From the endless outer chaos, Thalos expanded the world's boundaries, pushing outward into the void. And with that done, he began the next critical step—sealing it off.
Where the divine eye gazes, there shall the world's edge lie!
To completely separate this world from the boundless chaos beyond, what was needed above all was air—vast, endless air!
Ordinarily, this would be a tremendous undertaking. But thanks to the skulls of Ymir and Surtur, the two primeval giants, much of it could be done in one go.
By the time all this was completed, three full days had passed.
If one could zoom out far enough, beyond the world's veil, they would see a perfectly round globe glowing with blue light, wrapped around an unimaginably massive ash tree.
This tree stretched from the depths of the world all the way to the heavens. It had grown from the hearts of Ymir and Surtur, taken after they were slain.
Thalos couldn't help but smile at the sight.
Perhaps... he'd call it "Yggdrasil"—the World Tree.
Within the glowing orb of the Ginnungagap world, Yggdrasil's fresh green branches shimmered with vitality. Countless elemental forces of earth, water, fire, and air floated around the tree's trunk, some in motion, others fixed in place, waiting for Thalos to reach out and reshape them with divine will.
Beneath his enormous divine form, the gods and giants had already been watching for three days straight.
From the corner of his eye, Thalos noticed Odin practically squirming, desperate to help but unsure how to ask. He chuckled and called out:
"My divine brother! Won't you lend me a hand?"
Odin beamed. "How can I help?"
Willy, their younger brother, nodded excitedly.
Thalos looked around. "Help me move the excess water of this world into the Ginnungagap chasm."
"Huh? How do we do that?"
"You both inherited a share of Ymir's power. Just imagine a mighty wind, driving the waters toward the chasm."
"Got it!"
After Ymir died, the flood that followed was cataclysmic. The warmth from Surtur's corpse had only made it worse, causing the planet's temperature to skyrocket.
In the Edda, the great chasm of Ginnungagap was filled with a freezing, deadly ocean.
This time, it was still an ocean—just far vaster, and warmer.
Born from the blood of two primeval giants, this sea filled the Ginnungagap basin and eventually—supported by the World Tree—settled into a massive stone basin, becoming a true ocean.
Odin and Willy were effectively just water haulers.
It was Thalos—the God Who Crossed Worlds—who gave the sea its fundamental qualities.
Pressure, density, fluid dynamics—all the scientific properties that governed oceans in his past life—were now established and enforced within this one.
Thalos hadn't forgotten: in the Edda, Odin and his brothers had neglected to define the sea, which led directly to the Vanir gods storming the gates.
He chuckled.
After all, Njord—the Vanir leader—was the god of the sea.
But this time? With Thalos having laid down such ironclad definitions...
Would Njord even have a throne to sit on?
That night, future scribes would record this with reverence:
> "Thalos ordered the gods to gather the world's waters, and thus the seas were formed."
To the Vanir? It might sound like the Aesir were rewriting history to make their god-king look good.
No one noticed that hidden deep beneath the Ginnungagap basin, Thalos had quietly placed something strange—a tiny plug-shaped device.
A mischievous little trick from the Creator God himself.
He couldn't wait to see Njord's expression the day he tried to claim the ocean...
Either way, the definition of the Ocean became the entire focus of the fourth day.
On the fifth day, under Thalos' guidance, the gods and giants worked together to cast the corpses of Ymir and Surtur into the ocean.
Their bodies, like the rest, were broken apart by divine cloud hands and dissolved into primordial matter.
Slowly but surely, dirt and stone gathered around these bones. Upon the roots of the World Tree, the first continent began to take shape.
Even a single bone from the primeval giants projected a massive, semi-transparent shadow into the forming world, expanding visibly with every second. Some bones grew larger than mountains—each one a kilometer or more in size—and these attracted dirt and soil, becoming towering mountain ranges.
Ymir and Surtur's hair scattered into the wind, decomposed into source elements, then reassembled into giant trees.
Thus, a vast continent took shape.
They named it Midgard, meaning the Middle Garden.
To the east, across a great river called Ifing, lay the promised land for the giants—Jotunheim.
To the west, a lush, peaceful territory was quietly reserved for the future Vanir gods—Vanaheim.
Above Midgard, connected to the World Tree's trunk, Thalos blended earth and air elements to form a lighter yet equally solid continent: Asgard.
It was roughly 90,000 square kilometers in size and divided into 12 reserved zones for the Aesir gods and their kin.
Just below Asgard, a slightly lower layer would be reserved for the light elves—Alfheim.
As for the roots of the World Tree, four realms were anchored there:
- Svartalfheim – home to dwarves and gnomes.
- Helheim – the cold, misty realm of the dead.
- Niflheim – the primitive land of eternal fog.
- Muspelheim – the lawless fire realm, now leaderless after Surtur's fall.
In the Edda, Odin had taken the easy path—lumping similar elements together. It gave each world its own flavor, but also made them extreme and uninhabitable.
Thalos, in contrast, took a more humane approach.
Asgard might have gotten the best of everything, but it hadn't hoarded it all.
His voice thundered across the world:
"The most beautiful things in existence must not belong to one race alone. All have the right to witness beauty."
So he built Rainbow Bridges—one in each of the eight other realms—connecting them to Asgard's front gate, using a blend of ice, fire, and air.
By the end of that day, Thalos had created the Nine Realms.
On the sixth day, the gods—looking out at their vast, empty world—felt the stirrings of purpose.
Urged on by the will of the world itself, they decided to create mortal beings.
Thalos casually plucked a branch from Yggdrasil and cast it toward Midgard.
It broke apart mid-air, and from it formed countless mortal men, all modeled in the image of the Aesir, each about six feet tall.
Bor, the creatively barren father of the Aesir, named the first man:
"Ask."
Then Thalos flicked a second branch—this time from an elm tree. It split and became the first mortal woman. His mother, Bestla, named her:
"Embla."