700 B.S. — Vinlan, North Forest
⸻
They didn't march her out like a chosen maiden.
They dragged her like an offering nobody wanted to look at too long.
Astrid's shoulders pressed into the old stone, its face slick with moss and cold sweat. Rough hemp bit into her wrists behind her back, dug into her ankles where they were lashed to an iron ring buried in the roots. The rock rose over her like a broken tooth in the hill, older than the village, older than the runes worn almost smooth along its flank.
"Please," she rasped. "Please—"
The jarl's men didn't answer. Torches flickered between the black spruce as they retreated toward the fjord. No one turned. No one blessed her. They'd spoken enough pretty words at the edge of the village.
Her mother's hands had shaken tying the dead-flowers wreath in Astrid's hair.
"It keeps us safe," she'd whispered. "When the offerings stopped, the snows came deep and the sea took ships. When they started again, the mountain slept. That's what the old ones say."
"They say a lot," Astrid had spat. "Not one of them was here."
They tied her anyway.
Now the last gray of day faded between the trunks. The sky vanished, replaced by a web of branches and shadow. Ravens left their perches one by one, wings beating soundless as they fled deeper into the dark.
Astrid pulled until her wrists tore.
The knots didn't so much as creak.
They'd done this before.
She waited for panic to crest and burn out. It didn't. It sat in her ribs like a fist.
"HELP!" Her voice tore out one last time. "SOMEONE—!"
Sound flung itself at the trees and came back wrong—thinner, smaller, like it belonged to a child.
The forest listened.
Then it went still.
Not quiet. Still. Wind cut off. Needles stopped whispering. The night animals fell silent in a heartbeat, as if some great hand had clenched and squeezed all the small sounds away.
The ground under her bare feet thudded.
A low, distant impact rolled up through the roots and into the stone at her back. Not thunder. Not a falling tree.
Something old had decided to move.
Another thud followed. Closer.
The stone gave a tired, tiny groan under her weight.
Astrid's breath hitched in shallow gulps. Her throat was too dry to scream again. She didn't need a skald to tell her what that meant.
The stories were never stories.
Leaves whispered behind the stone.
Not the crashing of something huge. Soft steps. Human weight, dodging roots.
Her body locked on instinct. Rope burned against blood-slick skin as she tried to twist.
A hand clamped across her mouth.
She bit down. The palm was hard, rough with callus, tasting of pine tar and river water.
"Easy," a low voice breathed in her ear. "It's me."
Her knees almost gave out.
The hand slid away. Astrid dragged air into her lungs like she'd been underwater.
"Magnus," she hissed. Not relief. Fury trembling under it. "Are you mad?"
He slipped around the stone into view.
He looked like he'd run all the way from the fjord and back: blond braids half-loose, jerkin dark with sweat, one sleeve torn, skin streaked with sap and dirt. A wooden bottle thumped against his hip with every breath. His chest heaved, but his eyes—cold fjord blue—were clear.
"Probably," he said. "Doesn't change why I'm here."
"What are you doing?" Her voice shook harder than she wanted. "If they see you—"
"If they see me, the jarl gets two angry children to explain to the gods," he said, dropping to his knees behind her. His fingers attacked the rope. "You think I'm going to stand on a shore and listen while this forest eats you?"
"Magnus—"
"I'd let the whole world burn before I let that happen."
The words were soft. There was nothing joking in them.
The ground thudded again.
Closer. Heavy enough that the old roots around the stone gave a faint crack.
They both felt it roll through their bones.
Magnus's fingers tightened on the hemp until they split skin. Blood smeared the fibers. "It's closer than I thought," he muttered. "Old men said we'd have time."
"You felt it in the village?"
"Felt the benches rattle under me," he said. "Heard bowls jump. Then the jarl sent his dogs out with torches and you in front. I came the other way."
His knuckles dug into the knots. The rope held. It had been tied by men who were terrified of whatever they were feeding.
"This is packed like they were tying down the sea," he breathed.
Astrid stared into the dark between the trees. "Can you cut it?"
"If I can get at it." He hissed as the hemp bit deeper. "I need water."
"You're dying and you're thirsty?"
"If it breathes fire—and it will—" he jerked his chin toward the faint, sick orange smudge on the horizon, "we're going to want every trick I have."
He yanked the bottle up, ripped the stopper out with his teeth, and drank hard.
Astrid watched his throat work. She had seen this since they were children by the river: he would drink until his belly hurt, then raise his palm and make the river itself twist.
"Empty throat, empty Muti," he'd always muttered, half-embarrassed, half-proud.
Now he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His breath steamed white in the growing heat.
"Astrid," he said quietly. "Don't flinch."
"What are you—"
He stepped close, one hand braced on the stone beside her head. He drew a breath, lips shaping without a word.
He spat past her ear.
The water left him like a shot—no wider than a thumb, faster than any arrow she'd seen. It cut the air with a harsh, hissing sound.
Water Muti — Fjord Shot.
It slammed into the rope behind her.
Wet smashed through hemp. Fibers burst, spraying her neck. The strand binding her wrists to the stone parted with a jagged chkk and sagged.
Her arms dropped forward. Pain knifed from her fingers up to her shoulders as blood surged back.
She tasted copper. "You spat on me," she whispered.
"I missed your ear by a hair," he said. "Be grateful I've practiced."
Another footfall caved the earth somewhere beyond the trees. Closer. Astrid could hear trunks protesting now, wood groaning.
"You're not done," she hissed. "Feet."
He slid down, grabbing the rope at her ankles.
Smoke threaded between the trunks, thin fingers feeling their way toward them. The air tasted of ash.
Magnus drew in the last dampness from his mouth, from the wet smear left on the rope, from the sweat on his palms. Water beaded along his fingers in a taut, glistening line.
He pressed his hands together around the hemp like he was gripping a blade.
When he pulled, a near-invisible strand of water sliced through the knot.
Water Muti — Drownthread Sever.
The rope parted cleanly. Her legs came free.
He barely had time to drop his hands before the forest screamed.
The roar hit like a wall.
It tore through the trees, through the stone, through her ribs. The old trunks shuddered, shaking loose needles in a thick, dusty rain. Astrid's ears rang; her vision fuzzed at the edges.
Fire crawled between distant trunks—a long, low smear of orange licking across the forest floor.
Magnus's hand snapped onto her arm, fingers iron-hard.
"On my back," he said. His voice was too calm.
"Magnus—"
"On." He didn't shout. There was no room left for it.
She moved.
She scrambled up, chest across his shoulders, thighs locked to his ribs. Her freed hands clamped against his chest.
He stood.
The ground thudded again—close enough that the stone under them flinched.
He ran.
The forest closed around them like a fist.
Branches whipped Astrid's face, tore at Magnus's cloak. Roots tried to climb his shins. The dark between the trunks felt thick, a living thing, pressing in.
He ran anyway.
He moved like he'd been built for these trees—feet finding gaps without seeing them, shoulders twisting just enough to miss trunk after trunk by inches. His breath came hard, steam tearing from his mouth with each exhale.
Behind them, the thing in the forest didn't run.
It arrived.
Trees cracked. Not the long surrender of a storm-felled pine—sudden, brutal snaps, like ribs under a boot. The ground shook in pulses under Magnus's feet.
Heat pulsed with it.
Astrid could smell it now: hot stone, old smoke, something metallic and wrong.
"Don't look back," Magnus grated.
"I'm not stupid," she rasped into his shoulder.
"You climbed on my back while I ran toward it. Jury's out."
A branch exploded over their heads. Splinters rained down. Something massive had brushed the canopy.
The next roar came closer, lower. The sound flattened the night.
They spilled into a shallow cut in the earth—an old watercourse, half-choked with roots and deadfall. Smoke pooled here. Fire ran along the foot of the trees ahead, a low wall of flame crawling over fallen branches and dry moss.
The path to the village burned.
Magnus dropped into a desperate slide, boots kicking up dirt. He yanked her weight with him; they stopped a breath from the fire, heat hitting them like an open oven.
He shoved her off his back. She hit hands and knees, coughing smoke.
He was already reaching for the bottle.
It sloshed weakly. Not much left.
He drank anyway.
He closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them, something under his skin had sharpened. The air around his arms felt thicker, charged.
He stepped toward the low wall of flame.
Water bled out of him, beading along his forearms, coiling into his palms. It spun there, dark and dense, flattening into curved blades that hummed with pressure.
He crossed his wrists, then flung his arms wide.
Water Muti — Riptide Gate.
A crescent wave of compressed water tore from him along the ground, spinning. It hit the fire and bored through it, ripping a tunnel open, steam screaming from its edges. Burning branches were flung aside. For a heartbeat, there was a smoking corridor—black earth, embers hissing, flame clawing at the sides.
"Run!" he barked.
Astrid ran.
Her lungs dragged smoke. Heat tore at exposed skin. Sparks bit her legs as she sprinted through the temporary gap.
Magnus caught her around the waist without breaking stride. His legs bunched; he hurled both of them forward, clearing a last licking tongue of fire before the corridor collapsed.
The flames snapped back together behind them, devouring what little air was left.
They hit the far side hard, rolled through cold dirt, and came up tasting ash.
Another roar ripped across the canopy.
Closer.
"On," Magnus said. His voice was ragged now. No argument in it. Just command.
Astrid scrambled up his back again. His legs shook once under her weight, then solidified.
He ran.
No more tricks. The bottle at his side was light now. The Muti he'd pulled was burning out of his veins, leaving him cold and in pain.
The trees thinned.
The ground tipped down, then up.
Wind hit their faces—knife-cold, tasting of salt and deep water.
They burst out onto the rocky ridge above the fjord.
The village crouched below, longhouses clustered around the great hall, smoke rising thin from cooking fires; longships pulled up onto the shingle like sleeping beasts, carved prows turned toward the black water.
For a second, everything looked small. Fragile.
The forest line behind them broke.
It stepped through.
Until now, it had been just a feeling. A story. A weight in the earth and heat in the air.
Seeing it made the stories feel cheap.
It came on four limbs, each as thick as a pine trunk. Claws sank into the earth and pulled, carving trenches. Its body was long—a mountain of corded muscle under a hide of dark, overlapping scales that caught ember-glow in slick, oily patterns. Pale scars scored its chest and flanks—old lines where something had tried and failed.
Its head swung on a long neck, horns curving back like blackened branches. Smoke leaked from its nostrils with every measured breath.
Its eyes opened wider.
Slow. Deep red. Banked coals, not wild flame. Patient.
They reached the ridge.
Astrid's fingers knotted in Magnus's jerkin. Her legs forgot how to stand. Her mind went somewhere small and distant for a heartbeat.
A word surfaced that no skald had ever spoken in her hearing. It felt like remembering.
Dragon.
Magnus stepped in front of her without thinking. His hand went back, found her hip, shoved her behind his shoulder.
The dragon looked at them.
There was no rage in that gaze. No madness.
Just notice.
Then it inhaled.
Its chest expanded. The light inside its throat shifted from dim orange to white-gold. Fire dripped between its teeth in slow threads as it opened its jaws.
The ridge turned to day.
"Down," Magnus snapped.
He didn't wait to see if she listened. He grabbed her and threw them both sideways off the lip of the ridge.
They tumbled, smashing off rock and scrub.
Fire hit the place they'd been standing. Stone blackened in an instant. Lichen and moss flashed to nothing. Heat rolled over them in a wave that felt like a giant hand pushing every breath back into their lungs.
They slid, tumbled, bounced down half the slope before Magnus dug his heels in, arresting their fall with a grunt that sounded like something tearing inside him.
They were halfway down now. The fjord was closer—black water churning gray at the edges, longships lined along the shore like runes in wood.
The dragon's weight hit the ridge above with a sound like mountains grinding. Rock cracked.
"Move," Magnus rasped. His voice was barely there.
They staggered the rest of the way, half-sliding over shale, half-falling. Astrid grabbed his arm when he slipped; he dragged her when her knees gave out.
They hit the shingle. Stones shifted underfoot. The fjord's water reached their ankles, knife-cold even under the heat.
The air behind them thickened.
Astrid didn't need to look to know the dragon had followed their line down the slope, that its head was tracking them, that its throat was filling with light again.
Magnus yanked her deeper into the surf, up to his knees. Salt bit into every cut on his legs.
His hand went for the bottle. It swung empty.
He threw it aside.
He planted his feet.
"Behind me," he said.
Astrid obeyed. There was nothing else left.
Magnus reached.
Not for what he'd drunk—there was nothing left. For the fjord itself.
Cold slammed up through his legs, into his spine, down his arms. It felt like drowning upright. His fingers went numb. His heart stuttered once.
He dragged his hands up.
Water answered.
The sea tore itself out of its bed in front of them, rising in a jagged wall. Not smooth. Not elegant. A churning slab of black water, flecked with foam and stones, towering between them and the slope.
Water Muti — Leviathan Veil.
Holding it was like holding a falling tree.
His arms shook. Blood roared in his ears.
On the ridge, the dragon exhaled.
Fire met water.
The world turned to screaming white.
Flame hammered the Veil; steam exploded sideways in sheets hot enough to peel skin. The wall bowed inward, boiling, but held—for a breath, two.
Fire chewed through.
It burst in narrow spears past the collapsing water, punching into the fjord around them. The surface exploded into boiling pillars. Heat clawed at their faces; Astrid screamed as her world became steam and glare.
"Go!" Magnus tore his hands down.
The Veil fell with them.
He grabbed Astrid and dragged them both backward into the black.
The fjord swallowed them.
Sound dulled to a monstrous rumble. Fire raked the surface above, turning the top few feet of water into a red, churning blur. For a moment the heat bit through, searing every scrape and cut.
Then the deep cold closed its fist.
Astrid's lungs spasmed. Her fingers locked on Magnus without meaning to.
He kicked, dragging them down and sideways, away from boiling water and falling embers. His body screamed at him to breathe; he held it down with the same stubbornness he'd used on the Veil.
When darkness began to creep in around the edges of his sight, he forced them up.
They broke the surface in the shadow of the last longships, hidden behind their hulls. Air knifed into their lungs. Astrid gagged, coughing up salt and smoke.
Magnus grabbed the mooring rope of the nearest ship and hung there, chest heaving, arms shaking as if they'd belonged to someone else and only just been returned.
"Look," Astrid rasped.
Between the ship-bellies and carved prows, the village lay open.
The dragon flew above it now, vast and slow, wings beating hot wind down onto thatch and timber. Its throat glowed again.
Fire fell.
It washed over rooftops and yards. Longhouse thatch went up like dry grass. Smoke rolled heavenward, thick and black. The painted roof of the great hall vanished in an instant under the blast.
A ship Astrid knew—her father's, with the wolf carved into its prow—caught like tinder. Flames ran along its ribs and up its mast. The carved wolf's head split in the heat.
The screams from the shore reached them thin and broken, struggling under the roar.
Astrid made a sound that wasn't a word.
Magnus stared, jaw clenched until it hurt. His hands bit into the wet rope.
He had said he would let the world burn before he let her die.
The world had taken him at his word and chosen a place to start.
He couldn't stop it. Not tonight. Not with lungs full of salt, arms full of ache, and his Muti burned out of him.
The only thing he had stolen back from the mountain's hunger was the girl beside him.
"I'm sorry," he said. The words came out hollow.
She didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the burning wolf-prow.
Above them, the dragon banked once more over the ruin it had made, slow red eyes raking the shore. Then it turned, wings dragging sparks as it flew back toward the mountain, vanishing into cloud and stone.
In the freezing black water, hidden behind the skeletons of their ships, two lives clung together and watched everything they knew burn.