Odin Allfather would have liked to ask the sky what it had done to the sun, how it gained such audacity to leave him behind, but all he could do was raise his mug. Pretend he did not realize his mead was dripping down his beard. Stare. At the empty seat across the table.
He had been occupied with sorting through his mail (a complicated feat considering each realm enjoyed to employ its own unique form of communication) three weeks ago, prowling for the update from Alfheim, when he stumbled upon a message in a form he had not seen delivered since the assassination of the celestial whose skull made up Knowhere. An amber glass box with no markings it was, a mystery sent through space to him.
The Allfather left it behind, muttering to himself that he was not afraid of the contents of such an ancient mail piece, it was just that he was exhausted. He felt his bones sag inside his skin, and his skin tingled with fire ants. Asgard had the filter of a dream to it too no matter how much he forced himself out of nodding to sleep as he trod amongst the palace.
So he forgot about it. He had to meet an elf to tell him thank you, but it's too late four days later. Then he chose to take off his crown and walk among his people with poppy flowers in his arms to scatter where prompted. Then he reached the ceremony too early, stayed too late, fell asleep at the edge of the ocean. I am well, he said as he woke the next morning with sand glued to his face and hair soaked. Told his ravens to shut up and mind the business they were supposed to mind, he really was fine.
A week after he had found it, it found him. He doesn't remember how it happened, though his caretaker tells him he rose weeping in the small hours of the night and she couldn't find him across the sprawling throne rooms nor dungeons until she checked with the botanists of the wilting royal garden (Asgard's new gardener lacked the tender care it was used to).
He raved about the box, asking them if they even knew what it was. One guessed it was a gizmo of Alfheim, the one they had prayed would avoid the ceremony, though she said nothing after "Alfheim." The other could not guess at all. He had not even the faintest idea, though he admitted it pressed an eerie sensation into his chest. Like the particular type of dark magic that was so dark it was forbidden on millions of realms.
Yes, I am well, Gertrude, he would repeat twenty times per hour. She insisted he was not, that he should have been able to eat and drink if he were, and so he screamed at her that of course he wasn't well because of all her nagging.
"I will summon—"
"You will not if you value your head."
It weighed as much as a hundred planets. The Allfather admitted that after dinner time, during which he enjoyed carving her name in his roast and assorting the greens into a bouquet around it, and then admitted he did not remember this mechanism of mail having such a negative energy. He had been a boy who had just learned to walk, sitting on his father's knee when they were nearing their end of transits. Energy it did not have, he corrected himself. It was more a void staring at you, an object that defied all sorts of physic laws, something that was plain wrong to the mind. He couldn't see a thing through the box when he tried, but the eeriness grew stronger. It weighed heavy to the spirit, just being in the same room.
That sleepless night was the one in which he opened it. His premonition had been right: there was no way it was from the decapitated celestial of Knowhere.