Destruction's realm was not empty in the way a tomb was empty.
A tomb was empty because something had left it. A life, a soul, a presence that had once filled the space and then departed. A tomb was a negative space, defined by absence, shaped by loss.
Destruction's realm was not like that.
It was empty in the way a canvas was empty before the first brushstroke. Empty in the way a forge was empty before the first hammer fell. Empty in the way a story was empty before the first word was written. It was not absence. It was *potential*. The potential for making. The potential for unmaking. The potential for the endless, cyclical dance of creation and destruction that had driven the universe since the first star ignited and the first world died.
I stood at the edge of it and felt the weight of what had been abandoned.
---
The transition was easier this time. I was learning. Each realm required a different approach, a different key, a different understanding of what it meant to enter the domain of an Endless. Dream required sleep. Desire required want. Destruction required something else entirely.
Destruction required acceptance.
I focused on something I had destroyed. Not physically—I had destroyed plenty of things physically, worlds and lives and timelines and trust. I focused on something I had destroyed inside myself. The part of me that believed I was nothing but a villain. The part of me that craved approval so desperately I would burn down realms to get it. The part of me that thought a throne would make me whole.
I had destroyed that part of myself when I sat on the true throne. When I chose the timelines over my own freedom. When I became the Anchor.
I had unmade myself and remade myself into something new.
And that, I realized, was what Destruction's realm was about. Not destruction for its own sake. Not chaos and ruin and the end of all things. But the destruction that preceded creation. The unmaking that made making possible. The clearing of the old to make way for the new.
The realm opened before me.
---
It was a forge.
Not literally—or perhaps literally, it was difficult to tell with Destruction. The realm took the shape of its master's nature, and its master was a being who had once been the embodiment of entropy and now was something else entirely. The realm was vast and dark, lit only by the glow of dying embers and the distant flicker of stars that were being born and dying in the same instant. The ground was not ground. It was a mosaic of broken things—shattered swords, crumbled stones, the fragments of worlds that had been destroyed and would never be rebuilt.
But there was beauty in it. There was purpose. Every broken thing had been broken for a reason. Every ending had made way for a beginning. Every destruction had cleared space for a new creation.
And at the center of it all, sitting on a chunk of what might have once been a planet, was Destruction himself.
He was huge. Not physically—though he was tall and broad, with red hair and a red beard and hands that looked capable of crushing stars. But his *presence* was huge. The weight of entropy. The burden of endings. The exhaustion of a being who had spent billions of years tearing things apart and had finally, irrevocably, walked away.
He looked up as I approached. His eyes were the color of embers, fading but not yet gone.
"Loki," he said. "I wondered when you'd get to me."
"I'm making a pilgrimage," I said. "All seven realms. Dream and Desire are already crossed off the list."
"Dream and Desire." Destruction shook his head slowly. "You visited them back to back? You're braver than I thought. Or more foolish."
"A bit of both, I suspect."
"That's the only way to be." He gestured to a chunk of rubble beside him. "Sit. I don't get many visitors. Those who come might as well be comfortable."
I sat. The rubble was surprisingly warm, as if it still remembered the heat of the explosion that had created it.
---
"I left," Destruction said, without preamble. "You know that. Everyone knows that. I abandoned my realm, my function, my family. I walked away from being an Endless because I could not bear to be what I was."
"Why?" I asked.
He was silent for a long moment. The embers glowed. The stars flickered. The broken things beneath our feet shifted and settled.
"Because I began to see destruction as something other than my purpose," he said finally. "For billions of years, I did my work without question. I tore down what needed tearing down. I cleared space for new creation. I was the ending that made beginnings possible. And I believed that was enough."
"But it wasn't."
"No. It wasn't." He picked up a shard of something—a piece of a sword, perhaps, or a fragment of a world—and turned it over in his massive hands. "I began to see that destruction was not separate from creation. It was part of it. The same cycle. The same rhythm. And I began to wonder why I was only allowed to do half the work. Why I could tear down but never build. Why I could end but never begin."
He looked at me, his ember eyes burning low.
"Do you know what it feels like to be the embodiment of something you no longer believe in?"
I thought about the throne. About the cage. About the eons I had spent sustaining a multiverse I had not asked to sustain, holding timelines that were not mine to hold, being a function instead of a person.
"Yes," I said. "I do."
Destruction nodded slowly. "I thought you might."
---
We sat in silence for a while. The embers pulsed. The stars turned. The broken things beneath us hummed with the memory of what they had been.
"You're the first one who's visited," Destruction said eventually. "Of the family, I mean. Delirium came once, but she didn't stay. She never stays. Death checks on me, in her way—she claims every ending, and endings are what I used to be. But she doesn't visit. Not like this."
"Dream didn't come?"
"Dream is still angry. He thinks I abandoned him. Abandoned all of them. And he's not wrong. But he doesn't understand why I left. He thinks it was cowardice. Weakness. A failure of will." Destruction's voice was heavy. "It wasn't. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than unmaking a star. Harder than ending a universe. Walking away from everything I was, everything I knew, everything I was supposed to be... that was destruction on a scale I had never attempted before. Self-destruction. The unmaking of my own identity."
"And now?"
"Now I wander. I explore. I learn about creation—the half of the cycle I was never allowed to touch. I paint. I write poetry. I plant gardens on dead worlds and watch them grow." He smiled, and it was the saddest smile I had ever seen. "I'm not very good at any of it. But I'm learning. And learning is more than I ever did when I was what I was."
---
"Your siblings want you to come back," I said.
"I know."
"Death mentioned it. At the garden. She said the cycle is changing, that creation and destruction are accelerating, that the rhythm you were made to serve is shifting."
"I felt it." Destruction looked at me, his ember eyes flickering. "I felt it the moment you sat on that throne. The tree. Yggdrasil. It's not just a multiverse—it's an engine. A cycle of stories that grow and die and return and grow again. Every avatar you plant. Every life that composts back into the branches. You're doing what I used to do, Loki. You're tending the cycle of creation and destruction. But you're doing it as a gardener, not a destroyer."
"I didn't mean to take your place."
"You didn't take my place. You showed me that my place could be different." He set down the shard he had been holding and turned to face me fully. "I've been thinking about returning. Not to what I was. Not to the endless, unchanging rhythm of making and unmaking. But to something new. Something that includes creation as well as destruction. Something that lets me be more than half of what I am."
"You're the second sibling who's talked about change," I said. "Dream is considering it too. He didn't say so directly, but I could feel it. The idea that things don't have to be the way they've always been."
"We've been static for so long," Destruction said. "Billions of years, doing the same things, being the same beings, never growing, never evolving. And then you arrived. A singularity. A new thing. A god who was baptized by our father and claimed by our mother and who exists outside all the rules that bind us." He shook his head slowly. "You've changed us, Loki. Just by existing. Just by being what you are."
"That's a lot of responsibility."
"It's not responsibility. It's inspiration. There's a difference." He stood, brushing dust from his hands. "I'm not ready to come back yet. But I'm closer than I was. Closer than I've been since I left. And when I do come back—when I return to my realm and take up my function again—it will be because you showed me that function could be different. That destruction and creation could be two sides of the same coin. That I could be more than I was."
I stood as well. "I look forward to that day."
"As do I." He extended his hand. His grip was warm and rough and surprisingly gentle. "Thank you for visiting, Loki. Thank you for listening. And thank you for being what you are. Whatever you decide to become—whatever symbol you choose, whatever realm you build—know that you have a brother in me. A real brother. Not just a godbrother by baptism."
"Brother," I said, testing the word. It felt strange on my tongue. Strange but not unwelcome.
"Brother," Destruction confirmed. "Now go. You have more realms to visit. Death is waiting. Despair is waiting. Delirium is probably bouncing off the walls with impatience. And Destiny... Destiny always knows when you're coming."
I smiled. "I'll see you again."
"Yes," Destruction said. "You will."
---
The empty realm faded behind me. The throne returned. The tree blazed. The link to Jon Snow hummed at the back of my consciousness, steady and warm.
Three realms visited. Four to go.
And I was beginning to understand that this pilgrimage was not just about seeing the Endless realms. It was about understanding what it meant to be one of them. What it meant to have a domain. What it meant to choose a sigil and carve it into the fabric of existence and declare to the cosmos: *I am here. I am this. I belong.*
I was not ready yet. But I was closer than I had been.
Much closer.