Ragnarok was inevitable. All the loss was not. The boy fell from Asgard into almost total darkness. He could remember reaching out to his mother, but they only barely touched. She had tried to save him; it wasn't her fault. The boy knew that.

Modi had kicked him, injuring the young boy's leg, and knocked him unconscious, wasting precious time. The boy had to keep moving. He tried to run out of the palace, and couldn't keep his footing. There were people screaming and crying everywhere, and then the ground opened up. It opened into nothing. And the child fell, like the rest of them; he fell into nothing.

At first, the fall was terrifying. The blackness beneath him continued to open up, leading him into a place he was not supposed to go. Many of the people continued to fall into nothing, dying in the process. The boy knew they were perishing by the sounds of their screams as the air heated up and cooled down, leading them into more and more despair. But he was one of the lucky ones, like his father long ago, getting pulled into a different passageway to an uninhabited world.

The realm the survivors fell to was covered in vibrant plant life, and bluish trees. The trees were thick, and unforgiving, not friendly for climbing or bearing good fruit, but they were familiar enough as trees. He was lonely when he first arrived, but he had no room for fear. The boy learned to take care of himself very quickly, despite his young age. When the trees wept for the people who died after arriving on the realm, he would relish the sensation of cool water on him. Other people who came to this world were not so fortunate, and were so stricken with grief and heartache that the mere pain of being alone killed them. He helped several people float off into the sunsets, and was forced to harden his heart to such things early on, as there were hardly enough people now to restart their universe. Eventually, after a few years of weeping with the trees and resigning to the trauma, the boy forgot most things from the past. He even forgot his own name.

The boy, now called "Asleik" by the people, lived on this world for over 20 years without dissatisfaction with his station or his loneliness. Aside from the occasional friend here or there, Asleik kept pretty much to himself; he learned quickly in this ungoverned place not to trust those around him. Asleik enjoyed keeping one or two close confidants and the rest of his relationships superficial. There was no need for him to search for his family; to him, it was a certainty that they had all perished with the others he heard screaming. He soon forgot them, too.

The few people who were able to make it through to this realm were initially lost in their own devastatation, but together, they built something. Asleik was able to grow in magic on his own, making him invaluable to the people on their little realm in terms of leadership and innovation. After just a few years, they finally conceded to the possibility that they were the only lives left in the universe, and gave their realm a name: Einheim, meaning 'home of the lonely.' Sad, but true.

Asleik's magic became indispensible to the people. He learned how to make things without saying spells; he could light fires to cook food; he even used his cold magic to stave away the heat that came with the dust storms, which were thankfully very rare. He also learned to create a force field of protection around himself while walking through the crying trees, sparing his skin from the water. Even the world itself seemed to recognize him after a time, welcoming him into the pathways by moving plants aside without him asking.

The people on Einheim tried to recreate the cultures of their respective homes, and ended up creating new ones instead as their memories faded. Many of those that survived were children at the beginning of it all, no older than Asleik, making it a youthful realm that was full of promise. His magic made him special, though he could no longer remember where he had learned it. The people respected him out of necessity. When he became old enough to have authority, they gladly assigned it to him. Asleik took it because they asked it of him, remembering a faraway lesson from long ago: "Men are meant to be respected, not ruled," and Asleik stayed true to that when it came time for Einheim to start searching for other life.

At first, the searches came up with nothing. Asleik was the only one remotely capable of Seer abilities, and he did all he could to see what was going on outside of their realm. The only thing they could be sure of was the destruction lied somewhere above them; at night, they saw old remnants of worlds from above crashing through their sky, lighting up the faces of the new children who would invariably come. After all, when the people were alone, there was a lot of time for foolishness. The 'elders' of Einheim were much younger than any other realm they could recall, but they all helped rear the children the best they could. Asleik was smart, but he had only just learned how to read with his mother before she was lost to him. He was, for all intents and purposes, behind in education. He contributed to the best of his abilities, teaching them the songs that had stuck in his memory, and made up stories from his fantasies. It was the last bit of his mother that Asleik could hang on to, save for the constant and lasting sensation of her fingertips grazing his while he watched her disappear.