"Leon?" Rossweisse whispered, her voice trembling with disbelief.
"Is that really you?" she asked, her grip tightening on the rainbow sword still pressed against Hel's throat.
Leon nodded, taking a careful step forward. "I'm back, Rose."
But Rossweisse shook her head violently, backing away while keeping the blade trained on Hel. "No. No, this is a trick. You're Loki, aren't you? You coward."
Her eyes blazed with suspicious fury. "I won't fall for it. There's no way he could just—"
"I know this is hard to believe. But it's really me."
Without warning, Rossweisse spun away from Hel and slashed the rainbow sword toward Leon in a wide arc. The prismatic blade cut through the air with deadly intent.
Leon sidestepped the attack effortlessly, the sword passed inches from his chest, but his expression remained calm and understanding.
"Rose, stop," he said softly, making no move to retaliate or defend further.
Rossweisse raised the blade for another strike, tears streaming down her face. "You're not him! You can't be him!"
"You always put too much cinnamon in your coffee," Leon said quietly, his voice cutting through her panic. "You think I don't notice, but I do. And you have a scar on your left shoulder from when you tried to impress Odin during training and fell off Sleipnir."
Rossweisse's breath caught. Those were details only Leon would know, intimate moments they'd shared in private.
The rainbow sword wavered in her grip as tears began to blur her vision.
"Leon?" she whispered, hope and disbelief warring in her voice. "Is it really you?"
Leon smiled warmly. "I'm back."
The rainbow sword shimmered and dissolved into particles of light as Rossweisse dropped her arms. Without hesitation, she launched herself into Leon's embrace, wrapping her arms around him tightly as if afraid he might disappear again.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed against his chest, her voice muffled by his torn shirt. "I'm so sorry for leaving you there. I should have stayed. I should have fought harder. I should have—"
"Shh," Leon whispered, his arms encircling her protectively. One hand stroked her silver hair while the other held her close. "You did nothing wrong. You saved Koneko. You followed my orders. You did exactly what needed to be done."
"But you suffered," Rossweisse cried harder, her tears soaking through his clothes. "For weeks, you were alone in that horrible place because I was too weak to—"
"You're not weak," Leon said firmly, his voice gentle but absolute. "You never were. And look at you now—you just defeated a goddess of death with your own power."
Rossweisse clung to him desperately, months of guilt and pain pouring out in her tears. Leon held her patiently, whispering quiet reassurances while she let herself finally break down completely.
After several minutes, her sobbing gradually subsided into quiet sniffles. She pulled back slightly to look at his face, her hands reaching up to touch his cheeks as if confirming he was real.
"How?" she asked, her voice hoarse. "How did you escape? I thought you were bound by the oaths."
Leon didn't answer immediately. Instead, his gaze shifted toward Hel, who still knelt on the ground where Rossweisse had left her.
Rossweisse followed his look, understanding dawning in her eyes.
"Her?" Rossweisse whispered, looking back at Leon for confirmation.
Leon nodded.
=====
A Few Hours Earlier - Helheim
Leon knelt in his cell, heavy chains binding his limbs to the floor. His body was covered in countless wounds—some fresh, others partially healed only to be reopened during the next session. Blood had long since dried on his torn clothes.
But his eyes remained defiant.
Loki had just left after his daily rounds of torture, the god's mocking laughter still echoing in the corridor. Leon breathed heavily, his vision blurring from pain and exhaustion, but his will kept him going. A month in this hell, and he still hadn't broken.
The sound of approaching footsteps made him tense. He thought it was Loki returning—not satisfied with what he'd done earlier. It wouldn't be the first time. There were days when the god came back multiple times, as if Leon's refusal to scream anymore had become a personal challenge.
Leon forced his head up, preparing himself for another round of agony.
But when the figure appeared in his cell doorway, it wasn't Loki's that greeted him.
It was Hel.
The goddess of death stood silently in the entrance, her eyes studying his broken form. Half her face showed something Leon couldn't quite identify.
"Still alive," she observed quietly.
Leon said nothing, watching her warily.
Hel stepped into the cell, crouching down so they were at eye level.
"My father has grown impatient," she said, her voice matter-of-fact.
She paused, studying his face.
"So he's decided to try a different approach. He's going after them, to everyone you care about."
Leon's expression shifted almost imperceptibly, a flicker of fear breaking through his carefully maintained mask. He tried to hide it, but Hel caught it.
Deep inside, terror clawed at his chest. He hoped desperately that his backup plans had been executed, that E.V.E. had followed her emergency protocols. But there were so many variables, so many things that could go wrong.
Hel fell silent, watching him process this information. Something in her mismatched eyes seemed to change as she observed his reaction.
Then, without warning, a complex magical circle began to form beneath her hands, runes of power and binding swirling in the air.
"What are you doing?" Leon asked, his voice hoarse from screaming during earlier sessions.
But Hel kept silent, her focus entirely on the intricate spell taking shape around them. The magical circle grew brighter, more complex, its purpose unclear but undeniably powerful.
The magical circle flared with blinding light as Hel completed the spell. Leon felt the divine bindings around his power shatter like glass, the oppressive weight that had crushed his abilities for weeks suddenly lifting.
His strength flooded back in a rush—Mana coursed through his veins,responding to his will once more. The wounds across his body began to heal as his draconic physiology reasserted itself.
Hel collapsed to her knees, gasping. Destroying a divine oath sworn by her own father had taken an enormous toll. Blood trickled from her nose, and her hands trembled from the magical backlash.
"Why?" Leon asked, pushing himself to his feet for the first time in months.
Hel looked up at him, her mismatched eyes filled with exhaustion and bitter resentment.
"He abandoned me," she said simply.
"When I was born," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "my father took one look at my appearance and cast me into Niflheim. He said it was to 'protect' me from the other gods' reactions."
Her hands clenched into fists on the frozen floor.
She wasn't a daughter to him. She had never been a daughter. From the moment of her birth, when her dual nature of life and death had manifested in her very flesh, Loki had seen only utility. A weapon for the end times. A piece to be moved on the board when Ragnarök finally came.
Every cold year in Niflheim, every moment of isolation, every day watching the dead drift past her throne—it all served his purpose. He had shaped her into the perfect goddess of death, not out of love or guidance, but because he needed her to play her role when the world ended.
She hated it. She hated the way he looked at her—not with a father's affection, but with the calculating gaze of someone assessing a tool's sharpness. She hated how he spoke to her during his rare visits, discussing her domain and responsibilities as if she were a subordinate rather than his child.
Most of all, she hated her father.
But the bitter truth gnawed at her: she was trapped. He was still her father, still a god with millennia of cunning and power. She had seen what he was capable of. Even if she could match his strength, which she doubted, the very nature of their relationship bound her in ways that went beyond mere power.
And despite everything—despite the abandonment, despite being treated as nothing more than a tool for Ragnarök, despite all the cruelty and neglect—she still loved him. That was perhaps the most bitter truth of all. Somewhere deep inside, the part of her that remembered being a frightened child cast into eternal winter still hoped for his approval, still yearned for him to see her as his daughter rather than his weapon.
She could hate him. She could resent him. But she could never bring herself to kill him.
Leon was her only chance for revenge. Someone who had suffered under Loki's hands just as she had, but who possessed the strength and will to do what she could never bring herself to do.
"Stop my father," she said, meeting his eyes with desperate determination. "Make him pay for everything he's done."
Leon stared down at the goddess who had just freed him, understanding her pain completely. After weeks of Loki's cruelty, he knew exactly what kind of monster the god truly was.
"I will."
Then he reached into the dimensional space and retrieved two small green beans.
He popped one into his mouth and tossed the other to Hel. "Eat this."
Hel caught the bean, eyeing it skeptically. It looked ordinary, unremarkable. "What is it?"
Instead of answering, Leon bit down on his own bean. The effect was immediate and dramatic—his remaining wounds sealed completely, his strength returned to full capacity, and the lingering weakness from months of torture vanished entirely. While his enhanced physiology had begun healing him when his power returned, the senzu bean completed the process instantaneously.
Hel's eyes widened in amazement as she watched Leon's transformation. The broken, tortured prisoner was gone, replaced by the powerful figure who had dazzled the entire supernatural world with his strength.
Hel looked down at the bean in her palm with new respect. After a moment's hesitation, she placed it in her mouth and bit down.
The magical backlash from breaking her father's oath disappeared instantly. Her divine energy surged back to full strength, the trembling in her hands ceasing as her power stabilized.
"Incredible," she breathed, rising to her feet with grace.
Leon nodded, already moving toward the cell door. "Now let's go stop your father."
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