The bottom of the abyss echoed only with the dull thumping of Chronos' carcass. Jormund, facing the fallen immensity of the Titan, did not move. His obsidian eyes, born of the mercury of the Styx, stared at the golden glow pulsing in his father's petrified flesh.
"I don't know the way," said Jormund, his rock-like voice shaking the foundations of reality. "I seek the light that illuminates Helheim. I need a guide to lead me out of this tomb."
Chronos' laughter was a seismic crack, a shockwave that sent Siegfried reeling into the distance.
"A guide?" thundered the primordial voice. "One does not guide a torrent, Jormund. One does not guide the mountain. One endures them. You are almost complete, my son. But for your feet to tread the ice of the North, you must accept what you truly are."
A piece of the Titan's chest, a block of crystallized divine flesh, smoking with pure, dense gold, broke off and floated before the stone colossus.
"In the Styx, the Mother of All took you in. She bathed your limbs in her mercury venom to forge a body that even Odin's lightning could not break. She gave you Matter."
Chronos paused, and the air around the fragment began to vibrate, distorting dimensions.
"And I give you Breath. You are not an anomaly born of nothingness, Jormund. You are the son of the River and Eternity. You are the blood of the Jötnar, the heir of the Giants who ruled before the Gods invented thrones for themselves."
Jormund understood then. His existence was not a bug in Laplace's system, but the return of a lineage that the Gods thought had died out.
"Devouring my strength is not theft, it is your inheritance," whispered the Titan. "Swallow, and become the one through whom Time stops or speeds up."
Jormund stepped forward. He felt neither fear nor hesitation. He opened his obsidian jaws and seized the fragment.
The contact was a silent cataclysm.
The gold of Chronos did not flow like blood, it infused the stone like a shockwave. Jormund's obsidian, once matte black and mournful, became streaked with veins of incandescent gold. It was not a transformation, it was an activation. His Jötunn nature awoke. He felt the weight of centuries and the solidity of worlds merge in his chest.
Siegfried fell to his knees, crushed by the gravitational pressure that suddenly emanated from Jormund.
"I see..." whispered Jormund. His voice was no longer a squeak, but a symphony of thunder. "I see the roots of the Tree. I see the cold of Helheim calling to my giant blood." "
Jormund closed his basalt fist. Around him, time stood still: it bent. The debris in the hall remained suspended, held captive by his mere presence. He no longer needed a guide. He had become the center of gravity of his own destiny.
The son of Styx and Chronos looked up at the rocky ceiling of Tartarus. With a single step, he shook the universe. The ascent was no longer an escape. It was an invasion.