

“Where do yokai fall in this?” He asked. “I’ve never heard of the yokai sprouting out of the nine realms.”

“Why would we?” asked Solana. “You forget what we are, Outsider. We are of the Ethereal, and it is in the Ethereal that we take birth.”

“The Ethereal…” Lukas murmured, “You mean… the Haze?”

“I told you this once before, Outsider,” said Solana. “The Other is of the Ethereal. What is visible is Sight. That which is beyond sight is the Other. That which can be heard is Sound. That which is beyond Sound is the Other. That which pumps lifeblood is the force. That which is beyond it is the Other.”

“The yokai…” Tanya murmured, “You’re saying the Ginnungagap created the yokai.” She met Lukas’s eyes before shifting to Solana’s glowing, inhuman eyes, and found the confirmation she was seeking in them. “The Haze.”

It certainly made sense. That explained everything. The Haze was a world. Only, instead of rock and living tissue, it was a world of mist. Of mana. It was only natural that the creatures it’d give birth to would be just as ethereal and twisted as itself.

Yokai. Those of a different world. The spirits of the Mist.

“Do you have any proof?”

Solana looked at Tanya like she had said something utterly alien. “... proof?”

“Obviously,” Tanya said. “You just told me that everything I knew about the world is a lie. You claim that I’m… I’m like you. You claim Asukans are the bottom feeders of this world, but somehow, ended up ruling it?. And you want me to take that at face-value?”

Lukas suppressed the urge to grin. He knew, from his connection to the Haze, that Solana was speaking the truth. He had feared she’d use this knowledge to manipulate Tanya easily. It was nice to see that she was still being her cold, pragmatic self.

Tanya put her hands on her waist. “Unless you can show me some proof, all you have are words. A story. How do I know you’re not lying to me? And even if you aren’t, what has all of this got to do with me? With Everfrost?”

“Everything,” whispered the skinwalker. “The entire war between Asukans and Yokai has been over your heritage, child. Tell me, do you know why the Asukan Empire declared war against the yokai?”

“Easy.” said Tanya. “Because of Oni. Because we were hunted and turned into your spiritual puppets”

Solana smiled, and it was a cruel thing. “No. Because Empress Meynte, the Glacier Queen, the Last Ruler of all Yokai, gained a power that would have ended the Empire. A power so cold that Amaterasu’s light couldn’t penetrate. A power that lies in the Deepness of the Hvergelmir, a lake of Hel, guarded by the great Nidhogg.”

Lukas glanced at the throne. Nidhogg’s lair, Solana had called it.

Solana’s voice gained an unearthly edge. “It has many names. The perpetual darkness that turned Nidhogg’s scales into the shade of the darkest night. The devourer, one that dragged the Aesir into its cave… The Cruelest Snow, Eternal Glacier, Wrath of the End, Anomaly Slayer….”

Lukas felt the world slip beneath his feet.

“—Fimbulwinter. The Bane of the Gods—”

“Everfrost.”

…

…

Fimbulwinter.

The prophesied winter that heralded Ragnarok, the utter and complete annihilation of the Aesir pantheon. A prolonged period of continuous snow and frost, marking the rise of several factors, the unleashing of primal forces, and the occurrence of events that led to the decline of the Aesir as people on Earth knew it.

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The great wolf Fenrir breaking out of his shackles.

The prophesied fight between Jormungandr, the World Serpent, and Thor, the Nordic equivalent of a boogeyman for the jotun.

The calamitous battle that soon followed, leading to the demise of the Gods. Odin. Loki. Thor. And so many more.

Nordic history had references to the dragon Nidhogg, gnawing at the roots of the Yggdrasil. Alternative sources felt that it was the roots that were binding the magnificent beast down, chaining it from unleashing the maelstrom raging in the center of Niflheim upon all of Yggdrasil. Perhaps in a different life, it wouldn’t be Surtur slaying the Aesir Gods, but the maelstrom arising out of Hvergelmir.

Entropy. Chaos. The End of All Things.

But nowhere had he ever read about Fimbulwinter as an existence or a power in its own right. It was supposed to be a prophetic event, heralding a season of change, and as many would interpret it, the symbolic representation of the climatic changes across Northern Europe during that time.

He glanced at Tanya and found her rooted in shock. Her mouth opened, as if to find words to explain how unbelievable Solana’s claims were, how wrong her conclusions were. But she couldn’t find them. She didn’t even know if they were…

If Solana was right.

Lukas couldn’t blame her. For neither could he. His mind whirled as he tried to understand the situation. What Solana was implying. What Tanya was truly capable of.

“You — you—” Tanya began. “You’re saying that I — that I—”

“Hold the last shard of our Empress?” asked Solana, her expression victorious. “Yes. You are Meynte’s descendant. In your veins flows a power so great that even Amaterasu’s light cannot burn it. That when you transform into the Frost, you become the rift through which the maelstrom of Hvergelmir explodes into this world. You are the herald, just as you will become the Queen of the End. That throne it is waiting for you. It always has been.”

“Just a second,” Lukas interrupted her. He had too much experience with Inanna using truth as a tool for manipulation to not recognize what Solana was trying. “As much as I find the idea of Tanya sitting on that throne satisfying, tell me this. If the Empire attacked your kind because they feared this power, why do they make such a big deal over the Oni? Because it corrupts them?”

“To be an Oni isn't corruption, Lukas Aguilar. Corruption refers to an invasion of something into something else. It needs an invader and a victim. That’s not true for Oni. The change is as much for yokai as it is for the bremetan host. Bremetan physicality takes over our ethereal formlessness and grants us precious lifeforce. Our innate mana forges bless the Oni form with the power to craft mana. To be an Oni is to fuse, to become something greater than the sum of its parts. It isn’t corruption, but the next stage of evolution. For bremetan, and for yokai.”

“That’s just bullshit!” Tanya shot back. Lukas inwardly grinned, happy to break her out of her uncertainty. “I’m the descendant of the Wind King, and I can tell you we Asukans are obsessed with manacrafting. If being an Oni is the best of both, we’d be readying up for that in no time. We wouldn’t be trying to trick kami out of the borderlands and bind it to them using the Ritual.”

“No. You wouldn’t, because of your obsession with control,” Solana said archly. “To be an Oni is to cease being a bremetan. It is to relinquish one’s identity, either as bremetan or yokai, and become more. You do not need to look further than your own teammate.”

She gestured at Maude, who looked perfectly content to ignore the stares. “She isn’t the vanir you knew. Nor is she the yurei I had in my command. She’s… different. A stranger. Born out of a rare merging of two souls that sought to become something different by giving up their own individuality. I have lived for six centuries. Believe me, it takes a rare kind to turn down one’s individuality like that. Even to this day, I’m unsure of how a yurei managed that.”

Lukas had an inkling before, but it was a full-blown suspicion now. Maude, whatever she had become, it was different. Strange. Alien. Even to the yokai.

Solana feared Maude.

And he had an inkling that Maude knew it.

“Tell me about the war.” He pressed.

“The war… the war,” Solana sighed. “The source of all distortions. The Elders of my kind remember winning the war. We remember the Moon God being slain. We remember Empress Meynte overpowering Amaterasu—”

She paused. “And then… it wasn’t.”

“Excuse me?” murmured Tanya. “That makes no sense.”

For the first time, Solana looked resigned. Lukas had never seen her look so… uncertain. He was reminded of Inanna’s own look of resignation after the Scrying spell had failed.

“I do not know,” she repeated. “Our Storm Gods Fujin and Raijin had slain Tsukuyomi, while Empress Meynte had trapped Amaterasu in her personal oblivion. We were winning. And we did. The Moon fell from the sky. The Mists were coming. And then… they did not. And instead, Fujin and Raijin were dead, and Tsukoyomi was alive, standing over our slain divinity. As if… as if someone had turned the reality of his death upon itself. As if someone did not like the story that came to pass and tore the page to rewrite it again.”

Her portentous words shook him. “And… is there a God among Asukans that can do that? Rewrite the past?”

Solana shook her head.

“What of the Black Moon?” He asked.

Solana stayed silent for a long moment. “We do not know. No one knows how it came to pass. The memories of the war are gone. No one remembers how the End came to pass. Why it ended. No one remembers how our Ikai became this… Haze.”

Lukas choked. This… this was eerily similar to a past situation. Back when Inanna had performed the Scrying spell.

‘The way I understand it, one of two things has happened. The first is that this life, the pendant, your planet, you, and everything else I have experienced in this form, is a great lie. An illusion crafted by the Seven Gates to keep me trapped within for eternity, and I am only discovering it now.

Or.

That everything I’ve experienced here, with you, is real. It all exists. Someone has gone to extreme lengths to erase the Akkadian pantheon, and everything associated with it, out of time itself.’

It couldn’t just be a coincidence. Could it?

Lukas found it rather bizarre that the reflection of Inanna arising out of his inner divinity had been so quick to blame Ereshkigal as the source of her sufferings and the failure of the Scrying Spell. He couldn’t blame her. After all, if there was a power that could seal everything about a Divine Goddess away, it was likely that the same power was responsible for the failure of the Scrying Spell.

But.

Something similar had happened here. If Solana was right, then the Yokai Gods had actually won the battle. Empress Meynte had triumphed over Amaterasu. The Eternal Light had sunk beneath the impossible depths of the Eternal Glacier. And then someone went to extreme lengths to undo it all.

Erase it out of existence.

Tear the page of the book of destiny and rewrite it again.

And if something like that had happened here, could it be that something similar had happened to Inanna? Was there really such a power that could undo Time itself? And if it did, could it also revert what happened to Inanna? Could it also…

Could it also bring back Earth?

“Even if…” he croaked, “even if what you say is right, how do you know what Tanya has is Everfrost?”

Tanya looked at him like he had grown two heads.

“I know,” he pressed. “I know your depiction fits her powers. But so what? Where is the proof? For all I know, this is just a finely spun tale to twist her into thinking she’s one of yours.”

Something dangerous flashed in Solana’s eyes.

Lukas just crossed his arms. “I know I promised I won’t come between Tanya and her heritage. But how can I be sure that her Everfrost is the same as your… Empress? I’ve fought her. I’ve even defeated her, and I can tell you, it’s no world-ending power. It’s just—”

“Enough!” said Solana. He could see the wisps of anger in her eyes. He didn’t know if his words had struck some raw nerve, or if she was just too sentimental about such things. She looked at Tanya.

“Child. Walk ahead. Sit on that throne. It will grant you all the answers you seek.”

“No fucking way,” Lukas snapped. “I’m not letting her get anywhere close to that thing. And I won’t let you force her to do that either.”

“No,” said Tanya.

Lukas turned to her.

“I will sit on that throne,” Tanya said, the finality in her tone surprising him. “I’ve waited for years to get my answers, and if sitting on this throne will give me them, then I will.”

“You don’t need to do this.”

“No Lukas,” she repeated, eyeing the throne with a strange intensity. “I do.”