During a winter expedition beyond the Arctic Circle, Sigrun and Sigurd uncover a stone marked by a strange glow, and the mountain answers with a secret that should have stayed buried.
The wind came down from the north like it meant to strip the flesh from bone. Sigrun hunched deeper into her furs and stared past the drifted snow at Sigurd, who was cutting a narrow path ahead of her through the white emptiness. Every breath burned. Every step felt like a warning.
They were far beyond the fjords of Iceland now, beyond any road that should have led two young Vikings into such a dead, shining wasteland. The camp was behind them. The sea was miles away. All around them stretched ice, rock, and a silence so complete it made the crackle of their own boots sound loud enough to wake the land.
It had begun during the long night, when the aurora unfurled above them in colours no skald had ever truly captured. Green bled into blue. Blue into violet. The light moved like a living thing, slow and watchful, as if the sky itself were listening. They had found the cave then, while searching for wood, and inside it, half buried in frost, a slab of stone carved with a spiral and a ring of runes.
At first it had looked like nothing more than an old marking. Then Sigrun had seen one of the runes pulse faintly, as though a spark had been trapped inside the rock.
She had leaned closer. So had Sigurd.
The instant his fingers touched the symbol, the cave lurched. Stone groaned overhead. Snow dust fell in a sharp, blinding sheet, and both of them were thrown to the ground. For one stunned heartbeat, neither spoke.
Now Sigurd stood rigid a few paces ahead, axe in hand, his face pale beneath the windburn. Sigrun’s mouth had gone dry. The cave was wrong somehow; the air pressed against her skin, heavy and cold, and the darkness beyond the torchlight seemed to shift when she looked straight at it.
They moved on because turning back felt worse.
A few steps deeper, the passage widened, and Sigrun stopped so suddenly that Sigurd nearly walked into her. Ahead, the rock had split open in a jagged seam. From within the crack came a pale, unearthly glow, faint at first, then stronger with every pulse, like a heartbeat trapped in the mountain.
On the ground lay tracks.
Human footprints. Fresh.
Sigurd tightened his grip on the axe. Sigrun swallowed hard and whispered a prayer under her breath, though she was not sure which god to beg first. The light inside the裂ure trembled, and from somewhere beyond it came the sound of metal striking metal, distant and muffled, like an old battle waking up under the ice.
Then something moved in the glow, slow and deliberate, and the shadow that followed it was far too large to belong to any man.