#SuperViral, Ch 16: The Serpent at the Hearth Pt. 1

Erik Magnusson's hammer rang against red-hot steel. The impact sent sparks scattering across the workshop floor, tiny stars dying in the shadows beyond the forge's glow. Heat rippled the air. Sweat ran down his temples, soaked the collar of his leather apron. The camera on its tripod caught everything - the dance of metal and fire, the steady rhythm of a man who built things while his neighbors built walls.

Walls instead of hearths. The thought arrived, unwelcome. He wiped his forearm across his forehead, left hand gripping the tongs with the kind of ease that came from decades at the forge. Steel glowed orange-white between the iron teeth. His BeamCast channel, "The Modern Viking," was live. Twelve thousand viewers watching. They wanted something real - fire and metal, the honest work of hands that knew their craft. No flashy powers. No lightning hurled from fingertips, no flying through clouds. Just this: the soul of steel responding to his touch, stone whispering its hidden strengths, raw wood revealing what it could become. Odinsveien's steady heart, they called him. Reliable as the ancient anvil dominating his workshop's center, its surface dimpled with the marks of a thousand projects.

"The quench," he said, voice cutting through the forge's roar - deep, steady, a sound that carried weight. "This is the moment of truth for steel. Too fast, it becomes brittle, full of internal stress, ready to shatter at the first hard blow. Too slow, it remains soft. Weak. Unable to hold an edge." He moved the glowing metal toward the long trough of dark oil. "Transformation under pressure. You shock the steel, yes. Knowledge. Respect for the material. Force it to become stronger - strong enough to endure, not so strong it breaks itself."

The steel plunged. A violent hiss erupted. A rolling cloud of sharp-smelling smoke billowed toward high rafters, their surfaces black with decades of soot. "A community is like this steel." His eyes stayed fixed on the roiling oil, the metal darkening beneath the surface. "Strength, yes. Toughened by hardship. But strength born only of anger and fear, quenched too quickly in hatred's oil - it becomes brittle. Loses resilience. Shatters from within." He pulled the now-darkened steel from the trough. The transformation complete. Harder, stronger, its internal structure forever changed. He held it up for the camera, a simple object made special through care, through craft. His brand. His philosophy. Strength woven with wisdom, tradition forged into a tool for tomorrow. His comments section used to be quiet. Respectful. Fellow craftspeople, historians, community members who appreciated the no-nonsense approach.

The quiet respect drowning beneath a new, aggressive tide. Followers of a different influencer, a voice that had slithered into the social media feeds of Odinsveien's youth with alarming speed. "Jormungandr's Echo," the username read. @JormungandrsEcho. The World Serpent fated to battle Thor at the end of days.

His content lived on Current - fast-paced, short-form videos that hit like hammer blows. The opposite of Erik's careful craftsmanship. Short, visceral, and expertly edited. Quick cuts of anti-Super protesters shouting hatred, their faces twisted with rage. Headlines screaming new registration laws. Security footage showing powered individuals harassed by authorities - thrown to the ground, hands zip-tied, dignity stripped away in public. Over these images, a voice - digitally distorted and full of a cold, righteous anger - would deliver a powerful, mythic story. Jormungandr's Echo never showed his face. He appeared only as a shadowy figure in a stylized serpent mask of dark, overlapping scales, his eyes hidden behind polarized lenses. He was anonymous, unknowable, and for the frustrated youth of Odinsveien, completely captivating.

He didn't spew generic anti-human rhetoric. His poison was much more clever, crafted specifically for their culture. He spoke of the Ragnarok cycles, a known and accepted part of their worldview, a repeating pattern of divine destruction and rebirth that had happened forty-six times throughout history. But, he claimed, his voice dripping with prophetic certainty, this time was different.

"Our ancestors faced forty-six twilight struggles." The serpent-masked figure hissed over images of clashing Norse gods, apocalyptic fires consuming worlds. "Forty-six times, the world ended and was reborn. Echoes. Practice runs for the true and final reckoning. The runes do not lie. The oldest prophecies - the ones timid elders forget to read - speak of a forty-seventh cycle. The All-Father's Reckoning. The cycle that will not reset, will not renew. The final reforging of the world in fire and ice."

Insidious genius. The insidious genius of Jormungandr's Echo was his mastery of their deepest fears and proudest myths. He didn't just preach hate; he dressed it up in the holy robes of prophecy. He made it feel not only right but also like a divine command. Erik watched a collection of his latest Current videos. The content was a toxic but masterfully brewed drink of paranoia and destiny. The serpent-masked figure stood before a green screen of swirling galaxies, burning worlds. He laid out his tempting, terrifying argument.

"The old storytellers," the distorted voice began, "spoke of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. Our elders, in their comfort, speak of it as a repeating cycle, a quaint myth. They are fools, reading only the first chapter of a book whose final page is about to turn!" The video cut to pictures from ancient manuscripts. Runes glowed with an ominous red light. "The 46 cycles before were just echoes, the sharpening of the All-Father's axe! The Völuspá, the Seeress's Prophecy, speaks of a final winter, a fimbulvetr that will not end in rebirth, but in a final, glorious reforging of Midgard itself. We, my brothers and sisters, my fellow ættir, are the children of that 47th and final Ragnarok."

The story was breathtaking in its boldness. This final Ragnarok, the Echo preached, was not a battle between distant gods - Loki and Thor clashing in some mythic realm. It was their war, here and now. It was a holy war between the true inheritors of the divine spark - Supers, especially those with the strength of their Norse ancestry in their veins - and the mundane architects of a weak and dying world. Faceless bureaucrats. Human-led governments. Unseen figures like Max Morgan pushing for control - they were not just bigots, the Echo claimed. They were the modern form of the forces of chaos.

The Superhuman Registration Act was not a law. It was the chains of Gleipnir - the unbreakable bindings crafted by fearful dwarves to imprison the mighty wolf Fenrir, forged from the sound of a cat's footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, the spittle of a bird. Six impossible things woven together to bind strength itself. Anti-Super rhetoric was not propaganda. It was Loki's whispered poison, designed to turn brother against brother before the final horn sounded.

A call to arms that connected deeply with the young and powerless of Odinsveien, who felt increasingly cornered by a world that feared them. Jormungandr's Echo gave their fear a name, their anger a purpose, and their power a divine mission. He was telling them they weren't just misunderstood - they were warriors of destiny, on the edge of a cosmic battle for the fate of the world. It was a powerful, intoxicating lie.

The first sign that prophecy was becoming truth arrived on a cold Tuesday night. The Horn & Hearth Tavern - beloved community hub where deals were made and griefs were shared - was attacked. The owner, Bjorn, a cheerful non-powered man who had poured mead for three generations of Odinsveien's residents, considered an honorary family member, was thankfully unhurt. Deeply shaken, though. His hands trembled as he stood among the ruins. Erik arrived to a scene of quiet destruction, rising anger.

The tavern's ancient oak doors - hand-carved masterpieces Erik himself had helped fix years ago - blasted inward. Wood splintered in jagged fragments, scorched with unnatural energetic heat. Inside, tables overturned. Priceless, centuries-old drinking horns shattered across the floor. The message was the chilling part. Burned deep into the main bar's surface, a series of glowing non-Norse runes. The known symbol of a rival Super gang from the South Side, a group known for aggressive territorial behavior, use of illegal Auracite tech.

The official response? Predictably weak. Bored-looking city cops took statements, their faces showing clear lack of interest in a "Super-on-Super" fight. A pair of Kerberos agents swept the scene with advanced scanners, faces impassive, already mentally writing a report destined for a dusty file in a forgotten database. The community gathered outside, faces grim in flashing blue and red lights, understood the lesson immediately. The authorities would not protect them.

Before the last police car pulled away, Jormungandr's Echo had posted a new video. A masterpiece of quick-response propaganda - raw, shaky, utterly convincing. A call to arms. The video opened with tight handheld shots of the tavern's destruction. Shattered doors. Smoldering runes on the bar.

"The first arrow of mistletoe has found its mark!" The distorted voice roared over dramatic footage. "The hearth of a friend, a man who has stood with us, struck down! And by whom? Not the weak hands of mundanes - the treacherous powers of our rivals, made bold by a world that wants to see us tear each other apart! This is the sign the Völuspá warned of! The first blow struck in the twilight! The wolves are at our door, and the so-called guardians of this city do nothing!" The video ended with a stark question over the ruined tavern's image: "WHO WILL BUILD OUR SHIELD WALL?"

The video exploded through Odinsveien's digital channels. The fear and anger it created were immediate and strong. Erik stood in the wreckage long after the crowds had left. The scent of ozone and charred oak was heavy in the cold night air. Bjorn, his face pale, was numbly trying to sweep up broken glass. Erik closed his eyes, pushing past what he could see and smell, and extended his unique power, the one that allowed him to feel the inner structure and strength of things. He focused on the scorch marks, on the lingering energy signature left by the Auracite-based weapon.

And he felt... a lie.

He had handled real Auracite before, both raw and made into tools in his own workshop. It had a weight, a presence, a complex and resonant energy signature, like a deep, powerful musical chord. This... this was a single, flat, tinny note. It was a perfect visual copy of an Auracite blast, hot and destructive, but it lacked a soul. It was hollow. His power told him, with unshakeable certainty, that this was a fake, an imitation, likely created with replicated tech designed to look like the energy signature of a powered individual without having any of the true dimensional power.

He ran a calloused thumb over the scorch marks on the bar. This wasn't a rival gang marking their territory. This was too clean, too theatrical. This was a stage performance, a perfectly executed special effect designed to look like a Super attack. It was designed to be the proof Jormungandr's Echo needed for his prophecy. He looked out through the shattered doorway at the street. A group of young, angry Supers were already gathering. Their faces were illuminated by the glow of their phones. Their eyes were full of a new, righteous fire.

They were being quenched in the oil of hatred, just as he had feared. And Erik Magnusson, a man who built things, knew with a sickening certainty that someone was deliberately trying to make his community brittle, to make it strong enough to shatter itself from within.