Darius and Hela ascended into the void, leaving behind the ruins of the planet she had ravaged. The stars stretched infinitely around them, a vast, silent witness to what was about to unfold.
The cosmos itself seemed to hold its breath as the Goddess of Death faced the one being who stood above all.
The moment they reached the depths of space, Hela wasted no time. She unleashed everything.
A suffocating, inescapable aura of death erupted from her very being, saturating the void with an oppressive force. It spread outward like a consuming plague, devouring the light of distant stars and darkening the heavens.
The nearby celestial bodies trembled under the sheer weight of her presence, their orbits shifting erratically as the void itself seemed to rot in her wake.
Hela's expression was one of fierce determination, her emerald eyes gleaming with a primal hunger. Her body crackled with raw necrotic energy, her hands gripping twin blades forged from the abyss of Hel itself.
This was her full power, unchained and absolute.
The power to command death, to extinguish life on a planetary scale, to make gods themselves kneel.
She expected resistance.
She expected Darius to react—to shield himself, to counter, to fight back.
Instead, he smiled.
And in that instant, the universe fell silent.
Not just in the way sound ceased to exist in space. No, this was something else entirely. The very fabric of reality seemed to pause, as if caught in the delicate hands of an unseen force.
The distant hum of creation, the subtle whispers of the stars, the eternal movement of time itself—everything simply… stopped.
Then, it came.
A mere sliver.
A fraction of Darius' power, the tiniest ripple of his true self, bled into existence.
And the multiverse shattered.
A tidal wave of unfathomable energy surged outward, a force so absolute that it drowned everything in its path. The cosmos, in all its immeasurable vastness, trembled beneath the weight of something it had never encountered before.
Galaxies trembled in their orbits, black holes churned wildly, and even the higher planes—the divine realms of gods and primordial beings—felt the echo of something that should not be.
For a brief moment, everything in existence understood one undeniable truth.
Darius was here.
Hela barely had a second to process it before it hit her.
A force beyond comprehension crashed into her, bypassing her aura, her defenses, her godly resilience. There was no warning, no time to brace—just impact. Her body convulsed violently as an alien sensation tore through her.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't suffering. It was fear.
Pure, raw, absolute fear.
It clawed at the very essence of her being, forcing every fiber of her existence to acknowledge one singular fact—she was nothing before this presence.
For the first time in her immortal life, Hela understood what true power was.
But her defiance was greater than her fear.
She grit her teeth, forcing herself to move, to fight through the paralyzing dread consuming her. It was like struggling against the crushing depths of an infinite ocean, but she refused to drown.
With sheer force of will, she reasserted herself, her grip tightening on her weapons.
Then, she lunged.
With speed surpassing light, she became a blur in the void, her twin blades poised to strike.
The moment she was within range, she slashed at his throat, a cut swift enough to decapitate gods.
She hit nothing but air.
Darius hadn't moved. He hadn't dodged. He had simply existed elsewhere before her blade could reach him.
Hela's instincts screamed, and she twisted midair, slashing again. A hundred times. A thousand times. Each strike moved faster than thought, her divine technique honed to perfection.
She carved through space itself, tearing through the fabric of reality in an attempt to reach him.
But her blades never met their mark.
Darius stood still, watching with mild amusement as she raged against the impossible. She didn't even realize when he raised his hand.
It wasn't a strike nor was it a technique and definetely wasn't even an attack. It was just… a gesture.
With an almost lazy flick of his fingers, an invisible force struck Hela like an oncoming supernova.
Her body folded inward as the impact sent her hurtling across space. Entire planets blurred past her vision in an instant, her trajectory a chaotic spiral through the void.
She crashed through an asteroid field, pulverizing entire mountains of rock without slowing down.
The force continued to carry her, warping her own divinity, bending her unbreakable bones, reminding her that she was not the predator here.
And then—without warning—it stopped.
The momentum ceased as abruptly as it had begun, leaving her floating in the void, dazed, battered, and breathless. She struggled to regain control, her limbs sluggish, her mind reeling.
Darius was still there, Right in front of her.
As if he had never moved at all.
Hela coughed, the taste of something foreign—weakness—lingering on her tongue. She clenched her jaw, refusing to acknowledge the trembling in her limbs. She was the Goddess of Death. She did not kneel. She did not submit.
She shot forward again, this time unleashing everything in her arsenal.
Spears of darkness erupted around her, jagged constructs of pure necrotic power, each one capable of skewering even the mightiest of Asgardians.
She commanded the very essence of death itself to consume him, to unravel his existence at the fundamental level.
It didn't even touch him.
The moment her attack neared him, it simply ceased to be. It just… stopped existing as if it had never mattered in the first place.
Hela froze, staring at the void where her attack had been.
Then, she felt it.
Something closed around her throat.
An unseen force lifted her effortlessly, holding her aloft like a child grasping a fragile insect. It wasn't his hand—he hadn't even moved.
Darius watched her, his expression one of quiet amusement. Not cruel, nor malicious—just curious.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked, his voice calm, almost casual.
Hela snarled, summoning another blade in her grasp. With a furious growl, she raised it only for it to crumble into dust before she could even swing.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
Darius sighed, as if mildly disappointed. "You're determined, I'll give you that." His gaze softened ever so slightly. "But you're also out of your depth."
The force holding her in place released, and she fell. Not through space, not through any measurable distance—just down, as if reality itself had deemed her unworthy of standing at his level.
Hela righted herself, panting slightly, her hands trembling despite her best efforts.
Darius exhaled, tapping his staff lightly against the void. The multiverse settled in response. The cosmos, which had been thrown into disarray by his mere presence, calmed.
Order restored itself and reality resumed its rhythm.
And Hela understood that this was not a battle. This had never been a battle. This had been a reminder. A lesson carved into the fabric of her soul.
She wasn't worthy to fight him.
Not yet.
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Hela refused to accept it.
Again, she lunged.
Again, she struck.
Again, she failed.
Each attempt was more desperate than the last, but the result never changed. Darius remained untouchable. It wasn't that he was dodging—he wasn't even trying. He simply existed beyond her reach, beyond her ability to comprehend.
No matter how fast she moved, no matter how precise her strikes were, he was always ahead of her, always outside the grasp of her blades.
But she refused to stop.
Her pride, her very existence, demanded that she keep trying. She was Hela, Goddess of Death—she had warred against gods and felled entire civilizations with a flick of her wrist. She had been imprisoned, cast aside, and still she had endured.
She would not be made a fool of.
A scream tore from her throat as she unleashed everything left within her. Her aura blackened the heavens, necrotic energy surging like a tidal wave of death itself.
A thousand blades materialized in the void around her, each forged from the abyss, each laced with the essence of the dead.
They shot forward in unison, faster than light, an inescapable storm of destruction. A divine massacre.
Darius simply watched.
The moment her blades neared him, reality rejected them.
Hela's breath hitched.
She pushed forward, refusing to accept it, summoning more, reforging her weapons over and over, sending them screaming toward him in a never-ending barrage.
Each one met the same fate.
Every attack ceased to exist the moment it neared him, as if the cosmos themselves refused to acknowledge them.
The rage in her eyes flickered.
She roared, throwing herself at him once more.
This time, she abandoned her blades and struck with her bare hands, summoning all the divine strength in her body, forcing her very essence into her fists. The force behind her punch could have shattered planets. It could have slain gods. It could have undone the very laws of existence.
Her fist made contact.
For the first time since the battle began, she landed a hit.
The impact sent a shockwave rippling through the void, the sheer force warping space-time itself, distorting the very fabric of reality around them.
And yet…
Darius did not move.
He did not falter, he did not react at all.
Hela froze, her breath ragged, her entire body trembling from exertion. She stared at him, her hand still pressed against his chest. The strike she had poured her very being into had done… nothing.
Neither a scratch nor a dent. Not even a ripple.
Darius looked down at her with something she had not expected to see—pity. "You've tried enough," he said, his voice softer than before.
Hela's knees buckled.
Her body, finally reaching its limit, collapsed.
Before she could fall, Darius caught her. His grip was firm but careful, holding her as though she were something fragile.
Hela tried to fight it. Tried to push away the exhaustion, tried to summon the last shreds of her strength, but her body refused to obey. Her mind screamed at her to get up, to keep going, but the battle had long been decided.
Darius sighed, shifting her weight in his arms effortlessly.
"Stubborn girl," he muttered, shaking his head.
With a single step, they were no longer in the void.
They stood before Lady Death, who had been watching from a safe distance, her expression unreadable. She had remained silent throughout the entire battle, observing without interfering, without commenting.
Now, as Darius approached with Hela in his arms, her skeletal eyes flickered with something dangerously close to amusement.
"Finished already?" she mused, tilting her head.
Darius let out a light chuckle. "It was never a fight to begin with."
Lady Death's gaze shifted to Hela's unconscious form, her amusement fading into something else—something akin to understanding. She had been proud of Hela's bloodlust, of her destruction, but even she had seen the futility in the goddess' struggle against him.
Still, there was something to be said about Hela's spirit.
"She is resilient," Lady Death admitted. "Too resilient for her own good."
Darius glanced at the exhausted goddess in his arms, then back at Lady Death. "I'm taking her with me."
Lady Death arched a brow. "Is that so?"
"She'll wake up eventually, and when she does, she'll be right back where she started—trying to prove herself. Trying to fight something she can't win against."
He looked down at Hela's face, her expression still twisted with frustration even in unconsciousness.
"I'd rather she not waste herself on another pointless battle."
Lady Death studied him for a long moment before letting out a soft chuckle. "Do as you wish, then. She is yours to handle."
Darius smirked. "Glad we could agree."
With a thought, the fabric of reality shifted once more.
And in the next instant, he and Hela were gone.
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