The deeper Beowulf ventured into the heart of the mire, the more the world began to lose its shape. The yellowish fog thickened, turning into a semi-liquid veil that tasted of copper and wet ash. Here, the stagnant pools of water were no longer black; they had turned a sickly, milky white, as if the very Earth were bleeding its lymphatic fluid into the sludge.
Then, he reached the first line of trees.
Beowulf stopped. His massive chest, scarred by centuries of divine servitude, heaved with a slow, rhythmic growl. Before him stood Grendel's true heralds.
The trees here were no longer mere wood. They had been "refined." Grendel had taken the fallen warriors of the Danish coast and fused them into the landscape. It was a masterpiece of biological blasphemy.
A dozen men were suspended from the calcified branches of a giant, weeping willow. But they were not merely hanging by ropes. Their own nervous systems had been unraveled—long, translucent threads of spinal cords had been pulled from their backs and woven into the bark, binding the victims to the wood in a permanent, agonizing embrace. Their skin had been stretched thin, translucent as parchment, revealing the musculature beneath that had been dyed in shades of bruised purple and ochre.
This was the "Art" the All-Father had spoken of.
Beowulf walked among them, his head nearly brushing the dangling feet of a disemboweled huscarl. The victim's ribcage had been pried open and pinned back like the wings of a moth, the internal organs replaced by intricate carvings of white marble. Grendel had replaced the messy reality of death with the cold, unyielding perfection of stone.
"Do you admire the craftsmanship, Hound?"
The voice did not come from the mist. It seemed to vibrate from the very ribs of the hanging dead.
Beowulf did not answer. He reached out a massive, calloused hand and touched the leg of a suspended soldier. The limb was cold, petrified. Grendel wasn't just killing these men; he was turning them into minerals. He was accelerating the fossilization of the living. It was a direct insult to the cycle of life and death—an insult to the Valkyries who would never find a soul to carry here. There was nothing left but a sculpture.
"They were so chaotic," the voice whispered again, slithering through the air like a snake over dry leaves. "So much blood. So much noise. I simply gave them... silence. I gave them the permanence of the Labyrinth."
The Vision in Beowulf's skull flared. The golden eye of Odin throbbed behind his retina, demanding blood. The divine leash tightened, sending a jolt of white-hot pain down Beowulf's spine. The message was clear: Destroy the gallery. Erase the Architect.
Beowulf's hand tightened on the petrified leg of the corpse. With a grunt of primal effort, he tore the body from its branch. The sound was not a tear of flesh, but the dry snap of a ceramic statue shattering. He began to move with a sudden, violent grace, his three-meter frame becoming a whirlwind of destruction.
He struck the trees with his bare fists. Each blow sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil. The marble-infused corpses disintegrated into a fine gray dust that choked the air. He was a titan erasing a nightmare, a machine of Asgard resetting the landscape to a state of raw, unadorned rot.
But as the last "sculpture" fell and the dust began to settle, the atmosphere changed.
The mist didn't just swirl; it began to pulse. From the darkness beyond the calcified trees, a sound began to rise. It started as a low, metallic rattle, like chains being dragged over a tombstone. Slowly, it evolved into a rhythmic, jagged vibration.
It was laughter.
It was a sound devoid of joy, a hollow, echoing cacophony that felt like it was being scraped out of a dry throat made of charcoal and obsidian. It didn't sound like it came from a mouth, but from a void.
"Work on, little slave," the laughter echoed, bouncing off the white marble pillars that were now clearly visible through the haze. "Break my toys. Shatter my glass. But remember... every piece you break only provides more grit for the mortar of my throne."
The laughter grew louder, shriller, until it felt like needles piercing Beowulf's eardrums. The ground beneath his feet shifted. The mud was gone. He was standing on a floor of polished, bone-white stone.
Beowulf stood in the center of the ruins, his knuckles bleeding a dark, divine ichor, looking into the darkness where the laughter originated. He wasn't just in a marsh anymore. The Labyrinth had finally swallowed him whole.
"Grendel," Beowulf growled, the name a curse that shook the air.
In response, the laughter reached a crescendo and then snapped into a terrifying, absolute silence. In the distance, two pale, milky eyes opened in the dark, watching the Titan with a predator's patience.