Vetrúlfr gazed down at his own reflection in the ice-mirrored snow.
His hair hung damp over his shoulders, heavy as seaweed, and the sword in his hand seemed to pulse faintly with some buried heartbeat; foreign to him, yet tied to his own.
There was something in the hilt that writhed in silence, as if the steel itself had gorged upon a soul.
He let it fall to the snow with a thud. Not out of fear, nor fatigue, but because the weight of it no longer felt like something a living man ought to carry.
His mother, Brynhildr, had always been a woman of silence. But the gaze she now cast upon her son was neither maternal nor human.
She was not gazing upon the boy she had raised, nor the man she had anointed. She was looking past him, towards the sea.
Her lips parted slightly, and her breath clouded in the frost like incense before an altar.
Then she spoke; not to Vetrúlfr, but to the unseen. And not in any tongue he had heard. It was older than the runes etched into his bear cloak, older than the chants of the Goths in Byzantium, older even than the tongue of Odin’s ravens. She seized his arm.
“Swiftly! We must be away from this place. While you still carry her scent upon you. While the sea has not yet changed its mind.”
The Skrælingr thrall did not question her. She moved with the speed of those who see spirits in every gust of wind, and danger in every shadow.
She gathered Vetrúlfr’s tunic, cloak, and weapon belts, clutching them tight as she ran after him and his mother; never once looking back.
The winter wind followed, screaming across the snow like a wolf denied its kill. All the while the dark mire of the sea watched from afar.
They fled not to their longhouse, nor to any place of hearth and home, but to the cave where Vetrúlfr had once wrestled the great bear.
There, where the spring still steamed in defiance of the frost, he bathed. He stripped himself of salt and cold and blood and soot, and emerged clean, but not whole.
Brynhildr had not moved. She remained in prayer beside the stones, her lips bloodless and whispering some warding charm to the Vanir.
Her eyes never opened, and her posture never broke. It was as if the act of praying was the only thing holding her together.
The Skrælingr girl, meanwhile, never lowered her guard. Her hand remained fixed to the hilt of her seax, her posture the same as when she had seen him rise from the waves.
Not as a man, but as something risen. Her people had words for such beings: qivittoq, tupilaq.
Spirits that wore flesh like stolen garments. And though she said nothing, her stare told him she saw what his mother now feared.
Vetrúlfr ignored them both.
He placed his hand over his chest, where the sensation had first stirred; the phantom imprint of fingers colder than death.
The words had come then, whispered like lullabies through ice. Not in his tongue. Nor his peoples.
But something close. A tongue ancestral, knotted with roots older than men. Older than sagas.
The words escaped his lips again; accidental, unbidden.
Brynhildr stirred from her trance. Her eyes flew open, wide as the moon.
He repeated the words again, slower this time, shaping them carefully as if afraid they might shatter in his mouth.
“I heard them beneath the water… near the wreck. A shadow passed over me. A hand touched my chest. It was not warm. And a voice… a woman’s voice… whispered to me in that tongue. Playful. Cold. Mocking.”
His mother paled. In that moment, she looked as if thirty winters had stolen her breath all at once.
Vetrúlfr took a step forward.
“Mother… it was just a voice. Just words. I don’t understand.”
“You are not my son!” she shrieked, now on her feet, eyes wild as a cornered beast. “My son is gone — claimed by Rán! What stands before me is a draugr, wrapped in his skin!”
The Skrælingr did not wait for orders. Her blade was already drawn, held between Brynhildr and the thing she no longer trusted as kin.
Vetrúlfr backed away.
He had fought on the plains of Anatolia. Slain Bulgars by the dozen in single combat, and lain siege to the mountain fortresses of Armenia. He broken men in half with nothing but axe and oath.
Yet now he was disarmed. Not of weapons, but of something deeper; his very selfhood, stolen by a whisper.
And so, he did what the living do when they cannot silence the dead.
He went back to the sea.
The journey was slower this time. He felt the burden of each step not in his legs, but in the hollowness beneath his ribs. The part of him that had once felt rooted to the world now felt adrift.
When he reached the coast, the sky above him was awash in green fire; the northern lights dancing like the banners of dead kings. But it was not the sky that held his gaze.
A woman stood no more than three paces from the sword he had dropped. Her posture was composed, regal even, but still. She made no move to touch the weapon. Only watched it. As if it were not hers to claim without permission.
She was neither young nor old. Somewhere in the middle, ageless in a way that defied simple years. Her skin pale, almost translucent, was tinged with the hue of frost-kissed water.
Not white like snow, but blue like deep glacial ice. Porcelain, he thought, like the treasures in Basil’s keep. But not so fragile.
Her hair, long and black, clung to her face like kelp torn from the seafloor. Her robes, older than memory, bore the style of a vanished age; Vendel, perhaps even elder.
They stank faintly of salt and rot, yet she herself did not recoil from the cold.
“You are the son of Ullr, are you not?”
Her voice was soft, but there was a certainty to it, like the tide.
Vetrúlfr’s blood ran colder than any fjord. He had fought wolves. Men. War itself. But this —this was something else.
She noticed. Her gaze dipped to his feet, and her brows lifted slightly, as if surprised by his resolve or perhaps his ability. Then came a sneer, sly and serpent-mouthed.
“You left the sword after such a journey? How cruel. To fetch a relic once touched by gods and abandon it so soon. Did it mean nothing to you?”
He tried to answer, but his tongue betrayed him. She already knew. He saw it in the way she tilted her head, like a mother indulging a child’s lie.
“Who are you?” he finally asked. “What is your name?”
She tilted her head again. Her dark hair swayed like seaweed caught in slow current.
“You know… I cannot recall.”
And then, she vanished from his sight only to reappear behind him before his gaze could track her movement. A wet hand pressed against his chest.
His heart pounded. The handprint. The whisper. It was her.
“So cold,” she murmured, almost tenderly. “Are you unwell?”
The words were mockery. She already knew the answer.
He spun, sword half-raised.
“Why are you here? What do you want?”
Her lips parted in a faint laugh, and she danced her fingers along the dulled blade’s edge, unafraid. Then she wrapped her arms around him, gently, firmly, wetly. Her voice lapped against his senses like tide over sand.
“You want what you lost. But the sword alone will not return it. Share warmth with me here; beneath Máni’s eye and the lights of the north. And when Sol rises, you may have back what was taken.”
His mind told him to run. Not only did every ounce of his being tell him this woman was something beyond his comprehension.
He was a married man. Oaths were sworn, and his love for Roisin was strong, he would never even entertain the idea of betraying her.
Even if his soul had been claimed by the sea, he would challenge her to prove she could take him in full every time he rode Fáfnirsfangr into her domain!
But…. the scent of salt, of ocean, of unspoken things, it overwhelmed him. His senses betrayed him, and then…
And then there was darkness.
When dawn came, he was alone. His clothes were gone. The sword too. Only the bear pelt remained beneath him, dry despite the melting frost.
There were no footprints. No signs. And he thought for but the briefest moment, perhaps there never was.
Yet the hollowness he had carried since the trial beneath the waves had vanished.
He felt it in his limbs, heavy once more with life, and in his breath, which no longer steamed in ragged wisps.
The cold still clung to him, but no longer as an intruder, it felt more like a memory, the kind that aches in old wounds when storms come.
What had he traded? What had he reclaimed?
His body was his. His mind, intact. His soul… he could not say.
It no longer felt absent, but neither did it feel untouched.
There was something woven into him now. Something ancient. Not cruel, but indifferent.
And he could feel it watching from far below the waves, like a slumbering leviathan half-remembered in dream.
The sea, as always, did not answer. It never had. It never would. But it had acknowledged him, and that was worse.
He had no recollection of what happened that night after everything went black, but he would never forget her…
No matter how hard he tried. Not her voice. Not her scent. Not the way the world had bent in her presence, like frost curling under firelight.
She had not touched the sword until he permitted it. She had not taken his soul, only borrowed his warmth. And he had given it, not out of lust, nor fear — but something deeper. Something older. Something he did not yet understand.