Grendel's smile, twisted and mocking, froze upon his porcelain face. The silent laughter of the Labyrinth intensified as the white marble walls began to weep—a dark, viscous substance oozing down the bone-sculptures and sightless faces. The Architect's lair shrieked with a silent agony, but Grendel himself made only one move.
His left arm, unnaturally long and spindly, lunged forward, clawing into Beowulf's shoulder. The obsidian talons sank not just into the meat, but into the bone itself, shredding muscle and seeking to unlatch the Titan's divine armor. A sharp, searing pain exploded through Beowulf's body, radiating along his collarbone. His divine blood, incandescent and thick, sprayed out—not red, but a smoking, dark gold.
Odin's Vision reached its zenith. The golden eye in his mind was no longer pulsing; it had become a neutron star, a pressure so intense it threatened to shatter his skull. The command was absolute: CRUSH. ANNIHILATE. EXTINCTION.
Beowulf did not groan. He screamed. A cry of pure, primal rage that shook the marble foundations. The blood of Odin, which had tethered him for centuries, boiled in his veins, demanding a price—a vengeance. This was no longer the All-Father's will; it was his own.
He grabbed Grendel's arm where it had buried itself in his shoulder. His massive fingers, wide as iron pincers, clamped around the obsidian forearm. Beowulf's muscles swelled, his veins bulging black beneath his tanned skin.
"Your art!" Beowulf roared, his voice a landslide of stones. "I am going to deface it!"
He pulled.
The sound was appalling. Not a tearing of flesh, but a series of dry, snapping cracks, like an ancient tree being uprooted. The milky substance that composed Grendel's joints stretched, then groaned under the tension. Strands of gray matter, like fossilized sap, seeped from the hinges as Grendel's arm elongated and deformed—his obsidian skeleton resisting, then failing.
Grendel's body stiffened, his milky eyes widening with an expression that wasn't pain, but shock. His hand remained hooked into Beowulf's shoulder, refusing to let go.
Beowulf pulled again, with the full force of a titan unleashed.
This time, it was a wet, ripping sound, like the tearing of waterlogged cloth combined with a deep, final crunch of bone. Grendel's arm detached from his shoulder.
A geyser of gray matter—simultaneously viscous and granular—erupted from the gaping cavity. Grendel did not cry out. A horrific hiss escaped his lips, the sound of wind whistling through a ruin. He fell to his knees, his ebony body convulsing.
Beowulf stood holding the severed limb. It was still anchored to his shoulder, Grendel's obsidian fingers buried deep in his meat, claws entangled in his fibers. The arm, obscene in its length, dangled like an extension of his own body.
He looked at the arm, then at Grendel, whose body writhed on the marble floor, the gaping socket smoking with gray mist. The Architect raised his remaining arm, as if trying to reconstruct the irreparable.
With a roar that rattled the Labyrinth walls, Beowulf ripped the severed hand from his own shoulder. The pain was excruciating, but it was eclipsed by the brutal satisfaction of victory. He broke the arm in two like a dead branch and crushed the shards beneath his boot, grinding them into fine dust.
Then, he seized Grendel by the head, the porcelain skin cold and hard beneath his fingers.
"Your throne," Beowulf growled, his eyes fixed on the mountain of skulls. "Is nothing without you."
The Titan hoisted Grendel's gaunt frame high, and with superhuman power, he slammed him down onto the apex of the skull-throne.
The mountain of bone exploded. Shards of ivory flew in every direction. Grendel's already broken body disintegrated into a rain of gray matter and bone fragments. The throne collapsed, leaving nothing but a heap of dust and calcified debris.
The entire Labyrinth reacted. The walls trembled. Deep fissures appeared in the white marble, and the floor undulated like disturbed water. Then, slowly, everything began to shift. The marble retracted, the cracks sealed themselves, and the hall purified itself—erasing every trace of the struggle.
The agony of Odin in his skull receded, softening into a faint hum. The Vision withdrew, leaving Beowulf alone, panting, in the center of an immaculate hall.
The Architect was dead.
Beowulf looked at his hands. They were covered in divine blood—that smoking, golden substance. He was a butcher, a destroyer of masterworks. And he was... empty.
Then, a new voice echoed. It was not Odin's. It was not Grendel's. It was a female voice, of a glacial sweetness, like the whisper of wind in a desert of bones.
— The game is afoot, Hound of Odin. The Labyrinth expands. Others are on their way. Others you must break.
Beowulf looked up as the ceiling began to close, revealing an unknown, starlit sky.
— And this time, Beowulf, the voice continued. The points matter.
The hall went dark, plunging Beowulf into total shadow.