The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 96: Sling Shot

The moon cast its solemn glow over Berkimhum, tracing silver across palace towers and marble spires. From the jagged hills beyond, Atlas stood with Veil and Loki. The capital looked like a lullaby frozen in stone, but Atlas knew better. He had seen too much to mistake stillness for peace.

He stood motionless, eyes drinking in the sight he never thought he’d see again. The wind was gentle—too gentle. The kind of quiet that blankets everything before it shatters.

"...Should I have killed her?" Atlas’s voice slipped into the air, low, guttural. It didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. The words sat heavy between him and the moon.

"Wait, what?" Veil’s voice came from below, half-formed, a distortion of shadow climbing up Atlas’s back until he stood beside him. "You wanted to kill Eli?"

Atlas didn’t look at him. His jaw clenched. His heart felt like glass spun too thin.

"She’s an enemy now, yeah I get it. Maybe soon you’ll have to. But, Atlas..." Veil’s usual edge was missing. His voice softened, quiet enough to be mistaken for human. "...don’t put that burden on yourself. She was your partner. Your mating partner, to be exact. Even if you tried, I know you couldn’t do it."

Atlas flinched at the term. It felt too intimate, too real. He turned to Veil, intending to correct him, but the words got lost somewhere in his throat.

Because he remembered.

The trembling of her lips when she said goodbye.

The look in her eyes that said she knew he wouldn’t follow.

The scent of rain in her hair when they first met, buried under blood and betrayal.

He remembered everything.

"I..." he started, but let it fall.

His silence said more than a thousand confessions. Veil didn’t push further. He slid into Atlas’s shadow like a silent vow.

That was when Loki turned.

"OE. Atlas."

The tone wasn’t his usual flamboyant self. It was tight, serious.

Atlas narrowed his eyes. "What?"

Loki didn’t look at him. His golden gaze locked onto the horizon. "...Does your kingdom raise pets or something? Like hordes of middle-carnage dragons?"

"...What?" Atlas blinked. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I think... those dragons from the High Eves Mountains are headed this way. The ones who live at your kingdom’s border with the Empire."

Atlas’s blood froze.

He activated his Truth Eyes. His vision stretched—layers of light and spectral perception unfolding like a blooming lotus. In the distance, dozens of red dots moved in formation.

Too many.

Far too many.

The city’s barrier wouldn’t hold.

"...Fuck! What! How did they manage to lure them here...," Atlas growled. His hands curled into fists. The pressure in his veins was unbearable. Speed alone wouldn’t save the city. He could reach the gates, but not before the dragons arrived.

He looked at Loki.

Loki caught his gaze and raised an eyebrow. "...What?"

"Hmmm....Can you still be the Giant?"

Loki’s shoulders stiffened. "Yeah, but it’s painful. Very painful. And I don’t want to—wait. No. Don’t you dare....i think i know what the fuck you want...."

Atlas stepped forward, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "So, You know what I’m thinking.....right? "

Loki’s eyes flicked between Atlas and the dragons. Then back again and again back to the dragons and back to him.

His golden eyes pressing on him like the tallest mountain.

"Ohhh....hmmm...Fuck! Goddammit. Fine. But next time....Next time... I want silk. Royal edition. With embroidery. And gold trim...."

Veil stepped closer, hands raised. "What the hell are you idiots doing?"

Loki shoved Atlas away. "Move!... This is gonna hurt."

Then he began to change.

Then he began to change.

The air ignited.

It started at his core—a heartbeat of heat that pulsed outward. The ground beneath Loki’s feet began to glow, lines of molten red tracing outward like veins across the soil.

Then the fire came.

Heat blasted out in concentric waves, hotter than dragonflame. Trees burst into flame instantly. The very soil cracked and split apart, steam gushing up like geysers of fury. Birds screamed and scattered, only to be incinerated mid-flight.

His skin shimmered, glowing from within as golden-red mana erupted across his limbs. His muscles convulsed and swelled, bones cracking like thunder under pressure as his frame surged upward.

Ten feet.

Thirty.

Fifty.

Still he grew.

His screams echoed like the roar of titans buried beneath the earth. His back arched, shoulder blades splitting apart to reveal searing light. The surrounding forest disintegrated, vaporized in a flash. The hill beneath him—once ancient stone and stubborn roots—crumbled like dry parchment.

Atlas stumbled back, shielding his face from the sheer heat. Veil cursed aloud, swearing as the trees around them curled in on themselves and turned to black ash.

Loki kept growing.

A hundred feet. Then two. Then three.

The mountain itself groaned in protest as his limbs widened, each movement a tidal wave of molten pressure. His knees shattered rock like eggshells. His spine carved open the sky. Every breath he took melted patches of cloud. The land around him ceased to exist—it was not merely broken, it was obliterated.

Trees became vapor.

Soil became glass.

The forest that had once blanketed the hillside in ancient shade vanished into wind and ash.

Mana storms sparked from his shoulders as arcs of gold and crimson lightning danced across his skin. Craters formed where his feet planted. What once was a hill had become a crater surrounded by ruin.

Still he rose.

The sky had to make room.

Loki now stood above the landscape like a god carved from fire and wrath. A titan reborn through agony and intent. His voice rolled through the air like thunder cracking open the bones of the world.

"{{{Atlas...}}}" he boomed, voice layered in multiple echoes. "{{{You better be ready...}}}"

"What the fuck do you mean ’with’? Where?!"

Atlas grabbed his arm. "You’re going to be my blade. Just hold on."

Loki’s enormous hand flattened out beside them.

{{{Atlas. Land on my palm.}}}

Atlas launched.

The heat from Loki’s skin was unbearable. His boots began to melt. Sweat poured like rain. Veil cursed violently.

"I swear if we die—"

Loki pulled his arm back.

{{{Don’t die. That would be embarrassing.}}}

And hurled them into the sky.

.

.

.

__________

Monsters Guide

___________

Added page

Loki, the Flame-Crowned Exile

---

There are giants who rule with fists like mountains and eyes that see through time. And then there is Loki.

Once a prince among the Grimjotnar, the fire-blooded titans of the northern wastes, Loki was born beneath twin suns in a storm of ash and prophecy. His birth cry shook the bones of the earth, and his first steps cracked the stone beneath his feet. The elders whispered that he carried the flame of the World’s First Fire, the same blaze that once burned the sky black when gods still walked among mortals.

But Loki was not like the others of his kind.

Where most giants sought dominion through strength alone, Loki wielded chaos as deftly as any blade. He did not merely break walls—he broke rules. He laughed at laws written by kings and priests alike, danced on the graves of fallen emperors, and spoke truths that made even dragons flinch. He was not just powerful. He was dangerous.

He was feared not for what he could destroy—but for what he could change.

The other giants called him mad. Some said it with awe, others with hatred. But all agreed: no one outmaneuvered Loki twice.

It was said that when he smiled, the stars leaned closer to listen. When he fought, the wind itself held its breath. And when he wept—rare though it was—the ground wept with him, birthing rivers from sorrow.

His exile came not from failure, nor from weakness, but from defiance. He refused to kneel before the Council of Embers, the ancient order that governed the Grimjotnar. He denounced their tyranny, mocked their sacred rites, and dared to speak the name of the First Flame—a secret so holy that even thinking it was punishable by death.

So they cast him out.

Banished beyond the Wall of Ash, stripped of title and kin, Loki wandered the world alone. But even in exile, he burned brighter than those who had cast him away.

Legends say he walked through the Black Deserts of Nyx, where time unravels and thought becomes reality. He danced with demons in the halls of the dead and whispered secrets into the ears of sleeping gods. He shattered the chains of forgotten prisoners and set fire to the libraries of tyrants.

And when the Dreaming collapsed—when the Guide rose and the Warden of Sleep was no more—it was Loki who stood beside the new godling of broken fate.

Atlas.

They found him in the ruins of a forgotten jungle, half-naked, half-mad, and burning with purpose.

"I followed you out of that realm not just because you set me free," he told Atlas, his golden eyes alight with something older than fire. "But because I think you’re next. The next myth. The next one the gods will try to bury. The next name they’ll rewrite in holy texts to sound like a villain."

And then he grinned.

Wide.

Burning bright.

"And I want to watch it happen."

---

Why Giants Fear Him

- He remembers too much.

Loki knows things that were erased from history—truths buried beneath centuries of blood and ash. He speaks of the Elder Giants, the ones who warred with gods, as if they were old friends. And sometimes, when the wind howls just right, he sings lullabies in a language that makes mountains tremble.

- He doesn’t follow rules.

Not mortal, not divine. Loki bends reality like it owes him money. He has been seen walking through time loops without blinking, whispering to shadows that answer back, and laughing while standing inside a ring of holy fire meant to burn demons to dust.

- He is not just a giant.

He is something else now—something forged in exile and rebellion. His body shifts between forms, his hair burns like living flame, and his presence distorts the air around him. Some say he is part demon, part god, part something entirely new. Others say he is simply what happens when a giant dares to dream beyond his cage.

- He sees the future.

Or perhaps, he creates it. Loki speaks in riddles that come true days, weeks, or even years later. He calls himself a witness, a participant, and sometimes even a director in the great play of fate. Whether he is mad or prophetic is a question few dare ask—and fewer still live to answer.

---

> "You didn’t kill out of panic. Or vengeance. You did it with precision. Purpose."

> — Loki, speaking of Atlas, but describing himself all the same.

---

In the end, Loki is not just a character in this story.

He is a force of nature

HE IS storm given voice.

A flame that refuses to die.

And the only thing more terrifying than facing him in battle...

...is having him decide you’re worth watching.

Because when Loki watches someone?

That person always changes the world.

Or destroys it.

Page 135

__________

Follow curr𝒆nt nov𝒆ls on freew(𝒆)bnov𝒆l.(c)om