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An ear-to-ear grin spread across Mephisto's demonic face.
He stared at the spot where Hawk had dissolved into a shower of light. Only one thought rang in his mind.
Finally. It's my turn to step up.
Now, all he had to do was snatch that Phoenix out of the sky, and he would undergo the ultimate evolution: from a Dimensional Lord to a Chief God.
Mephisto tilted his head back. His eyes flashed with hunger as he looked up at the golden Phoenix perched high atop the World Tree, its wings spread in all their blazing glory.
But just then.
Hela, who had been standing silently behind him, stiffened. A cold shock spread over her pale features.
"Wait... His soul."
"It didn't enter my Helheim."
"What?"
Mephisto snapped out of it, whipping his head around to stare at his supposed ally.
It hadn't been hard for him to recruit Hela.
The reason was obvious.
No matter what Odin wanted or how hard he tried to change fate, he had locked Hela away. Over the centuries, her hatred only grew stronger and more bitter.
She hated the Vanir of Vanaheim for being cowards and letting her be imprisoned without helping. That's why she sent her undead army to destroy their realm and wipe out everyone there.
And she hated Asgard just as much.
Vanaheim was her mother's homeland, but Asgard was her own. Her own people had stood by and watched as her father cast her into the dark.
Because of this, even though her power was tied to the soil of Asgard, her hatred for it surpassed even her hatred for Vanaheim.
To put it bluntly, even if Loki hadn't released Surtur to trigger Ragnarok, Hela would have found a way to unleash the Fire Demon herself. She would have burned Asgard to the ground with her own two hands.
She would rather scorch the earth and spend the next fifty thousand years rebuilding from the ashes.
Building a new Asgard. An Asgard that belonged to her alone.
So, when Mephisto had laid out the truth about Ragnarok and his plan to usurp the Phoenix, it was a match made in Hell.
They wanted two different things.
A perfect alliance.
She wanted the World Tree wiped clean and ready to be rebuilt. Mephisto wanted the authority of the Phoenix.
But just now, according to the laws of reality, the moment Hawk fell, his soul should have been drawn into Hela's domain, Helheim.
Yet Hela had felt nothing. Hawk's soul hadn't appeared.
Hearing this, the grin on Mephisto's face vanished.
The next moment, he realized what it meant. His demonic form dissolved into a plume of thick black smoke. Motivated by instinct, he attempted to sink back into the soil of Hawk's Underworld, intending to slip through the backdoor portal they had created and flee to his own Hell Dimension.
But as he moved to sink.
The Underworld... was gone.
The ashen soil upon which Mephisto and Hela had been standing ceased to exist.
At the exact same moment.
A hairline fracture appeared in the sky above them.
At first, it was a single crack. Microscopic.
But the instant it appeared, millions of others spiderwebbed outward, racing across the fabric of the sky. In the blink of an eye the fractures connected, covering the atmosphere in a dense jagged web.
As the lines of force intersected.
CRACK!
With a sound like breaking stained glass, the false world shattered into sharp pieces that fell like rain.
Mephisto and Hela felt a burst of dizziness.
When their eyes cleared, the world around them had changed.
They were still standing before the World Tree.
But this was no longer the dying Yggdrasil.
It had been transformed.
This was—
The Parasol World Tree!
The Phoenix graces only the most sacred of lands, and rests upon no branch but the Parasol Tree!
Mephisto stared in horror.
The wound Surtur had carved into the trunk of the World Tree was gone.
The tree no longer looked weak or lifeless. It stood tall and full of life, its huge leaves rustling with a sound that almost seemed happy.
High above, in the void where Asgard had formerly been, stars were colliding and shattering and reforming. Drawn by the gravitational pull of the World Tree, a new divine realm was coalescing from the cosmic dust.
The Phoenix remained perched at the apex of the Parasol World Tree, its wings fully extended. It gave off a blinding gleaming light—a new, eternal sun—lighting the birth of the new realm and bathing the surviving worlds in its warmth.
Of course.
That bright light also fell upon Mephisto and Hela, exposing them.
But the smile had gone from Mephisto's face.
He'd been played.
"ROOOOARRRRRR!"
Unable to contain his rage, Mephisto shredded his human disguise. He reverted to his true ten-foot-tall demonic form. Boiling sulfuric heat flared from his nostrils as he threw his arms wide and bellowed.
"HAWK!!!"
"Heh." A soft clear chuckle resounded from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
Hawk's figure manifested, stepping from the trunk of the Parasol World Tree. He was sitting cross-legged, hovering in the air, resting his chin on one hand. His golden pupils gleamed with cold amusement as he looked down at the enraged demon.
He shook his head slowly, letting out another soft laugh.
"Come on, Mephisto. Why so angry?"
"If anyone should be pissed off right now, shouldn't it be me?"
"..." Mephisto froze, the rage stalling in his throat.
Hawk's smirk deepened. "Besides, I warned you, remember? I told you, I only ever give someone one chance. One warning. But for you, Mephisto? I gave you more chances than I've given anyone in my life."
To be fair.
Hadn't he treated Mephisto well?
Even at the very end, just moments before Mephisto drove the blade into his back, Hawk had tried one last veiled attempt to talk him off the ledge.
He had framed it as an argument with the World Tree.
I'm giving you one last chance. Don't make me destroy you completely!
If Mephisto had stayed in the shadows and walked away, Hawk would have pretended he had never seen him. The betrayal would have never happened.
So—
"Ask yourself, Mephisto. Was I not good to you?"
"I treated you well. Do you know why?"
"Because you called me your 'Good Father'."
"Even though you proved to be a treacherous son, for the sake of that instant of father-son bonding, I chose to give you one last chance to turn back."
"But you threw it away!"
Hawk's mind darted back to the image of Mephisto clutching his hand, crying crocodile tears, and begging, "Daddy, help me out!" And then he looked at the demon standing before him—a demon who hadn't just plotted treason but had tried to murder his own "father."
Hawk let out a heavy sigh. The sigh of a parent whose child has broken their heart.
As Hawk spoke, a flash of emotion flashed across Mephisto's demonic face. But at that final sigh, his expression blackened to a murderous black.
Yet one burning question still gnawed at his mind.
Mephisto spoke in a rough growl. "When did you start suspecting me?"
"Suspect?"
"Hah..." Hawk, sitting comfortably in mid-air, chuckled at the question. "I never trusted you in the first place, Mephisto. So how could I 'suspect' you? Why do you think I gave the Western Hemisphere back to you?"
Mephisto's expression changed.
Hawk smirked. "You told me yourself. You warned me that Yahweh could manipulate souls to create an Angel of Death."
"But between the two of you, you're the master of soul manipulation."
"If a complete amateur like Yahweh could pull a stunt like that, wouldn't an expert like you be able to quietly slip into my Underworld through the souls passing between us?"
"Did you really not notice?"
"After I gave you back the Western Hemisphere, every single soul that was processed into my realm... I dumped them out on the barren soil. I never let a single one of them inside the true perimeters of my Underworld."
"I was planning to wait and see what kind of trick you were going to pull."
"But then... You called me your good brother. You called me your good father."
"And I softened."
"I gave you back the Western Hemisphere, hoping that the gesture would make you realize your mistake. Hoping you would wake up and change."
"But my hints went right over your head."
"You want to know how I finally figured out you were going to betray me?"
"..."
Mephisto's face was black with fury. "How?"
"The defining trait of a rebellious son is disobedience. They say one thing to their father's face and do the opposite behind his back. Let me ask you: did you ever stop the proliferation of darkness and evil on Earth?"
"..."
Mephisto froze.
Hawk saw the hesitation and shook his head. "See? A rebellious son to the very end."
"Not only did you ignore your father's orders, but you tried to lie to me. You spun this whole story about leaving to conquer the multiverse, claiming you needed an open gateway between my Underworld and your Hell so you could access souls while you were away."
"I knew what you were doing."
"Because I had already given the Western Hemisphere back to you. The few lingering souls you had slipped into my Underworld weren't enough to act as an anchor point. You needed a direct conduit to slip through."
"So you needed an excuse to create a backdoor into my realm, allowing you to strike at the right moment."
"But even then, even knowing all of that... right up until the last second, I considered giving you one more chance. After all, a son can betray his father a thousand times, but a father will always love his son like a precious treasure."
Hawk repeated the words he had yelled while battling the World Tree. He sighed again—a genuine sound of parental disappointment—and looked down at Mephisto. "As a father, Mephisto... I have no more words for you."
He had never given any of his enemies this kind of leniency.
Hawk gave one warning. One chance to survive.
He never gave a second.
Only Mephisto.
He had given Mephisto multiple chances, all because the demon had called him "Good Father"!
And how had Mephisto repaid that kindness?
Unbelievable... Every time Hawk offered him an out, Mephisto had treated it like a homing beacon, dodging the lifeline and marching straight into the execution chamber.
So, what else could Hawk do?
If he didn't want the face Hawk offered, then Hawk would just rip his face off.
Hawk shook his head. "Don't worry, Mephisto. Out of respect for our time as father and son, I won't erase you. When your soul enters the Underworld, I'll make sure you have a place. The Magma Prison. It will be your new domain. You can do whatever you want in there. Consider it my final act of paternal mercy."
"Father??"
Hearing Hawk patronize him one last time, Mephisto lost his mind. The last shred of his sanity snapped. He yelled. "You want to be my father?? I ALREADY KILLED MY REAL FATHER! You can go join him in Hell!"
With that—
Mephisto spun around, screaming to Hela.
"HELA! WITH ME! WE KILL HIM NOW!"
"You're on your own."
"..."
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