Chapter 967

Chapter 967: 967

He knew the beast was still in there. He had glimpsed traces of it throughout their exchange, the feral glint in the god’s four eyes, the brief hesitation as Björn contemplated letting him finish mutating just to see a better slaughter. But every single time the madness reared its head, this new, disciplined Björn forcefully suppressed it, burying the instinct in favor of pragmatic execution.

As their two domains collided and began to violently merge, rusted, blood-soaked weapon-spires grinding against the freezing glaciers, a look of desperate determination settled onto Ragnar’s face.

He was going to force his birth right now.

It would be premature. The new form would be incomplete, fragile, and far weaker than it should have been. But it was the only state that gave him even a ghost of a chance against this thoughtful, calculated God of War.

Down below, his kingdom was already shattered. His people were broken, his realm was lost, and he knew with absolute, bleak certainty that the war itself was over. But this clash right here, this final, personal reckoning with the entity that had defined his entire existence was something he refused to lose.

Ragnar’s domain violently enveloped the spatial fabric around them, trying to force his advantange but to his suprise, it worked as Björn didn’t push back giving up the ground space as he took over the sky.

Ragnar’s domain manifested as a vast crystalline void, a terrifying space that felt less like a frozen battlefield and more like the interior of a colossal, hollow organism.

Below them, the ground solidified into a hyper-reflective, pitch-black mirror of ice, reflecting distorted, stretched shadows of Björn’s massive frame. Suspended in the air above were thousands of translucent, amber-like ice pods hollow, amniotic husks hanging like pale eggs from thick, pulsating frost-umbilicals that drained into an unseen ceiling far above.

The air instantly thickened, turning so cold it felt like liquid plunging directly into Björn’s lungs. The ambient heat around the God of War was violently ripped away, forcing the surrounding atmosphere to condense into crawling, white frost-vines that reached frantically toward his skin. Across the black mirror floor, sprawling vein-like networks of white crystalline frost throve with a faint, stolen blue light, siphoning the thermal energy of the domain to continuously gorge the suspended pods overhead.

It was the cold, sterile stomach of a sleeping predator, built entirely to digest its occupant.

Standing at the center of the dark mirror floor, Ragnar gave up all pretense of physical form.

"Hatch, " Ragnar spat, his voice echoing from every pod above simultaneously.

The vein-like networks across the domain throbbed wildly, pulling every scrap of stolen thermal energy directly into the young king’s body. The remaining mortal flesh on Ragnar’s frame sloughed off in bloody, frozen sheets, shattering as it hit the mirror floor.

From the amniotic husks overhead, thousands of frost-umbilicals detached and slammed directly into Ragnar’s spine, pumping concentrated, cold essence straight into his core.

His body cracked open from the sternum outward. The premature birth was brutal, agonizing, and incomplete, forced through raw, desperate willpower before the gestation had properly finished.

With a sound like grinding glaciers, Ragnar’s form expanded and crystallized. What emerged from the sloughed flesh was no longer a man wearing ice armor, but a towering, skeletal entity carved from pure, void-black obsidian ice and glowing white frost-veins. His chest was a hollow, rib-lined womb where a singular, pulsing blue core burned with absolute cold, and in his right hand, his blade fused directly into his forearm, becoming a jagged extension of his newly born, crystalline skeletal frame.

The birth was premature, the frost-veins along his neck were brittle, hair-line fractures running across his obsidian limbs where the process had been rushed but the aura radiating from him was cold and strong. He had bypassed his human limits, turning his entire existence into the living, breathing heart of the Matron’s Husk.

From within his hollow ribcage, Ragnar’s core flared, staring up at Björn through a face carved into a featureless, icy mask.

He was ready to consume the God of War.

Where Ragnar’s domain claimed the lower realm, looking upward, the unseen ceiling was entirely replaced by Björn’s vast, turbulent sky. A endless sea of thick, viscous blood churned overhead, defying gravity as gigantic weapon-spires, broadswords, rusted halberds, and shattered spears protruded downward like the fangs of a starving beast.

The air itself vibrated with a deafening, terrifying duality.

The suffocating, silence of Ragnar’s crystalline void was constantly shattered by the thunderous roar of millions of phantom warriors echoing from Björn’s crimson sky. A insidious, psychological pressure permeated the merged space, a violent, intoxicating mental toxin whispering directly into the soul, urging every living thing to throw away strategy, forsake thought, and surrender entirely to the primal thrill of endless slaughter.

Björn stood at the convergence point, his four eyes drinking in the sight of Ragnar’s premature, obsidian-ice form. He felt the maddening whisper of his own sky clawing at his mind, tempting him to strip away his tactical discipline and simply tear the young king apart with bare hands.

Instead, he smiled, a calm controlled expression and stepped forward.

The entire merged domain shuddered as both beings surged into motion.

Ragnar moved as he dissolved into the black mirror floor. Instantly, from the thousands of amniotic pods dangling from the blood-dripping spires above, a wave of skeletal, obsidian-ice surrogates dropped into the fray. Each surrogate carried the exact same signature as the true king, their blade-arms glistening with parasitic intent as they swarmed Björn from every angle.

Björn didn’t waste momentum cutting down the false husks. Reaching upward with two of his heavy arms, he plunged his gauntleted hands straight into the overhead sea of blood.

"Grave of the Vanquished!"

With a brutal heave, Björn tore down a dozen massive, blood-soaked weapon-spires from his sky, driving them like meteors straight into the dark mirror floor. The impact shattered the black ice, interrupting the flow of thermal energy through the crystalline veins and detonating the incoming surrogates before their parasitic tendrils could touch him.

Through the erupting mist of crushed ice and crimson spray, the true Ragnar materialized directly in Björn’s blind spot. His blade-arm, fused with pure obsidian ice, thrust forward with blinding speed, aimed directly at the hairline fractures near Björn’s heart.

The parasitic frost flared violently, the Law of the Matron’s Husk seeking to latch onto the God of War’s core.

Björn didn’t dodge. With quick efficiency, he used his third arm to deliberately catch the obsidian blade in his palm. The parasitic tendrils instantly pierced his skin, attempting to convert his blood into frozen crystal and siphon his vitality straight into Ragnar’s hollow, glowing ribcage.

In the fraction of a second before the frost could spread, Björn’s fourth arm, wielding his colossal battleaxe, moved in a clean, ruthless arc.

He didn’t cut his own arm off this time, he severed the obsidian blade-arm of Ragnar at the elbow, taking advantage of the hairline fractures caused by the king’s premature birth.

As the severed crystalline arm shattered into harmless dust, Björn leaned in close, his four eyes locking onto the pulsing blue core inside Ragnar’s hollow chest. The maddening whispers of war raged around them, but Björn’s voice was crisp and entirely devoid of rage.

"Your birth was rushed, young king," Björn murmured, driving his heavy knee straight into Ragnar’s fragile, obsidian sternum. "Your shell is absolute... but your foundation is hollow."

Ragnar felt his sternum fracture under the impact of Björn’s knee, the hairline cracks across his premature obsidian shell spider-webbing inward toward his glowing core.

Instead of fighting the kinetic force behind the blow, Ragnar leaned into it, using the crushing blow to trigger a spatial phase. His obsidian body shattered like brittle glass, shedding his outer frame entirely.

He materialized fifty yards back, gliding silently across the pitch-black mirror floor. Ragnar realized the brutal truth, fighting Björn up close was suicide. The God of War was an absolute meat-grinder, a master of micro-amputations and lethal spatial counters who thrived on physical contact.

If Ragnar wanted to survive, he had to play the mage to Björn’s juggernaut. He needed to dictate the geometry of the battlefield, turning his domain into a living, range-controlling labyrinth.

Ragnar raised his remaining crystalline arm as he broken arm reformed, his pulsing blue core flaring with blinding intensity.

"Frost-Grown Labyrinth, Mirror Stasis!"

Across the dark floor, the black ice violently erupted upward into towering monoliths of frozen crystal. The giant mirrors crisscrossed the merged domain, catching the blood-red light of Björn’s sky and refracting it into thousands of disorienting, blinding prisms.

Björn surged forward, his boots shattering the floor with every step, intent on dragging Ragnar back into a brutal melee. The maddening roars of his crimson sky echoed through the air, his domain actively pressing down on space itself to shorten the distance between them and force a pure, muscle-to-flesh brawl.

Björn’s axe sheared through the first ice monolith, intending to cleave Ragnar behind it, but his blade passed through a harmless reflection.