Helga didn't answer his question.
Instead, she raised both hands and uttered a word not in any human tongue. The air thinned, then snapped cold. Her voice layered with something old and foreign, touched by the magic of the Valkyries.
"Mists of Niflheim."
A gray veil poured from her mouth, her fingers, her chest spreading like breath over a mirror. It hissed as it touched the broken earth, blooming across the battlefield in slow, intelligent tendrils. It didn't drift. It hunted.
Morpheus pivoted immediately, sliding backward down a slope of shattered steps. The mist clung to his ankles like cold oil. Where it touched, his skin prickled with death not pain, not ice, but numbness. A disconnection.
He snarled and snapped a finger toward it. The sand around him ignited in a controlled burst, pushing the mist back, but only for a moment.
This wasn't a natural fog. This was weaponized memory—crafted from the dead breath of the fallen. And inside it, he heard whispers. Regret. Guilt. Grief.
Helga stood tall within it, untouched, her armor shimmering with pale runes. "This is what I learned from them, I based it off of my spell of peaceful death." she said, eyes burning through the mask. "Your blade can cut flesh, Morpheus. But this? This fog cuts the spirit."
He launched forward without hesitation, a streak of black fire burning behind him. A blade of burning glass carved from desert heat formed in his hand. He slashed across the mist, cutting through the air between them.
But Helga was gone.
A whisper.
Then the sting across his back. Her blade had kissed him.
Morpheus spun, eyes scanning the mist. Another whisper. A figure then gone. She was using the mists as cover, warping herself between echoes of sound and spell.
"You're still trying to save me?" he spat, more to the mist than to her.
"No," came her voice. "I'm trying to remind you of your convictions! You wanted to save humanity not doom it!."
The ground cracked beneath him—she had conjured bone-spears from the fog itself. They burst upward like claws, and he leapt high, twisting midair and throwing two obsidian knives downward. They sliced the mist clean but missed her body.
She appeared behind him in the blink of an eye, her fingers laced with glowing magic. Healing energy twisted into something invasive—like barbed wire made of hope. She grabbed for his chest.
Morpheus caught her wrist. And for a second, their eyes met.
"You should've killed me when you had the chance, I want and have always wanted revenge. These memories you are showing it only affirms my convictions." he whispered.
Then he twisted her arm and flung her into the earth, the ground cratering beneath her with a burst of dust and cold.
But she wasn't finished.
The mists surged with her fury—howling winds from Niflheim coalesced into spectral wolves that charged him from every direction, gnashing and snapping with ice-forged teeth.
Morpheus ducked, rolled, let one of the wolves crash into a broken pillar—then hurled a sand-forged spear through another's head, making it dissipate in a scream.
He landed hard and turned to see Helga rising again, her mask cracked further, her breaths sharp. Blood painted her shoulder.
"You were supposed to protect them," she said, chest heaving. "Not become the thing they feared."
"And you were supposed to be a light in humanity, by my side in this war!" he hissed. "But instead, you begged a fake god to give you strength."
"I didn't beg," she said, and her spell surged.
She slammed her hands to the ground—and from the mists rose a wall of soul-light, burning with the screams of the dead. It cascaded toward him, a wall meant to bury.
Morpheus braced then shouted in an ancient tongue. The sand exploded upward into a dome, clashing with the wave of spirit magic. The collision was deafening like glass breaking inside a cathedral.
Smoke and mist swirled, tearing through the sky. Lightning cracked overhead.
A chunk of mountain fell nearby flung by one of the gods. The ripple of Ra and Thor's battle was closer now. Stones rained from the heavens. Thunder carved a streak into the sky so bright it split the clouds wide.
Helga stumbled, her mask finally breaking apart and clattering to the stones.
She was crying and smiling.
"You always knew this would happen, didn't you?" she asked.
Morpheus didn't reply.
He only moved forward, faster than before. Blade drawn again.
She raised her hands to fight.
And the mists howled.
The sound of a blade piercing flesh cut through the roar like a whisper of finality. A sharp breath caught in the throat, then exhaled in a wet, rattling hiss.
Morpheus staggered.
A figure stood behind him calm, composed, almost unimpressive in appearance. No armor, no glowing sigils. Just a man. A man who looked utterly human. Too human. One hand rested on the hilt of a slender, glistening dagger now embedded deep in Morpheus's gut.
Morpheus's body twitched. Blood welled from the corners of his lips, bubbling as he inhaled raggedly. Slowly, he inched his head back, just enough to glimpse the face over his shoulder.
"I was wondering where you were," he rasped, voice thick with iron.
"Loki."
***
Smoke and blood thickened the air as Ra's blazing falcon form streaked overhead, talons gleaming with divine fire, wings beating shockwaves into the battlefield. Below, Anubis moved like a predator uncaged—on all fours one moment, leaping onto Thor with wild claws the next. Thunder cracked. Lightning slammed into scorched sand. Magic rippled in waves, and the ground split from the force of god against god.
Thor roared, thunder cascading off his body like water pouring from a broken dam. Each swing of Mjölnir tore gouges through the sand and sky alike, but Anubis matched him with raw feral might, bearing down again and again. Ra darted overhead in wide loops, bombarding the Asgardian with bursts of holy fire, forcing Thor to shift, duck, and snarl in frustration.
Their battle wasn't isolated.
It was a vortex.
The ground quaked beneath their clash, and the war around them shifted. Valkyries wheeled higher into the sky, diving only where it was safe, avoiding the chaotic pocket of divine destruction. Demons and angels, once too proud to fight beside each other, now hurled magic and javelins alike to support Thor—desperation outweighing allegiance. Arrows of ice and fire rained from the backlines, singing Ra's wings, drawing his attention upward. Spear-laced lightning whipped toward Anubis, forcing him to backpedal and snarl.
Ra veered sharply, slashing through a line of angels mid-flight with his blazing wings. The air behind him shimmered with their falling feathers and charred screams. But his distraction opened a gap.
Thor seized it.
A bellow tore from his throat, primal and victorious. He spun Mjölnir in one hand and slammed his shoulder into Anubis, launching the beast across the battlefield like a cannonball. Anubis crashed through a mound of bodies, armor, and sand, splitting a sand-formed obelisk in two as he tumbled.
Ra wheeled midair, calling down searing beams of fire to incinerate the oncoming angels and demons, but Thor was no longer grounded.
He was channeling.
His muscles swelled, veins glowing electric white as he threw his head back, calling down power not just from himself but from the storm itself. The clouds churned. The wind shrieked. Every inch of the battlefield fell under shadow, and then…
CRACK.
A single bolt of lightning, thick as a siege tower, erupted from his body and speared through the heart of the war.
It carved through demons. It incinerated Valkyries. It turned men to ash and sand to glass.
And it struck the shield.
For a heartbeat, the air grew silent. The glimmering golden dome that protected the pyramid strained, a sound like glass bending under pressure echoing across the dunes.
Then it shattered.
A blinding light exploded as the shield fractured, each fragment dissolving into thin sparks. A pulse of divine energy burst outward, knocking bodies down across the field, shattering formations, and silencing chants.
Thor stood panting in the aftermath, smoke rising from his arms, eyes burning with fury. The pathway to the pyramid was now wide open.
And every soldier mortal or divine understood what that meant.