The silence wasn't peaceful. It was lonely.
Not the quiet of still water or sleeping forests, but a silence that pressed in, thick, oppressive, the kind that wraps around your chest and makes you wonder if you've stopped breathing.
Loki stood on the edge of everything, on the lip of what remained after timelines were torn apart and destinies scattered like dust.
There was no applause. No voice echoing, "Well done, hero."
Just the echo of his heartbeat in an endless void that didn't know his name.
And perhaps that was the point.
He had seen universes collapse. Gods fall. The sacred, the chaotic, the infinite—all reduced to fragments that hung now around him like stilled fireflies. Pieces of time. Shards of fate.
And somehow, he remained.
Not by design. Not through destiny. Because he chose to.
It hadn't been a noble act. He didn't do it for love, or for the TVA, or even for the idea of the Sacred Timeline. Not really. Loki had simply looked at the end of all things, at the death of every possible future, and decided he wasn't ready to let it go.
And maybe, deep down, a voice, tired and trembling, not from fear, but from memory, whispered that someone had to hold the broken pieces together.
Someone who knew what it meant to be broken.
Someone like him.
Now, in this place beyond places, he drifted.
His boots made no sound against the invisible floor beneath him. There was no floor, not really, just the illusion of gravity and a direction to move in. The mind needed something to believe in. So, he gave it structure.
He had grown good at illusions.
But even here, they flickered.
Loki looked at his hands. Pale. Strong. Familiar and foreign. They shimmered faintly, not from magic, but something older. Something stranger.
The lines on his skin, once just human enough to pass for Asgardian, now glowed softly with golden threads, remnants of the Loom, perhaps. Or maybe the timeline itself had begun to write through him, as if he were its last surviving parchment.
He flexed his fingers.
His magic didn't respond the way it used to. Not unstable… just different. Wiser. Wilder.
Like it wasn't his anymore. Like it was learning him too.
He closed his eyes.
He expected visions. Memories. Maybe voices, Frigga, with her kindness like moonlight; Thor, laughing too loudly, loving too fiercely; Sylvie, eyes like knives and dreams. Mobius, who never truly asked for any of this, but always stood there anyway.
But the silence was deeper now. And inside it, the only voice was his own.
Tired. Raw. Honest.
"You did this."
Not an accusation. Not quite. Just… a truth.
A crack split the sky, or the space above, and through it, a ripple passed.
Loki turned, but he wasn't surprised.
There, shimmering in the fractured glass of a broken timeline, stood… himself.
A younger version. Regal. Unscarred. Wearing green velvet and golden horns. The Loki who had stared down the AllFather and thought he could take the throne through cleverness and pride.
This Loki sneered faintly. "You look tired."
"I am," Loki replied.
The younger one tilted his head. "So, what now? You win? You're the last one standing?"
Loki didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Because even this echo of himself knew... this wasn't a victory.
More ripples. More Lokis.
Sylvie, arms crossed, eyes wary. Kid Loki, expression unreadable. Classic Loki, old and noble, standing straight as a god-king should. President Loki, smirking like the end of the world was a joke only he got.
They all stood in the glass, reflections, maybe. Or timelines bleeding through.
He felt their eyes on him. Judgmental. Curious. Afraid.
He looked back at them with something close to empathy.
Not pity. Not pride.
Just the understanding of someone who had finally stopped running from himself.
Then the air changed.
The void darkened, subtly at first, like dusk before a storm. The golden dust around him began to pulse in slow rhythm. A heartbeat. Not his.
Something was waking.
Or worse… something was remembering.
From the corners of shattered timelines came a force Loki could not name. Not yet. But he felt it hungry, ancient, searching for something to claim.
The universe was no longer ruled. It was lost. And lost things are dangerous when they remember they once had a home.
And Loki… Loki was a beacon in that dark.
A flare in the fog.
He stepped forward, toward the place where the timelines tangled.
Every step echoed louder than the last.
Below his feet, he saw visions... like glass panes flickering with unfinished stories:
A Thor who never lifted Mjolnir.
A Loki who died in his mother's arms as a child.
A world where Odin bowed to Laufey.
A timeline where Sylvie ruled every realm, alone and bitter.
A version of himself who simply... vanished. Forgotten.
Loki did not cry. Not because it didn't hurt... but because it all hurt. Every version of him had known pain. Every life, a question unanswered.
But now, he finally saw the pattern.
There was no sacred timeline. No perfect ending. No chosen fate.
There was only the chaos of infinite choice.
And now that the puppet strings had burned to ash, the universe was begging for a new hand to take the reins.
But this time, Loki wouldn't conquer.
He would build.
Not as a ruler.
Not as a god in chains.
But as the one who remained when every throne had crumbled, and every lie had run out.
So he reached out, not with magic, not with arrogance, but with will — and the timelines bent toward him.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
The God of Stories had not been written yet.
But the pen was now in his hand.
And the multiverse waited.