The weary prince's boots thudded against the iridescent Rainbow Bridge with each bone-tired step. Crimson streaked across Thor's chiseled visage, matting his golden locks as rivulets of sweat and blood mingled undistinguished. Mjolnir hung limply at his side, its trademark energy flickering with waning reserves.
Asgard was a mere glimmer of its once resplendent glory in the distance. Her grand spires and gleaming architecture lay in smoldering ruins, a tragic monument to the Titan's wrath. Thick plumes of acrid smoke billowed across the war-torn realm, blotting out the dying embers of Yggdrasil's brilliant light.
Death had a stifling presence about the ethereal city. In the hollow pits of his heart, Thor already knew even before reaching the ruined palace gates - they had lost. So many brave warriors fallen, sacrificed upon the bloodstained altars of Odin's foolhardy conquest.
His soul felt rent asunder from the pain and loss, every labored footfall stoking his anguish like stoking the embers of a dying flame. His friends, slain by the hand of Thanos's Black Order. Citizens dying in untold droves. And his own family...Norns, what had they suffered?
Each step resurrected a fresh wail of anguish reverberating in his mind. His greatest wounds were not carved into his marred flesh, but rather the soul-sickening regret carved from Hela's cruel bargain.
Why...why had he been so arrogant, ignoring his destiny as a protector for so long? Instead he'd revelled in the glory of conquests and barroom brawls until it was too late. Now he wandered the shattered ruins, the last of Odin's line laying in crumbled disarray like torn relics of a fallen empire.
Whatever life remained in the eternal city seemed to have drained away like blood from a mortal wound. Only death's unnerving silence answered his guttural cries.
"Mother? Father?! ANSWER ME!"
No reply came but the hollow winds whistling through toppled masonry. Thor seethed, hauling his battered frame towards the splintered palace gates. His boots crushed the ancient seals upon the intricately carved doors, sending a macabre symphony of groaning stone ringing out.
Ash and debris rained down in dusty plumes, stinging his bloodied eyes as he pressed onward into the bowels of his home. The grandeur of Asgard's halls and courtyards were reduced to mangled landscapes of rubble and smashed relics. This could not be happening...
Battle-weary Einherjar troops lay strewn among the dead and dying in the wreckage. The mighty king's personal guard, protectors of the realm eternal, were scattered like rag dolls in the aftermath. Long stood they resolute against demonic invasion, until the brutal onslaught of Thanos's outriders swarmed them under like a pestilent tide.
Frigga...where was his beloved mother? The Queen of Asgard and its eternal light? Thor's heart clenched with rising panic as he surged towards the royal wing. Through a shattered portico and up spiraled granite steps he ran until his lungs burned.
"Frigga? Moth-" A gut-wrenching wail tore free at the sight awaiting him.
The queen's opulent chambers were utterly ruined. Splashes of crimson trailed across the flagstones, framing the pale corpse illuminated by a shaft of harrowing sunlight.
A body clad in gossamer robes and golden filigree lay crumpled in an unceremonious heap upon the marble floor. Singed tendrils of hair framed the slack, lifeless expression of his dearest friend, his soulmate, his ever-stalwart mother.
"No no no no, Norns please no..."
Thor stumbled forward in disbelief, shaking hands smearing fresh blood upon his mother's papery cheeks. He tasted the salt of his own anguished tears as his forehead dropped in a futile debasement of prayer.
