"Ahhh!!!"
Within a beautiful palace radiating infinite light in Asgard, a sudden agonized scream pierced the air.
Inside the bedchamber adorned with various gold and silver embellishments, the god of light Balder sat on the bed, half-covered by a blanket. His handsome face, still glistening with beads of sweat from just awakening from a nightmare, was etched with distress, and his emerald eyes trembled intermittently.
After a long while, he finally reached up to massage his forehead and slowly let out a pained groan.
…
"The god of light Balder is plagued by nightmares!"
This news spread throughout Asgard within a few months, igniting a flurry of debates among the gods.
It must be said that the good-natured Balder's character was indeed kind to a fault. Among the Norse gods, most of whom had the temperament of fierce berserkers, he was an exceedingly rare bleeding heart, even to the point of being overly idealistic and indiscriminate.
Just like the light he embodied, he would not discriminate based on the other party's morality, gender, race, or background, but treated everyone with equal benevolence, bestowing the same light upon all.
Not to mention the gods, even the Great Serpent imprisoned at the bottom of the sea had met him a few times when Balder happened to be out travelling and conversed with him. Unexpectedly, the Great Serpent found this fellow quite agreeable, at least enough to set him apart from the "gods that must be slain" and segregated him into a special category of "gods that may or may not be slain".
From Asgard where the gods resided to Jotunheim where the Frost Giants dwelled, except for Helheim which Balder had never been to due to the environment being too harsh for anyone besides the dead and a few deities to endure, it could be said that Balder had companions everywhere across the Nine Worlds.
And such a disposition also led to him being vacillating and irresolute, struggling to be decisive. However, as Odin's eldest son besides Thor, he was the heir apparent to the divine throne. Therefore, his son Forseti was designated as the god of justice and truth to assist him in rendering various judgments.
And now, this future king of the gods had fallen into the predicament of being haunted by nightmares.
Gods seldom dreamed, and when they did, the dreams were often highly exceptional and portentous.
Such as traversing the boundaries of past and future, foreseeing bygone and forthcoming events; or crossing the threshold between life and death, communing with those extraordinary living and deceased beings in the dreamscape; and nightmares often signified an ominous portent.
Indeed, the god of light Balder's temperament was gentle to a certain degree, so much so that initially he didn't confide about his nightmares to others. It was only because he had nightmares every night, leading to this god of light's psyche weakening and his spirit growing haggard and drawn, that his mother - the queen of the gods Frigg - took notice. Then, the queen, who doted on her future divine king of a son, convened the gods in the golden hall, seeking to find a solution.
With the queen's decree, all the gods naturally had to attend.
Inside the golden hall, the gods either divined or wielded magic, and some even directly delved into the god of light Balder's dreams. After exhausting various methods, including the all-father Odin and queen Frigg who possessed the ability to perceive the past and future, the gods still couldn't fully decipher the meaning within Balder's nightmares, but there was one point that all the gods concurred upon - that this was a tremendously ill omen.
After ruminating for a long time, Odin mounted his eight-legged steed and prepared to personally visit Helheim to consult Hel, the ruler of the dead, about the situation.
In this world, if there were some portents of death that even he, the all-father who could glimpse the future, was unaware of, then probably only Hel, who was half-dead herself, and Mimir, the wise giant, would know.
The divine steed's eight hooves galloped across the sky, traversing the ocean, following the river of the dead to that realm of death veiled in layers of dense fog.
However, what made Odin a bit perplexed was that from his aerial vantage point, gazing down at the only palace with lights on in that realm of death concealed in deep fog, it seemed as if sounds of celebration were emanating from within at this moment.
The all-father slightly knitted his brows. He rode his eight-legged divine steed, only circling in the air above without truly descending into the realm of the dead.
The realm of the dead, which had existed since the dawn of creation, had its own laws and order. Even all-father Odin would find it arduous to withstand that environment suffused with the essence of death. If he truly alighted in that realm of the dead, even if he was the all-father, he would probably still be hard-pressed to escape the doom of transmuting into one of the deceased and then becoming thrall to Hel, the mistress of the dead.
Not to mention, in that realm of the dead, there still dwelled those primordial beings who had perished in the war between the ancient Frost Giants and the elder gods before the world was born. In that epoch, the realm of the dead already existed, but even though they were once so puissant, after death, they ultimately had to bend the knee to Hel, the goddess of the dead.
However, not being able to directly enter the realm of the dead didn't mean Odin was impotent against it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to make Hel kowtow to him.
He outstretched a finger, which danced deftly in the air as he intoned various runes, his voice thundering like lightning. Before long, glacial gales and tempests manifested in an instant under his incantation.
Amidst the keening frigid winds and maelstrom, Hel, whose stature was far more immense than humans and closer to that of a giant, heeded the summons and emerged from the realm of the dead below Odin.
She hovered in the air, looking down at all-father Odin who rode his eight-legged divine steed before her. Her icy visage contained not much reverence as she only slightly inclined her head to Odin, displaying a modicum of respect for the all-father, and then slowly inquired,
"The all-father has summoned me. What is the matter?"
Odin raised his head, gazing at the titanic figure of Hel before him, and then sonorously asked,
"Why are there sounds of revelry within your palace?"
Hel responded evasively,
"The realm of the dead is about to welcome an esteemed guest, so we have brewed exquisite mead and prepared a grand feast for them."
"Who is that individual?"
Odin paid no heed to Hel's equivocal words and pressed on with uncompromising insistence.
Hel didn't answer, only shaking her head and saying,
"All-father, the living have the laws of the living, but the dead also have the order of the dead. All that lives must die. Even though you are venerated as the all-father, there are some matters you should not probe too deeply into."
Odin's brows were tightly furrowed, his aged countenance covered by a thick white beard, making it difficult to discern what he was contemplating.
"That individual is Balder, is it not?"
He suddenly spoke.
Hel didn't answer him, but not answering was in itself an answer.
"Is there no means to forestall it?"
The all-father intently gazed at Hel before him and pursued the question.
Before him, Hel's face was noncommittal, a few traces of coldness and vexation surfacing on her visage.
"Perhaps there is, but that is no longer something you as the all-father of the living can continue to inquire about."
With that said, without waiting for Odin to speak further, she turned and returned to her own palace of her own volition.
Odin's face was inscrutable. Hel's attitude was very patent - the world of the living and the world of the dead were disparate.
As the queen of the dead, all the deceased were under Hel's jurisdiction, and it was the same even if gods perished. Meanwhile, Odin was the all-father who reigned over all the living. The two were supposed to be of equal station.
And although Hel now had to kowtow to him under the puissance of the runes, there were some things that couldn't be asked, and that was that. Therefore, Odin's unrelenting interrogation would naturally cause her to be so disgruntled that she directly turned and departed.
He quietly stroked his beard, but a term inexplicably flashed through his mind.
"Ragnarok…"
Suddenly, in the all-father's heart, a hint of trepidation and wistful melancholy surfaced.