Everyone's attention snapped back to Hermione.

"Something has gone wrong with Odin, the All-Father of Asgard."

She spoke slowly. "Odin and Thor and I are on good terms. I'm planning to head over and assess the situation. There may be fighting."

She paused, sweeping her gaze across the group.

"Most importantly..."

Her tone shifted. "Asgard's third prince, Loki, is also a Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult."

"Envy."

The room went still. Everyone flinched.

Tom Riddle showed no surprise, he had known for a long time.

Agatha was the first to recover.

"So you and Loki were running a two-man act for the whole world back in New York?"

"That's right."

Hermione nodded. "This time we're solving a problem for one of our own — and getting him a throne in the process."

"If we succeed, Asgard falls under the Witch Cult's influence. Indirectly, but firmly."

Sharp intakes of breath around the room.

They had assumed the Witch Cult was an Earth operation. They hadn't imagined its reach already extended into the cosmos, and to the legendary divine realm of Asgard, no less.

Excitement flared in Wanda's eyes.

"So we're going to Asgard?"

"Yes."

Hermione turned and walked toward the door. "Follow me."

......

Beneath Stark Tower.

She led them to a massive hangar. The lights came on, and there in the center, resting in quiet stillness, sat a beautifully designed spaceship.

"This is..."

Surprise flickered across Kaecilius's face.

"An Asgardian ship."

Hermione walked up to it. The hatch slid open on its own. "A gift from Odin."

Everyone exchanged a glance, then filed aboard one by one.

Hermione settled into the cockpit and ran her fingers across the controls. She plotted the same route she'd taken on her previous trip to Asgard, then fired up the engines.

The ship cloaked. It rose slowly, cleared the tower, and punched straight up through the clouds.

The atmosphere fell away. The cosmos opened before them.

An endless sea of stars. Brilliant, cold starlight in every direction.

The ship accelerated and reached the nearest jump node within minutes.

Hermione engaged the jump drive.

Space warped. The ship vanished.

When it reappeared, the view through the viewports had completely changed.

An expanse of golden palace complexes filled their field of vision, massive, soaring structures drenched in mythological grandeur.

Then they saw it.

The divine realm had been split clean down the middle.

The left side was exactly what legends promised: gleaming gold, radiant and eternal. But the right side was something else entirely. A desolation. A graveyard. The earth cracked and buckled, buildings lay in ruin, and the ground had fractured into countless abyss-deep fissures with eerie green flames churning up from within.

Two completely different worlds, divided by a single hard line running through the center.

Along that boundary, the two forces ate at each other. The air shrieked where they met.

"This is Asgard?"

Wanda pressed her face against the porthole, eyes wide. "It looks nothing like I imagined. It looks like the underworld."

Hermione took a slow breath and nodded.

"Because part of it is. That's Hel. Somehow it's bleeding into Asgard."

She steered the ship toward the golden-domed royal palace, her expression grave.

They landed in the palace plaza.

The hatch opened. Everyone stepped out.

The palace gates were already open. Odin stood in the doorway in full golden armor, Gungnir in hand. Behind him, Thor, Loki, Frigga, and Banner.

"Hermione!"

Thor came forward in long strides, his face breaking into a grin. "How did you get here?"

"Lady Witch."

Odin stepped forward. Something like relief passed through his single eye. "I did not expect you to come."

Loki gave a brief nod. Nothing more.

Banner looked a little sheepish.

Frigga was smiling warmly.

"Before I get into why I came — how did you know it was me?"

Thor laughed. "Every Asgardian ship has its own identification signature. Yours was a gift from Asgard itself, so the moment it entered range we got word. We guessed it was you."

That explained it. No one had intercepted them. They had landed right at the palace gates because the ship had been read as a friendly.

"As for why I came..." Hermione looked at Thor. "You took Dr. Banner and disappeared. Tony tried to reach you multiple times and never got a response. I figured something had gone wrong."

Thor's expression flickered with guilt.

"The Bifrost has been seized. Heimdall was forced to pull back. I've had no way to contact Earth."

Hermione nodded and turned to Odin. "Your Majesty — could you walk us through what's happening?"

Odin sighed. He turned and moved back into the great hall.

"Come inside first."

They followed.

The hall was heavy. The kind of quiet that settles when people are running out of options.

Odin lowered himself onto the throne. He set Gungnir's butt against the floor, and the sound it made was low and solid and final.

"It is Hela."

"My firstborn. Asgard's former Goddess of Death."

He spoke slowly, and the weariness in his voice was not performed. "I sealed her away thousands of years ago. But now... I can no longer hold the seal."

"Half a month ago she broke free from Hel. The first thing she did was begin consuming Asgard's lifeblood."

"She and I are now fighting for ownership of Asgard itself."

He raised one hand. A three-dimensional projection bloomed in the center of the hall.

A woman in dark green armor, a great horned helm on her head, standing at the heart of the underworld. Boundless death energy churned around her. Behind her stretched an expanse of cold emerald soil burning with pale underworld fire.

Hela.

Ruler of Hel.

Odin's gaze settled on the encroached territory. "It is only because of Thor, Loki, and Hulk that her advance has been temporarily stopped."

"I see."

Hermione nodded. "I sensed something was off and came to see whether I could help."

"Looks like my timing wasn't bad."

She turned and began introducing the rest of her group to Odin.

Odin's gaze moved from Hermione to the figures standing behind her. He had been so focused on her arrival that he hadn't looked at them properly until now. Deep red robes. And something in each of them that made a god pay attention.

He looked more carefully, and even Odin's composure shifted.

His eye went to Agatha first.

Purple magical energy flickered around her, faint, but present, laced through with something else. A pure, unmistakable aura from the Dark Dimension.

Surprise crossed his face.

Dormammu's aura. He hadn't dealt with that entity directly, but he knew the name well enough, the unfortunate being the Ancient One had been making miserable for centuries.

By the look of things, that was over now.

"The aura of the Dark Dimension." He said it slowly, almost to himself. "So beyond the Sorcerer Supreme and Lady Witch, Earth has cultivated another power at this level."

He paused, studying Agatha. "After Dormammu fell, you are the one they chose to inherit the Dark Dimension."

Agatha's mouth curved. She didn't deny it.

Odin's gaze moved to Wanda.

Scarlet magic drifted through the air around the girl in slow, quiet currents, carrying a rhythm that was ancient and somehow disordered, like something older than order itself.

His pupil contracted.

"Chaos Magic?"

Odin drew a slow breath.

"The Scarlet Witch." He looked at Wanda steadily. "I have seen that legend in the old texts. She has not yet fully grown into her power, but the potential in what I am sensing right now..."

He let the silence finish the sentence.

Boundless.

➤ Next: Sparring with Odin

Chapter 378 - Sparring with Odin

Odin turned his gaze to Kaecilius.

"The orthodox lineage of Kamar-Taj." He nodded. "A disciple of the Ancient One?"

"I was," Kaecilius said calmly.

Odin asked nothing more. He turned his attention to Tom Riddle and Luna.

These two felt much the same as Hermione, pure-blooded wizards, most likely, the same as her.

"Midgard truly does hide its dragons well."

Odin finished studying the group and let out a quiet sound of admiration.

"And Her Excellency the Witch surrounds herself with talent. Far better than Asgard's current... shortage of promising blood."

Thor, standing off to the side, went red. He scratched the back of his head.

Frigga laughed softly and patted his shoulder.

Hermione waved a hand.

"Your Majesty is too kind." Her tone was genuine. "I'm nowhere close to you or Master Ancient One."

That was not false modesty.

She was already at Level 6, and she still couldn't read Odin's full depth.

He had grown old. Hela had clearly cost him, he was weaker than he once was.

But weaker did not mean matchable. A king who had ruled for thousands of years was not something a Level 6 witch could simply close the distance on.

The gap was there. She just didn't know how wide.

That thought turned over in her mind, and Hermione's eyes shifted.

"Your Majesty — since we're here in Asgard, why not spar?"

The great hall went still.

Thor moved first.

"No."

He stepped in front of her and dropped his voice. "Hermione. You're not Father's equal. Don't do this."

She gave him a sidelong glance and ignored him. Her eyes stayed on Odin.

"Your Majesty, verbal descriptions of Hela's power won't give us a real picture. Before we go into this fight, I'd like to know what we're actually dealing with. A few exchanges with you would tell me more than any report."

Thor opened his mouth again. Odin laughed first.

"Hahahaha!"

It rolled through the hall and bounced back off the walls.

"Thor, you underestimate her." Odin rose from his seat. Gungnir struck the floor with a low, resonant boom. "If she brought it up herself, she has her reasons."

He looked at Hermione. Something warm moved through his single eye.

"To challenge a stronger opponent without flinching — that is worth something."

"Come. To the training grounds."

,

Behind the Golden Palace, the training grounds.

A massive circular arena, cast from metal that didn't exist in any ordinary catalogue, its floor carved over with layered magical etchings built to absorb punishment that would level a city block.

Odin stood at the center, Gungnir in hand.

Golden armor caught the sunlight and threw it back in sheets. Divine light moved in his lone eye. The fatigue that had sat on him moments ago was simply gone, stripped away the instant he stepped onto the field, replaced by something older and heavier. The weight of a king who had campaigned across the Nine Realms for millennia.

Hermione stood across from him, wand rising slowly.

The Witch Cult ranged themselves along the edges to watch.

Thor, Loki, Frigga, and Banner were there too.

Banner muttered quietly, "She's actually going to fight the All-Father?"

"Father will hold back," Thor said.

Loki said nothing. He watched Hermione in the arena, and something complicated moved behind his eyes.

He wanted her to win. He also wanted Odin to win.

"Careful."

Odin went first.

Gungnir left his hand.

No wind-up, no flourish, just speed and force in their purest form.

The spearhead tore through the air. A white shockwave burst outward from the point.

Hermione didn't step back.

She stepped forward.

Gungnir drove straight through her chest.

No blood. Her body simply came apart, dissolving into a vast, drifting field of elemental particles.

The spear passed through and hit nothing.

"Oh?"

Surprise crossed Odin's eye, and then appreciation. "Fine technique. But not enough."

Gungnir blazed.

Blinding gold light erupted along the shaft. Lightning crackled down the length of it and detonated from the tip, flooding outward in every direction, swallowing the entire particle field at once.

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK.

Every particle lit up.

"Ngh."

Hermione's groan was low. Her form pulled itself back together at the far edge of the arena.

Her face was pale. Her right hand pressed against her chest.

Careless.

Elementalization could shrug off most damage, but if the opponent's attack carried strong elemental force of its own, it could still reach her in that state. And Odin's lightning was not a graze. It had barely touched her, and her magic was already stuttering.

She frowned and ran the numbers fast.

Straight Elementalization wouldn't dodge an enchanted attack, it just made her a slower target. But staying physical wasn't the answer either. A Level 6 Shield Charm would last about half a second against Odin and Gungnir combined.

Odin didn't wait.

Gungnir came again.

Hermione Apparated. She snapped into existence directly behind him and swept her wand, three, four, five crimson curses, all at once.

He didn't turn around.

Gungnir recalled itself to his hand and drove into the ground. A golden barrier expanded in every direction and caught every curse clean.

Hermione pushed her magic and Apparated again. And again. And again.

Her figure strobed across the arena, left, right, ahead, behind, a dozen positions inside a single second, afterimages bleeding into each other across the space.

It didn't matter.

Odin stood exactly where he was. Every time she landed, the spear tip was already there, already pointing at her back before the next heartbeat.

It was like he had some kind of spatial lock on her.

Gungnir. The eternal spear. Never misses once thrown, that was what the legends said.

Hermione turned that over. Not just physical tracking, she realized. It locks through space itself. The target doesn't get to leave.

She had no room to breathe.

She Apparated one more time.

And stopped.

She couldn't outrun it.

Then she wouldn't try.

Hermione planted her feet. Her eyes shifted — fully, completely, to ice-blue.

She raised her right hand.

A cluster of pale blue flame bloomed in her palm, flickering with contained cold.

Qian Blue Ice Flame.

The temperature dropped like a stone. Frost raced outward across the floor of the arena, coating metal and stone in a thick white shell within seconds.

Odin's eye sharpened.

He felt the danger before he'd fully processed it. The spear was already moving, golden light threaded with thunder, tearing through the air, aimed directly at her face.

Hermione extended one finger and touched the tip.

Ice flame met spearhead.

The Qian Blue Ice Flame moved like it was alive. It poured onto the shaft and climbed, fast, hungry, racing up the full length of Gungnir in under a second.

The golden lightning along the shaft froze where it burned. Then it cracked apart and fell as splinters of ice.

Odin's face changed.

Through the bond between king and weapon, he felt it, cold and searing heat, both at once, two forces that should cancel each other out instead compounding, tearing into the spear from two directions simultaneously.

Gungnir was a divine artifact.

It began to shake.

He felt the divine power inside it lock up. Felt it stop answering.

The spear slipped from its alignment and dropped to the ground.

➤ Next: Odin Concedes — The Fight Begins