Type-Moon: Does even a sneak peek make it official?

The setting sun sank toward the horizon. Inside what was once a grand hall, now reduced to rubble, loomed a colossal figure.

This hall—once host to magnificent celebrations—had long since been defiled by an utterly alien presence.

First, the great doors had been battered down, nearby windows smashed to shards. The sacred implements once used in worship of the Norse gods were beaten with blunt weapons, then without exception hurled to the ground.

Every man-made thing in this place had been destroyed. It was as though civilization had been rolled back to a savage age. Upon the throne—one of the few things left standing—stood a giant, his entire body drenched in blood.

"…Ah… this scent… is that all there is?"

A moment later, after swallowing his mother's body whole, the giant's rasping voice echoed. He lifted a blood-soaked hand and lightly stroked his own cheek.

Though Grendel's mother was an outsider by nature, the local Norse phantasmal species revered her as a goddess—one could even say she was the de facto leader of the Norse phantasmal world.

"The scent of sin. The scent of injustice. The scent of darkness. My father, Cain—bless your child who has fulfilled all your duties."

Grendel smiled broadly, nodding as foul-smelling crimson pooled and dripped from his form.

Why eat his own mother?

The answer was simple—anger.

The giant's fury could not be contained. And why? Because he no longer belonged to this era. In truth, both Grendel and his mother were remnants of the Age of Gods.

He had been born in the mythic age, yet for reasons unknown had survived the end of the divine era, even the dawn of the Common Era. Four centuries later, he awoke upon the Scandinavian isles.

As the years passed, his fury curdled into hunger, and at last he devoured the very mother who had awakened him.

To Grendel, it made no difference. After all, the offspring of Cain were all beings of iniquity. His plan now was to devour everything upon the Scandinavian isles, then every living creature on the distant continents. To him, the lesser races existed solely as food.

"Oh? Humans? Dinner, is it?"

The last sliver of sunlight slid below the horizon. A new moon hung high in the indigo east, its light mingling with the fading dusk to cast the ruins into silhouette.

From his throne, Grendel rose in one motion, striding over the shattered gates and crumbling walls. The clatter of falling stones echoed across the empty land.

The giant stood thirty meters tall, with legs that could crush the earth and arms that could obliterate any mystical life.

After the end of the Age of Gods, a being like Grendel—rooted in an independent mythos—could not survive on his own. With his mother's aid, he merged his essence with the leylines of a vanishing race of great giants from the Norse sea-god pantheon. In this way, he parasitized the history of the humans in the North and endured.

This truth, Grendel did not know. But even if he did, he would have considered it only natural.

His rage, in fact, had a traceable source: through his fusion with the Norse giant's leylines, and through his bloodline as a child of Cain, his body carried a sliver of the "residual rage" of Surtr—the Norse end-times destroyer.

In other words, Grendel now was a hybrid of two mythic sins—Cain's wickedness and the fire giant's wrath.

Cain's line begat Enoch; Enoch begat Methuselah; Methuselah begat Lamech; Lamech's son was Noah; and Noah's great-grandson was the god-opposer Nimrod.

Under the night sky, Grendel narrowed his eyes and began searching for prey.

And there they were—three humans racing toward him.

In that instant, the air itself seemed to change.

"…Oh?"

With an amused murmur, Grendel sniffed. Aside from the golden-haired morsel and the silver-haired morsel, the youngest of the silver-haired humans carried a scent hard to describe. The giant felt his heart respond.

A heartbeat—huge, deafening.

Each pulse carried something far greater than hunger or rage—

"No matter… you're all the same! I'll eat you all!"

Moonlight poured from above, dyeing the giant's hands in a tangible crimson frenzy.

But in moments, he realized his mistake. These humans would not be so easily trampled or butchered.

The two flanking him ducked low without slowing their charge, slipping under his swinging arm.

As they glanced aside at the titanic blow cleaving the sky and sinking deep into the earth, Siegfried and Beowulf broke sideways, sprinting to either side.

They were faster than his swinging arms, dodging with perfect precision, displaying their mastery without a scratch.

The dragonslayer's Balmung struck again and again at the giant's right leg in heavy arcs.

The bare-handed king swelled his biceps, thick veins bulging like steel clamps, seizing the giant's left hand with crushing force in an attempt to break it.

Avia darted lightly up the giant's foot, knee, chest, and finally to his head—standing atop it.

With that alone, a chilling magical power gathered—hands imbued with Typhon's strength drew in mana, unleashing a blast of icy wind and blizzard that froze Grendel's massive frame solid. Crimson magma then began to seep slowly down his head.

In an instant, flames erupted from his body, shielding him and breaking the trio's hold.

Avia extended a hand, and runes flared into being—

Thunder roared as though to rend the earth. Like the silver-haired youth's own fingers, countless blinding bolts entwined with fire struck the giant, forming chains… Yet the move, once effective against the sea-monster Kraken, inexplicably failed against this giant.

Perhaps for that very reason, Grendel's lips curled in a sneer.

That blood-red mirth mocked humanity's strength. Such lowly beings—good only for offering their blood, bones, organs, and brains to him.

"I'm digging in!"

From several meters up, Grendel lunged to bite Avia where he stood.

Though the silver-haired youth could have evaded, he instead chose to meet the attack—driving both fists into the giant's incoming skull with explosive speed. The crunching sound of shattering bone rang out.

"Impossible… impossible… how could you hurt me…?"

In Grendel's disbelieving gaze, Avia smiled, stepping closer with each word:

"So that's why you were so confident—because right now, you're wearing the skin of Leviathan."

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