The Red Skull's forces began to mobilize.
At the same time, outside the remote town of Tønsberg in southeastern Norway, Herman stepped over the scattered corpses of fallen Nazi soldiers and slowly made his way into the bell tower.
He had no intention of wasting words with them. Instead, he'd simply blown their heads apart—quick, efficient, and free of meaningless conflict. None of them even had time to react before they died.
It was silent.
Not a single gunshot echoed near the bell tower. The town's garrison remained completely unaware, and even the grim-faced officer a short distance away—busy making calls to deliver a detailed report to the departing Red Skull—didn't notice that every guard at the bell tower's entrance was already dead.
"These HYDRA bastards really know how to dig..."
Stepping deeper into the bell tower, Herman saw the ground torn open by the Nazis.
He had to admit, HYDRA had an uncanny talent for finding the supernatural. In timelines untouched by his interference, many extraordinary entities had first been discovered by HYDRA—even the infinitely powerful Scarlet Witch.
It wasn't just persistence. S.H.I.E.L.D. was equally devoted to studying the extraordinary, yet HYDRA always seemed to have the luck of the devil.
This excavation was no different. Anything capable of calling to him from beyond the universe was no simple discovery.
"Rather mystical," Herman murmured, staring at the shattered floor.
A large hole had been dug into the earth, revealing a stairway descending into a vast underground hall. The voice calling him emanated from within.
Standing there, he could hear it clearly now—so clear it was as if someone whispered directly into his ear through headphones. The words themselves were incomprehensible, an eerie chant that sounded almost like the whispering of some cosmic god.
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The strange language echoed endlessly in his mind. He couldn't understand a single word, yet it resembled the kind of maddening whispers described in countless books about eldritch beings. Thankfully, this one carried no corruptive influence.
Still, there was power in it—strange, resonant energy. It wouldn't harm him, but it might shatter the mind of an ordinary listener.
"The call has background noise... like countless voices singing," Herman noted. "It carries an emotional weight, something that seeps into living hearts."
He analyzed the sound carefully, curiosity deepening. Why could he hear it at all?
Without further hesitation, Herman began his descent down the spiraling staircase into the depths of the earth. His gaze drifted to the symbols etched into the walls along the way.
"Enochian?"
Unlike HYDRA's so-called experts, Herman recognized the writing instantly. It was said to be the language of Heaven—the tongue of angels, a language imbued with divine power. The words themselves were said to hold miraculous properties.
Of course, that was only a legend.
Judging by the lack of energy radiating from the carvings, there were only two possibilities: either the runes had lost their original power, or they had never possessed any to begin with. Herman was inclined to believe the former.
After all, he could clearly feel the energy pulsing from below—a force so potent that even someone of his level, a being approaching universal scale, could not remain completely unaffected.
A place holding such immense power would not be carved with meaningless symbols.
"Maybe the Enochian language itself was what blocked my perception before," he mused. "And once HYDRA unearthed the site, its protective effect vanished."
It was a reasonable guess.
He could recognize the script, but not read it. There was no way to study Enochian anywhere on Earth—it was more elusive than the myths of Asgard itself.
Even before his transmigration, neither Marvel's films nor comics had ever mentioned it.
He wasn't sure if that was because he hadn't read enough or because, in the Marvel Universe, Earth simply lacked a language of true divine power—the kind that belonged to the Heavenly Father's realm.
"So... could this ruin be linked to my arrival in this world? Is my [All-Seeing Eye] behind it?"
He couldn't help but draw the connection. His [All-Seeing Eye] was, after all, known as the Eye of God—and now, the voice calling to him was tied to the very language of angels.
Coincidence?
Perhaps. But perhaps not.
Continuing downward, Herman committed every rune to memory. His perfect recall would ensure nothing was forgotten, but he took photographs as well—just to be safe.
He didn't know if he'd ever decipher the language, but it was worth preserving.
He'd recognized it as Enochian thanks to something he'd seen in the future timeline. Skye had a fondness for browsing obscure, occult websites.
On those sites, Herman had seen similar symbols and myths—and memorized them all, word for word.
Yes, even though such stories had never appeared in the Marvel canon of his previous life, the moment he'd seen those Enochian references in the future, he hadn't found them strange at all.
After all, no matter which version of Earth you were on, there were always certain stories steeped in religious mystery that felt eerily similar. The legends of the Enochian language were no different—just another thread woven among countless so-called myths and tales of the supernatural.
In 1581, occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley claimed to have received messages from angels, providing what they called the linguistic foundation for communication with another world. They insisted they had witnessed conversations between angels and even recorded those divine exchanges.
The Enochian script that Skye once stumbled upon on those strange, fringe forums was said to originate from the notes of those very occultists—records of the angelic language.
As for what the script meant or how it was pronounced, the descriptions of Enochian all stated the same thing: due to the physiological differences between humans and angels, mankind could never truly speak this "language of the gods," which was said to be infused with energy.
Hmm.
Looking at the structure of those stories...
Herman couldn't possibly have believed that such tabloid-like accounts could have any connection to real, extraordinary phenomena.
"But it seems I was wrong. In the Marvel Universe, no legend should ever be taken lightly."
Herman was not an arrogant man—he could admit when he was mistaken. The identical runes carved into the walls before him and those seen on the future forums were proof enough.
Enochian.
And the tales of angels.
They were real.
Herman studied the rune-like inscriptions along the walls, suspecting that this so-called divine language might be similar to Asgard's rune technology—symbols capable of channeling power, perhaps even the essence of universal laws.
Of course, if his earlier assumption was correct—if this language could truly interfere with his perception—then Enochian was far more advanced and potent than any Asgardian rune system.
"'Words bear civilization,' huh? I suppose this is what that means," Herman muttered as he continued down the staircase, his fingers brushing lightly against the carved symbols.
Then, all at once, he heard a faint cry for help near the bottom.
"Help... please... I don't want to die..."
Following the voice, Herman looked down to see a woman, her body drenched in blood, desperately crawling toward the stairs, clinging to life with sheer willpower.
Was she trying to drag herself outside to call for help? Humans, when facing death, rarely think clearly. The instinct to survive overrode all reason. She wasn't even considering that if she reached the Nazis outside, they'd likely finish her off without hesitation.
Herman didn't need to read her mind to guess her story—she was most likely one of the unfortunate researchers shot by HYDRA.
"A research specialist, huh."
A brief glance into her fading surface memories confirmed it. She had been a highly educated expert, gunned down by HYDRA to ensure silence.
After uncovering something extraordinary beneath the earth, HYDRA had decided to eliminate all the scholars and scientists whose loyalty couldn't be guaranteed.
It was classic HYDRA—efficient, ruthless, predictable. A reminder of an eternal truth: if you choose a side, you'd better commit to it completely.
Otherwise, you ended up caught in between—useful to no one, discarded without hesitation.
"Help... me..."
The woman raised her head when she saw Herman, her eyes filled with desperate will to live. But her strength could not overcome the steady drain of life.
Her gaze dimmed rapidly. The next moment, her body went still, collapsing lifelessly onto the cold floor.
Her life force vanished almost instantly.
When Herman reached her, he saw the fatal wound—an exit hole in her skull, blood still trickling out. Bits of white matter mixed with the dark red on the floor. That she had managed to crawl this far was a testament to her staggering willpower.
"To last this long after being shot in the head... that's practically a miracle," Herman remarked flatly.
His tone and expression didn't change.
Beyond the gruesome physical sight, within a spectrum invisible to ordinary eyes, he watched as the woman's soul slowly drifted free from her body.
Herman had no interest in the souls of mortals, but he observed with faint curiosity as her spirit was pulled into a rift that had silently opened nearby. The energy flowing from that doorway felt strangely warm—familiar. It was clearly the native afterlife realm of this Marvel Universe.
"Interesting."
He let out a quiet murmur. It was rare to witness the local realm of the dead taking a soul directly—most of the time, any soul that crossed his path ended up claimed by him instead.
"An intruder, then."
Just then, a harsh shout echoed from above the stairwell.
It was the grim-faced officer who, after reporting to Red Skull and realizing something was wrong, had charged down the bell tower with an entire squad of armed men.
"Hm?"
Herman had already sensed their approach. Looking up, he saw a HYDRA officer clad in an elegant suit beneath a heavy military overcoat, standing among a dozen fully armed Nazi soldiers. The man's eyes were sharp and wary as they fixed on him.
Both the soldiers and the officer wore helmets made of a strange alloy—designed to offer strong resistance against psychic influence.
Perhaps because of that protection, the cold-faced officer seemed calm. Instead of panicking, he took out a cigar, lit it with deliberate ease, and met Herman's gaze through the smoke.
"Mutant? Or perhaps just another lucky fool who stumbled into special powers? Is your ability to make people's heads explode?"
The sinister officer, head of HYDRA's Supernatural Division, revealed his sharp instincts. From the moment he ordered his squad to don helmets engineered for psychic defense, it was clear he'd already deduced how the soldiers outside had died.
Now every Nazi soldier wore one of those peculiar helmets, each gripping an energy rifle capable of melting steel.
All their weapons were trained squarely on Herman.
The officer's confidence was palpable—he looked down on Herman with a mocking smirk.
"Answer me, boy. If your abilities meet our standards, perhaps we might even make an exception—recruit you into the glorious ranks of HYDRA."
His eyes gleamed with cold arrogance.
"Curiosity killed the cat. Such a simple truth... When will HYDRA ever learn it?"
Herman let out a quiet sigh. His voice carried no emotion—steady, detached, almost bored—but it reached every Nazi soldier in the chamber.
The officer's face darkened. "What an irritating tone. Seems you still don't understand your situation."
In truth, it was the officer and his men who failed to understand.
They were already standing at the very edge of death.
"Ignorant brat," the officer sneered. "You've no idea. For mutants like you, we have a thousand—no, ten thousand—ways to fight back. You think you're invincible? With that little—"
He never finished the sentence.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The hallway erupted in a series of wet explosions. One by one, the helmeted Nazi soldiers' heads burst like overripe melons, painting the walls in a mist of red.
HYDRA's so-called psychic defense helmets offered protection far inferior to Magneto's. They were worthless against Herman's telepathic power.
"What was that you were saying?"
Herman's voice was low, dark—like a whisper straight from hell. The officer froze, his body trembling as Herman slowly approached.
He clutched his head in panic, eyes wide with terror, as if afraid it would detonate at any second.
"Impossible! No! They were wearing helmets!" he screamed, his voice breaking into hysteria.
The scene before him had shattered the limits of his comprehension.
"Pitiful fool... how could you possibly know what's possible?"
Herman stopped in front of him, his gaze calm and distant as he looked down on the terrified man.
"At least for you... I'm something far beyond what you can ever defeat."
He read the man's surface thoughts—nothing but terror, an obsessive, overwhelming fear of his head bursting like the others'. Before the officer could even think to beg for mercy, Herman's will tightened.
Boom.
Another head burst apart.
Without sparing another glance, Herman turned and walked down the final stretch of stairs. Stepping over the corpses and the spreading pools of blood, he entered the vast, shadowed underground hall.
Before him stood the massive bronze doors—sealed once more.
And beyond them, the voice calling to him had reached its peak.
"My Lord... has returned..."
The murmurs from within had transformed—no longer chaotic, but clear, resonant, a language Herman could suddenly understand.
Not because he had studied it, but because the moment he stepped into that hall, comprehension bloomed within his mind as if the language itself willed it so.
"Enochian."