The void around the Norse vanguard had become a charnel house of flickering runes and shattered geometry.
Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, had been a symbol of absolute dominance, its scales shimmering with the integrated laws of the ten pantheons as it constricted the Matured Outer One.
The obsidian horror, shaped like a jagged spear of entropy, seemed tiny within the Serpent's titanic coils—a splinter of glass caught in the grip of a galaxy-spanning dragon.
But the Outer Ones do not understand mercy, and they do not recognize the inevitability of physical defeat.
Just as the Serpent's muscles rippled for the final, bone-crushing squeeze, a sound erupted from the monster that defied the physics of the vacuum.
It was a high-frequency vibration, a "Cry of the Chaos," that caused the stars to ripple like reflections in a disturbed pond.
And at that moment, the obsidian hide of the Outer One did not shatter from the force, but instead it inverted.
