The white light vanished, replaced by a choking mix of ozone and molten earth.
The old French plaza was gone.
Now, a glassy crater stretched fifty yards across, smooth as ice.
Rain hammered the hot ground and hissed away instantly, fog rolling in thick waves over the wreck.
Somewhere in that blinding fog, thunderous laughter rang out.
“Magnificent!” Wind bulldozed the cloud aside and there he stood—Thor.
The Norse God of Thunder looked untouched, battle-scars still raw but a wild grin stretched across his face.
All twenty divine weapons Ren fired lay shattered in the dirt around him, smashed aside by Mjölnir—he never dodged a thing.
He didn’t need to.
For him, it was just a warm-up.
Across the crater, Ren hovered in the air.
His once-expensive jacket hung from his shoulders in tatters, snapping in the gale.
“I have slept for centuries!” Thor’s voice hit hard—Ren felt it right through his bones.
Lightning danced along Thor’s beard.
Every muscle in the god’s body swelled as he dug his fingers into Mjölnir’s hilt.
“Don’t disappoint me!
Show me the blood of a King!” Before Ren could answer, Thor moved—just gone.
The stones under him shattered as he shot forward, breaking the sound barrier in a heartbeat.
Thor appeared right above, swinging Mjölnir down like a meteor trailing a burning tail of light.
Ren didn’t try to block it.
He was no brawler like the Seventh Campione.
A blow like that would turn him to pulp.
With barely a thought, the air beneath Ren twisted into gold.
He fell backward, slipping into a glowing portal just as Mjölnir demolished the spot he’d been standing.
The earth rocked.
The crater deepened, another ten feet at least, as dirt and surges of lightning blasted out through the town.
Ren flickered back into view, floating higher now, face stone-cold.
Thirty golden portals swirled open behind his back like a halo.
“You fight like a coward, jumping between worlds!” Thor hollered, ripping his hammer from the ground and fixing Ren with burning eyes.
“No.
I fight like a man who wants to eat breakfast in peace,” Ren replied, voice sharp as frost.
He snapped his fingers.
All thirty portals fired—but Ren didn’t shoot straight at Thor.
He knew hurling steel at this god was pointless.
The weapons—huge swords, tridents glowing with curses, maces heavy as anvils—slammed down in a tight pattern around Thor, not aiming for his body but driving him, step by step, into a confined space.
Thor laughed, spinning Mjölnir in violent arcs and shattering any blade that got close.
But each strike shoved him back, each weapon cutting off his ground.
A halberd forced a retreat, a scimitar made him swerve.
Little by little, Ren boxed him in.
He wasn’t trying to kill Thor, not yet—he was caging him.
“Enough!” Thor shouted, raising Mjölnir toward the clouds, ready to call down a storm that would wipe the map clean.
“I agree,” Ren murmured.
The ground beneath Thor shimmered gold.
A dozen glowing portals split open around Thor, but no weapons flew out.
Instead, chains—thick links of celestial gold—exploded from the rifts.
They writhed fast as snakes, locking around Thor’s ankles, up his legs, pinning his wrists to his sides.
Enkidu: the Chains of Heaven.
They were built to trap gods, and the greater the divinity, the tighter the hold.
On Thor—pure power of a major god—they tightened like mountain ranges.
Thor grunted and struggled, the chains digging in, draining his divine energy, locking him firm.
Ren drifted down, boots touching the crater’s edge.
The golden portals faded, only the chains and Thor left standing.
“It’s over,” Ren said, flat and quiet.
He lifted a hand, opening a sharp-edged portal, targeting Thor’s throat for a clean kill.
“Go back to legend.” Thor glanced at his bindings, then up, grinning, wild-eyed.
“A divine lock,” he rumbled, voice going low and rough.
“A trap for gods.
You’re worthy.” The air tightened, pressure dropping to something almost painful.
Lightning around Thor spiked from blue to blinding white.
“But you forget,” he said.
He grinned wide, blood in his teeth.
“I’m not just the God of Storms.
I’m the God of Strength.” An iron belt materialized, glowing hot, clamping around Thor’s waist.
Megingjörð—the forgotten belt that doubled his strength.
Thor’s arms bulged, suddenly monstrous.
He roared, and the world seemed to crack.
Ren’s eyes narrowed.
The Chains of Heaven, those perfect anti-divine locks, started to groan.
Gold links splintered, hairline fractures spiderwebbing out.
Somehow, Thor’s raw power broke the rules, wrenched at the world’s very logic.
Ren dropped his hand.
A simple, sharp kill wouldn’t work anymore.
He’d need something a lot heavier to bring the Norse god down.
Well, so much for the vacation.
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