Winterfell was unusually quiet that evening. The last of the guards had retired to their posts, and the wind howled softly through the high towers. Inside the great hall, a fire burned low, throwing flickering shadows across the stone walls.
Anna sat at the edge of the fire, her hands wrapped around a cup of wine. Robb Stark leaned against the mantel, watching her with a small, quiet smile. They had been together for months now, yet the closeness still carried a strange newness —the kind that made every shared look feel important.
“You’re staring again,” Anna said softly, raising an eyebrow.
Robb chuckled. “I can’t help it. You look like you belong here, even though you hate the cold.”
“I do not belong here,” she protested, though her lips twitched into a smile. “I belong somewhere sunny, where the wind doesn’t steal your breath in half a second.”
He walked over and took her hand, fingers warm against hers. “I like that you’re stubborn. Makes you… human.”
Anna laughed, and for a moment the tension of the world outside melted. No wars, no banners, no duty —just them. She leaned against him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.
They used to call her Project Nyx.
Hydra never gave her a real name. To them, she was an experiment — a weapon born from chaos itself. But before all the pain and the cages and the endless tests, she’d had a name.
Anna Valen.
Twenty-five years old. The most powerful being Hydra had ever created — and the one they feared the most.
They said she could bend life and death, manipulate matter at a molecular level, and shatter reality without meaning to. When she screamed, glass cracked for miles. When she cried, people forgot their own names. And when she lost control, entire cities trembled.
For years, Hydra kept her locked in a cell beneath the Alps, filled with runes and machinery built by scientists who didn’t believe in magic — until she proved them wrong. They tried to use her, to weaponize her. But the thing about death… is that it never stays caged.
And tonight, Anna was free.
The facility was in ruins. Flames reflected off her dark eyes as she walked barefoot through the corridors, her long black hair matted with blood and ash. Around her, Hydra agents lay scattered — some unconscious, some… not so lucky.
“You should’ve left me dead,” she whispered.
When the Avengers arrived at the wreckage hours later, they didn’t find a monster.
They found a woman sitting quietly on the ground, her hands glowing with violet energy.
Wanda Maximoff was the first to approach. She felt it immediately — that familiar, terrifying energy. Chaos Magic. But stronger. Wilder.
“Who are you?” Wanda asked carefully.
Astra lifted her gaze.
“Someone you shouldn’t try to control.”
And in that instant, Wanda saw it — the truth Hydra had hidden for years.
Anna wasn’t just powerful. She was ancient. Older than magic, older than life itself.
The whispers were true.
She was the Goddess of Death — and she had just woken up.