Thor hovered in the golden light of the Prism Tower as the Rune Power pouring from the World Tree completed its final integration within him.
He could feel the runes taking their places in the structure of his power, in a way entirely unlike lightning.
It felt less like filling gaps or stacking more power on top, and more like a whole new system of branches connecting to his core.
Every breath created a new point of resonance between the runes and his body. Every heartbeat pushed the edge of his aura outward by the slightest degree.
He turned the hand holding Mjolnir slightly. The arcs of electricity across its head briefly shifted phase when they touched the runes, then stabilized again almost at once.
The two powers were still finding their balance, but the direction was clear.
Russell stood at a fork in the World Tree's trunk. Suddenly sensing something, he looked away from Thor and toward a slowly rotating Barren Planet deep in the cosmos.
Its surface was covered in dense impact craters and a dark, weathered layer, with no obvious signs of life or energy.
At least, none that conventional scans could detect. But Russell fixed his gaze on a particular point on the planet's surface and found something connected to Knull.
Let's make this duel a little more interesting.
"Sword, come."
He spoke as casually as if he were addressing the empty air.
But the two words spread from the edge of the World Tree along multiple paths through the Dimensions, crossing the distance to the Barren Planet in an instant.
Deep inside a dark fissure that had lain beneath the weathered surface for nearly a thousand years, the hilt of a longsword buried under rubble and sediment began to move.
First, a sliver of it