Perhaps a significant amount of time had passed within the darkness, but to Jörmungandr, it felt as if he could only shed one tear before being pulled into yet another memory by the string, the red glow dimming a little with each one he passed through.
The dreams locations and settings were all varied, but there was a commonality all of them shared and rarely deviated from; in all of them, Asta was sad, or anxious, or lonely.
Within one such memory, she was surrounded by others, her hair being pulled and her cries being ignored until they finally left her be, several kids laughing while taking out a glowing device and capturing her ragged image within the box.
A beep would sound from it, and she would look up in tears, begging, "P-Please, stop sending those to people!"
"Why should we listen to a b***h like you?" one of the boy's laughed, "Don't worry, we get as good an angle we can for a freak like you."
"B-But, I-I'm not, I just have vivid d-dreams—e-everyone has one or too, right?"
Another boy crouched before her, tilting her head up and opening her mouth with his thumb before smiling.
"Course we do; wanna make mine come true?"
Her eyes widened as a zipping sound was heard.
The image closed up before he could see further, and Jörmungandr hurtled into another memory, crash landing into a dining room with only two people in it.
It was a younger her, silently eating as much dinner as she could before a young man—who looked similar to her, save for brown hair and golden eyes—would open his mouth and shame her for eating because she was "already so chubby". She would hunch into herself as he spoke, letting him have his fair share of verbal abuse before he left, shutting the door to his room in the upstairs—and then she would relocate to the bathroom.
It was only then she would stick her finger down her throat and relieve her stomach of food, and eyes of tears.
"No, no..." she would groan to herself afterwards, rinsing her mouth and cleaning her face as she glared daggers to herself in the mirror. "You know he says that to get to you! You know it and you still..." she held up her bony arm, the pale skin all but translucent with veins and arteries, and shook it violently with a bruising grip. "You are not fat! You have nothing left to give, so why are you so... argh!"
Grabbing a brush from the white stone table with a bowl indented in it and threw it at the glass, making a crack.
"Why am I always like this?!" she yelled at herself, raising her hands to hit her face.
Jörmungandr tried reaching out, tried stopping her from hurting herself, only for the dream to crumple up and he fell into yet another hell, where Asta was the main character and everyone else the main villain.
As more memories passed, he vividly saw Asta's mental deterioration on all sides, in every way; whenever she experienced happiness, something far worse would occur in her life, something that left her even more scarred than before.
At one point she had found and taken in a stray with her grandmother who had adopted her after she had attempted to bleed herself out in a bathtub; it was the first thing she had ever expressed want in anything before, and so though Maribelle was losing her sight and allergic to cats, she allowed the cat to stay.
Asta cared for the cat as if it where her child; she got him his shots with the meager money she earned at her job, comforted him when he woke her up at night, fed him the best diet after days of research, and patiently took all the scratches and bites he gave her with a smile. In the end, the cat trusted her and she the stray, and Asta was genuinely happy for once.
Then, while guiding her grandmother from a metal box on wheels to the house, she heard a squeal from the metal box and a quiet impact. She finished guiding her grandmother before whirling around and found what she did not want to see: her little cat, slowly bleeding out without a sound as his tail jerked before stilling, blank yellow eyes staring at her.
An insincere apology was all she received before the box moved away.
And Jörmungandr had to watch everything happen, watch her personal tragedy play across his eyes with such vivid detail, such clarity—and he could do nothing each time.
Ever since the first dream, it was as if a barrier was set up against his existence, barring him from action as an unknown force consigned him to a spectator and refused him even a supporting role. It was agony to watch and do nothing, but what was perhaps the worst thing he saw was the final and most recent memory she had.
Reeling from the hellish life she had survived during her time alive within the game, he was stuck in a fog of darkness and flashes of consuming fear before a distorted image finally appeared, the string wrapped tightly around his finger barely glowing as it slowly unraveled.
"'I must say, your situation is rather ideal,'" Hela smirked, continuing cruelly, "'Even after dying, you haven't really died, and you have an undyingly loyal Patron, though you yourself seem to fail in understanding and considering my little brother's more delicate emotions. A shame, really. Your cowardice knows no bounds, does it not?"
'Huh?' he thought to himself, a blank expression upon his face as he listened into the conversation more deeply.
"Of course," she smiled benevolently, as of she were to impart a great kindness upon her, "I'm certain you've had your good moments, your tender moments and even moments of surprising understanding; I'm certain beneath all of your cowardice, there is a truly good and kind girl inside you. But that's the thing—it's behind all of your fear, and I must say, even for a woman that clings to her Patron for protection while still fearing him, you're quite cruel."
She leaned in, and the more she spoke, the more pain seemed to build in Jörmungandr's heart as he realized his sister did not trust him.
"Why don't I help you with that fear?" she offered, and shivers passed down his spine at the grinning skull beneath her gently smiling visage.
"...What do you want from me? Why are you even offering me an opportunity?" Asta asked cautiously, distrust and curiosity warring within her gaze, and as he saw how dull and lifeless they had become, he felt a profound fear, the like of which he had never felt in his life, even at sensing her death.
Hela simply smiled.
"I need you to want to live again, and then..." she leaned in and whispered the rest in Asta's ears, words that he heard as well. "...monitor his every move, tell me every strength and weakness he could have; we must protect this world from him. He is a waking disaster, and if his power were to awaken..."
Asta's icy blue and ruby red eye widened, shudders pulling through her as violently as a pianist's recital, the notes jumbling into a discordant fear she could not remove.
"You understand, of course, the consequences of not fulfilling this? You might not die at this moment, but at the end, you will die along with everyone else; if you keep your end of the deal, the only one who will disappear will be none other than that Patron you fear so much."
'Disappear?' he numbly wondered, curious yet increasingly terrified of the prospect of disappearing again.
The Jotun leaned away and offered her pale hand, that enchanting upturn of the lips still smeared on her face, eyes cold and calculative—and every bit as cruel as their father's.
"Do we have a deal, little specter?"
Perhaps what hurt the most was not Hela's words or concerns, or even her persuasion and reasoning.
What hurt the most was seeing Asta's hand meet Hela's, and Jörmungandr made the discovery of what it felt like to die inside while still being alive.
The red string snapped and the recollections shattered with it, leaving him alone in the dark as he always had been, and always will be.
Before the void swallowed him, he spoke a few words, a tear traveling down the length of his face.
"Again... so I'm always... the problem... again..."
The last thing he remembered was red hair and a skinny back walking away from him, and then Jörmungandr was gone, the only thing remaining being a teardrop an emerging hand caught.
Cupping the droplet, the figure made out of the void smiled before licking it up.
"I'm so happy when my narrative follows what I want."