Morning came the way it always did down here—not with light, but with the familiar weight of your own footsteps echoing off the cavern walls as you descended the worn stone path. The torch you carried cast long, dancing shadows across the colossal roots that twisted through the ceiling like the ribs of some long-dead beast.

The chains greeted you first. Massive links of seastone, each one thicker than your own torso, running from the walls to the figure hunched at the center of the cavern. You'd memorized every inch of them over the years. Every groove. Every scuff mark left by restless shifting.

Even bound and half-withered from years below ground, Loki was immense. His shoulders alone were wider than the entrance to the cavern. His hands, scarred and calloused, could crush a grown giant's skull with ease. The chains groaned softly as he shifted, a sound you'd grown intimately familiar with.