Not So Friendly Anymore

Chapter 42: The Butcher Arrives

(Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!!!🎄🎄)

The stars over Asgard went out.

Not dimmed by passing clouds.

Not hidden by storm or shadow.

They went out, snuffed one by one like candles beneath a smothering hand, leaving only a vast, empty black where constellations had shone moments before. Across the realm, warriors paused mid-step in the streets below, their conversations dying on their lips. Einherjar on the walls looked skyward, shields lowering slightly as confusion turned to unease. Even the city itself seemed to hold its breath, the golden spires standing silent as the light above them died, constellation by constellation, until the night sky was
nothing but a void.

Then the cold came.

Not the crisp bite of winter, Asgard had known winter, had reveled in it. This was something deeper, older, a void-cold that seeped into the bones and gnawed at the soul rather than the skin. It carried no wind, no snow, just an emptiness that made hearts beat slower, breaths shallower, as if the realm itself was forgetting how to feel warmth.

On the outer edge of the realm, far beyond the golden bridge and the shimmering Bifröst, space split.

No thunder cracked.

No fire roared.

No spectacle announced it.

Just a silent wound tearing open reality itself, a jagged rift that bled darkness into the cosmos, edges fraying like torn fabric. From it stepped a lone figure, emerging as casually as a man walking through a doorway.

He walked on nothing, bare feet touching the void as though it were solid ground beneath him. His body was gaunt, scarred from battles across forgotten worlds, wrapped in tattered black cloth that moved as if alive, tendrils shifting and coiling like extensions of his will. In his hand, the Necrosword breathed, stretching and curling lazily, whispering in a thousand dead tongues, echoes of gods it had slain, their final pleas twisted into hunger.

Gorr the God Butcher had arrived.

Behind him, the rift widened slowly, vomiting shadows that clawed at the edges of existence, tendrils reaching out like fingers grasping for purchase. Dead gods hung there in the tear, impaled memories suspended in the dark, frozen screams on divine faces, echoes of divinity slaughtered across millennia, their essence still leaking into the sword. The Necrosword drank their remnants eagerly, pulsing with a sickly light, growing stronger with every drop it absorbed.

Gorr's eyes, sunken, burning with an unquenchable fire, fixed on Asgard in the distance.

On its gleaming towers.

Its defiant light.

Its gods.

"So," he rasped, his voice dry as grave-dust, carrying across the void without effort, "this is where you hide now."

He took another step forward, and Asgard's wards screamed.

Ancient runes that Odin himself had carved into the fabric of the realm flared to life in desperate protest, golden sigils bursting across the sky like a net trying to hold back the tide. They held for a heartbeat, then shattered like glass under the Necrosword's mere presence, bursting into ash that drifted away into nothing. The sword passed through them without resistance, devouring the magic as easily as it devoured flesh, leaving only silence in its wake.

High within the city, alarm crystals detonated one after another, their sharp cracks echoing through the halls like breaking bones, lights flaring red in warning.