The first to step out of the pillar of light were two figures.
The woman on the left held a great Sun sword, her hair Burning like fire behind her, every step leaving a molten footprint on the ice.
The woman on the right carried a war hammer, the electric arcs swirling around the hammerhead striking the falling snowflakes into powder in mid-air.
"Asgard's sun goddess... and the Goddess of Death..." The Frost Giant who had fled back clutched his bleeding shoulder, his voice dry.
"They have come in person."
Laufey's pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints.
He had seen battle footage of Mavuika and Hela, snippets stolen and recorded by scouts using magic crystals from the Vanaheim battlefield.
But images could never convey even a ten-thousandth of the pressure felt on the scene.
At this moment, even from fifty miles away, he could clearly feel that soul-scorching fire and life-freezing death.
Even more terrifying was the figure at the bow of the main ship.
Odin, King of the Gods, ruler of Asgard.
He wore no armor, only a simple battle robe, but the Eternal Spear gungnir in his hand was the sharpest spear and the sturdiest shield in the Nine Realms.
He stood at the bow, scanning the Jotunheim Royal Court; wherever his gaze fell, even the air began to congeal.
Laufey knew there was no way back.
From the moment they raided the Bifrost Bridge, only one outcome remained between Jotunheim and Asgard.
And that was war!
He took a deep breath, the bone-chilling air filling his lungs, yet it made his mind exceptionally clear.
Laufey turned to face all the Frost Giant warriors, priests, and Elders gathered in the Royal Court.
Fear was written on everyone's face, but deep down, a fire that refused to be extinguished was hidden; it was the pride of the Frost Giant race that had lasted for ten thousand years, the tenacity of struggling to survive in this harsh World, and the long-standing hatred for Asgard.
"Do you all see?" Laufey's voice echoed through the hall, using ice magic to make every word pierce the listeners' ears like ice picks.
"The Asgardians are here, with warships and armies, stepping across the Bifrost Bridge."
He walked toward the stone pedestal beside the throne, where the supreme treasure of the Frost Giant race was enshrined—the casket of ancient winters.
Laufey held the casket of ancient winters with both hands; the moment the box touched his palms, a terrifying chill erupted, and the temperature of the entire Royal Court plummeted to a point where even breathing would be Frozen.
But his palms did not freeze; instead, they began to resonate with the box.
"They consider us savage giants and do not allow us to obtain the more fertile lands of the Nine Realms." Laufey held the casket of ancient winters high, his voice echoing multiple times due to the infusion of magic power.
He walked out of the hall step by step, coming to the edge of the observation deck.
Below, tens of thousands of Frost Giant warriors were assembling, holding ice axes, ice spears, and ice shields, looking up at their king.
"Crack—"
What surged from the box was not cold air, but a beam of pure blue light.
The pillar of light shot into the clouds, and instantly, the perennial dark clouds of Jotunheim began to swirl, forming a massive vortex covering the entire realm. In the center of the vortex, snowflakes were no longer gently falling but were as sharp as blades, pouring down like waterfalls.
The blizzard had arrived.
It was not a natural storm, but the ancient winter's wrath awakened by the casket of ancient winters.
The storm was mixed with the roars of Frost Giant ancestors; every snowflake contained the power to tear through magic defenses, and every gust of cold wind could freeze the engines of the Asgardian warships.
"All citizens of Jotunheim, hear my command!" Laufey's voice remained clear even in the storm: "The war has begun!"
He held the casket of ancient winters in one hand and drew the Frost King Sword from his waist with the other.
The King Sword pointed toward the Golden Fleet in the distant sky.
"Show those false gods of Asgard the true power of our Frost Giant race!"
"ROAAAAAAR—!!!"
The response erupted like an avalanche.
Thousands of Frost Giants raised their weapons, their ice magic converging into a blue ocean, resonating with the blizzard in the sky.
The Frost Ballistae on the Royal Court walls began to charge, with arrows as thick as tree trunks; the ground cracked open as sleeping Frost Beasts were awakened, letting out World-shaking roars.
Laufey stood on the observation deck, the casket of ancient winters pulsing in his hands like a second heart.
He looked at the Golden Fleet in the distance already advancing toward the Royal Court, at those two figures—one gold-red and one dark-green—and a look of resolve flashed in his ice-blue eyes.
The surprise attack had failed, but the war... had only just begun.
The light of the Bifrost Bridge had not yet completely dissipated when Asgard's Golden Fleet pierced into the heart of Jotunheim like a spear of divine punishment.
The first wave of attack came from the ships' broadside fire.
Thousands of brilliant white beams tore through the blizzard, striking the Frost Giant positions on the outskirts of the Royal Court.
Ice walls Vaporized under the high temperatures, and the Frost Giants' ice shields shattered like thin paper; the first line of defense turned into steam and slag within ten seconds.
But the Frost Giants' counterattack came just as swiftly.
"For Jotunheim!" a Frost Giant leader bellowed, raising his ice battle-axe high despite his unhealed shoulder wound.
The Frost Giant mage corps behind him cast spells simultaneously, and thousands of ice spears condensed in the blizzard, each as thick as a human javelin, their tips shimmering with the cold light of anti-magic.
"Fire!"
The ice spears fired in unison, shooting toward the sky against the curtain of artillery fire.
The Asgardian ships raised golden shields; most of the ice spears shattered against the shields, but some still penetrated the defenses and pierced the hulls.
An escort ship's engine was skewered by an ice spear, and it tilted and fell while trailing black smoke, exploding into a fireball on the ice plains.
The war reached a white-hot intensity within the first minute of contact.
And in this chaos, two figures broke away from the fleet like meteors, plunging straight toward the most densely packed areas of the battlefield.
The first was a gold-red flame meteor.
Mavuika's entire body shimmered with neon-like light; she had been accelerating continuously since leaping from the warship, aiming straight for the ground with the momentum of a comet hitting the Earth.
The spot where she landed was exactly in the center of the Frost Giant mage corps.
"Protect the casters!" a Frost Giant roared, but it was too late.
Mavuika didn't even swing her sword; she simply thrust sun-blaze thousand suns into the ice upon landing, pressed her hands onto the pommel, closed her eyes, and took a breath—
Then she opened her eyes.
"BOOM————!!!"
With her as the center, a spherical domain of fire with a radius of a hundred meters erupted violently.
The temperature within the range jumped from below zero to a level capable of melting gold and breaking iron; all physical laws within this domain were temporarily overwritten by the laws of fire.
The Frost Giant mages discovered to their horror that the ice magic they condensed Vaporized into white mist the moment it left their bodies, the array runes they drew melted and deformed on the ice, and even the frost blood flowing in their bodies was boiling and Burning.
An aged Frost Giant mage screamed as his beard began to smoke, cracks appeared on his skin, and gold-red light shone through the fissures.
Mavuika pulled up sun-blaze thousand suns and began to move.