The mountain had changed.
Where once jagged, frozen stone stood as a monument to desolation, now a black cathedral of reality-warping obsidian rose into the skies. The throne at its heart throbbed like a second heart to the world, pulsing with the chaos of flame, shadow, and crimson light. The Scarlet King sat upon it like a god reborn.
Wanda stood to his left, her red aura calm but watchful. To his right, the Phoenix burned with quiet intensity, her presence enough to melt the ice within a mile's radius. They had come to him willingly. Not as servants. As equals.
The King was no longer diminished. Each alliance, each touch of remembered power, had reignited fragments of what he had lost. And now, as the mountain's dark spires reached toward the stars, he reached inward, drawing from the throne that was a piece of him.
Reality rippled outward.
He remembered the void. He remembered war.
He remembered her.
---
In a chamber of silence beyond the throne room, the Scarlet King sat alone. His mind wandered through aeons.
He saw her again.
Hela.
In another timeline, in a broken realm beyond the reach of gods, they had fought side by side. Two beings forged from death and wrath. She had known his name before others dared speak it. She had kissed him in the ashes of the dying cosmos and called him "king" not with reverence—but with recognition.
"We were more than rulers," he murmured. "We were fate itself."
The memories called to him, and he rose.
---
Back in the chamber, Wanda and Jean waited as the Scarlet King returned, his presence even heavier now, dragging at the edges of reality.
"I remember it all," he said simply.
Jean tilted her head. "And?"
"There's one place I must go. One bond I left unfinished."
Wanda nodded, sensing the gravity behind the words. "Hel."
He raised his hand, and space itself split before him—not a portal of magic, but of command. Like a sovereign carving into reality itself.
Before stepping through, he turned to his avatars.
"Doctor Doom. Emma Frost. Hold Earth in silence."
From the shadows of the cathedral, Doom bowed with a solemn nod. Emma gave a smirk, crystalline skin shimmering. "Don't take too long. The gods are already gossiping."
Then he was gone.
---
The space between worlds was a river of memory, strewn with the corpses of forgotten deities and echoes of old laws.
The Scarlet King walked.
Specters whispered his name. Some reached toward him with clawed regret, but none dared touch him.
He passed through the Vale of Black Blossoms, where dreams of the dead grew like vines. He passed beneath the skeletal remains of Nidhogg, its once eternal hunger silenced by the passage of his will. He crossed the River Gjoll, the souls within parting like water around his feet.
Hel awaited.
---
She felt him before she saw him.
The air shifted. Cold became colder.
Hela sat on her throne of bones, one leg crossed over the other, fingers tapping the armrest with ageless patience. Her court, filled with silent shades and phantoms, froze in unison.
He stepped into the great hall, cloaked in living shadow, his red eyes burning like twin suns.
She stood slowly.
"It's been a long time," she said, her voice the quiet echo of tombstones.
"It has," he replied.
They stared at each other. Death incarnate and the King of Ruin.
"Why return now?" she asked.
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he took a slow step forward. The ground beneath his foot fractured with power.
"I am whole again," he said. "But something still remained in Hel. A bond. A promise."
Hela descended her throne. "You left without a word."
"I had forgotten who I was."
"And now?"
He reached out his hand.
"Now I remember who we are."
Hela's lips parted slightly—not in surprise, but in understanding. She stepped forward, their hands touching like the meeting of two collapsing stars. The court trembled. The walls of Hel groaned. The River Gjoll surged.
Her touch sent spirals of emerald power around his crimson aura. Where they met, death and chaos intertwined.
"Do you still seek dominion?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I seek balance. Flame. Chaos. Death. Earth. It begins again."
She leaned forward, her lips brushing his ear.
"Then we do it together."
He pulled her into an embrace, not of tenderness, but of absolute unity. The moment stretched across the underworld. Hel itself pulsed with new life—paradoxical and glorious.
---
Later, they stood atop the highest tower in Hel, looking down upon the rivers of the dead.
"This place will change," Hela said. "Even the dead will feel the shift."
"They already do," he said. "The old laws die. The new rise."
She touched his shoulder. "You've become more than what you were."
He nodded. "And you are the part I left behind. No longer."
From their joined hands, a ripple of power surged outward—a declaration, a coronation, a rebirth.
The Scarlet King now held the deathly mantle of Hel within him.
He turned to her, eyes softening only slightly.
"Earth awaits."
She gave a wicked smile. "Then let's make the gods tremble."
Together, they vanished into the shadows, leaving Hel changed forever.
---
On Earth, the skies darkened for just a moment.
Those attuned to power felt the shift—the Scarlet King had returned stronger than ever.
And he was no longer alone.
Death walked with him.
And the world would never be the same.