Loki -2021-2021 〈Instant ✯〉

He had been a ghost once, in the catacombs of the TVA. A variant. A ghost who learned to love a woman made of clocks and purpose, who watched that same woman shatter into temporal confetti, and who then stepped into the howling mouth of a multiversal storm.

In July, he pruned a rogue timeline himself. Not because the TVA ordered it—there was no TVA—but because some branches grew thorns. A reality where a mad scientist weaponized grief into a plague. Loki stood at the epicenter, held the detonation in his hands, and whispered, “Glorious purpose.” Then he let it go. The branch dissolved. No one cheered. He was fine with that. Loki -2021-2021

He was Loki. God of Stories. And he had lived an entire lifetime in twelve months. He had been a ghost once, in the catacombs of the TVA

“To 2021,” he said to the void. “The year I learned to stop running. The year I learned to stay.” In July, he pruned a rogue timeline himself

August was quiet. He read all of Shakespeare’s tragedies in a single night and laughed at them. “You call this suffering?” he muttered. “I invented suffering. In 2021.”

So he waited.

He left before Thor could ask his name.