In his youth, Odin had waged war alongside her, conquered the Nine Realms, and built the empire of Asgard.
But as Odin changed from a tyrant into a benevolent king, the divide between him and Hela grew ever wider.
She longed for conquest. He longed for peace.
She craved power. He embraced responsibility.
In the end, Odin had no choice but to imprison Hela.
With his own life force and Asgard's most powerful magic, he forged a seal that locked her in the rift between Hel and Asgard.
As long as Odin lived, the seal would hold.
But Odin was dead.
On the coast of Norway, before Thor and Loki, he had dissolved into golden motes of light and vanished into the wind.
His soul had gone to Valhalla, but his life force—the key to sustaining the seal—was gone from the universe forever.
The seal began to weaken.
Then Thanos came.
He brought the Six Infinity Stones to Earth, and the shock wave from his battle with Loren crossed dimensions.
It pierced Asgard's realm and struck the seal, already on the verge of collapse.
Not deliberately. Not even directly. It was only the aftershock.
A spark flung from the collision of two stars—but enough to shatter a seal already riddled with cracks.
The rift to Hel tore open.
Darkness poured from the breach. It was neither energy nor matter.
It was something more fundamental, more primal: a darkness like the void before the universe was born.
It swallowed the fragments of the seal, the traces of Odin's magic, and everything that tried to stop it.
At the heart of the darkness, a figure emerged.
Hela.
She was tall and graceful, dressed in a close-fitting, scale-like suit of deep green armor.
Black hair fell over her shoulders and down her back