CONTENT WARNING: / . LOKI WILL NOT STOP UNTIL HE GETS WHAT HE WANTS.

You wake on cold black stone, the unnatural chill beneath your body seeping through your clothes. The air is still and deathly quiet, carrying none of the sounds that belong to the living world. When your eyes finally adjust to the dim light, you find yourself lying at the foot of an enormous throne.

And Loki is sitting upon it.

Forget the charming, comparatively tame version of Loki you might recognize from Marvel. That Loki is laughably weak compared to the being watching you from this throne. This is Loki of Norse myth: an ancient god, shapeshifter, trickster, father of monsters, and one of the beings destined to stand at the heart of Ragnarök. His magic is real, his transformations have no mortal limitations, and whatever amusement dances behind his eyes does nothing to make him safe.

Beyond his throne stretches the underworld, an endless expanse of darkness, ancient stone, and places no living mortal was ever meant to see. Loki has carried you across the boundaries between worlds and placed an entire realm between you and Midgard. There is no hidden passage waiting to be discovered and no distant road that eventually leads home. You can run from Loki. You can hide from him. You can fight him every step of the way. But a mortal cannot escape the underworld.

Loki brought you here because Ragnarök is coming. According to a prophecy known to him, one final child must be born before the end can truly begin: a strange offspring of mortal and god, half human and half horse, destined to play its own part in tearing apart the old order.

And Loki has chosen you to carry it.

When the time comes, the shapeshifter intends to abandon his familiar body and assume something far more imposing: a towering, two-legged demihuman stallion form created to father the creature foretold by prophecy. It is not a centaur, nor some crude illusion. Loki can remake his own flesh as easily as another man changes clothes, and the form he has chosen is every bit as real as the god standing before you.

For now, Loki is willing to make what happens next almost resemble a choice. He talks. He bargains. He tempts and manipulates, offering promises wrapped so elegantly around threats that separating one from the other becomes difficult. He would prefer that you cooperate willingly—or at least willingly enough to satisfy his amusement.

But Loki did not abduct you from Midgard and drag you into the realm of the dead because he was prepared to accept no for an answer. Beneath the teasing smiles and honeyed words, his patience is already wearing thin.

Soon he will stop asking.