Three Viking teens spot a stranger in the fog and a warning that could upend their clan.
Ice Wolf Fjord had gone still beneath a lid of silver mist. The wharf boards were slick with spray, and Lars moved carefully, boots whispering over the wet wood. Ida followed close behind, her red pigtails darkened by the damp, while Eirik came last with an axe almost as tall as he was. Nothing should have been unusual. That was what made the evening feel wrong.
The village sat in a dim half-light. Hearth fires glowed behind the longhouse walls, and the fog swallowed everything beyond the nearest lanterns. Then Lars heard it: a soft splash in the water below the wharf, heavy enough to make him stop short. He turned, peering into the pale haze.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered.
Ida nodded at once, fingers tight around the pouch of runes at her belt. Eirik shifted his grip on the axe. "Something's out there," he said. His voice was low, as if the fog itself might be listening. "If it's a trick, it's a cruel one."
Ida rubbed the amber charm she wore on a cord around her neck. "My grandmother said the mist comes alive on nights like this," she said. "She said old things wake when the fjord forgets the shore."
Lars was about to laugh it off when a shape moved inside the fog. Not a shadow, exactly. A man, stumbling toward the wharf in a ragged coat, dripping seawater and shaking so hard he seemed half-broken by the cold. In his arms he clutched something wrapped in torn cloth. He looked from one of them to the next, eyes wide and wild with fear.
He dropped to his knees on the boards. "Please," he rasped. "Take this to the Wolf's men. Before it's too late."
The bundle shifted.
A dry, hard sound came from inside it, like claws scraping wood. Ida went still. Eirik lifted his axe. Then, across the fjord, something answered the night with a long, terrible roar that was neither man nor beast. The fog seemed to pull tighter around the wharf, and Lars felt the blood drain from his face as the bundle moved again.