A young band of Vikings sails into fog, where an uncharted island and an abandoned village promise danger none of them expected.
A cold, salt-heavy wind cut across the deck as the slim wooden drakkar drove through the black, heaving sea. Svar, Torsten's son, tightened his grip on the oar until his knuckles burned. He was the oldest among the young warriors aboard, and this expedition east was their first real test. Olof sat beside him, restless as a fox and twice as hard to contain, while Jorunn, the only girl in the crew, watched the water with a calm that made the others seem younger than they were.
Behind them, the fog thickened into a wall. Ahead, the rising moon spilled a red glare over the waves, broad and round as a shield stained with blood. Svar had heard old men speak of such nights, when the sea kept its own secrets and the world beyond the shore shifted into something stranger.
Then Olof jerked upright and pointed into the mist. "There!"
A shape surfaced out of the grey. At first it looked like a shadow split loose from the fog, but as they drew nearer it took form: an island none of them had ever seen, none of their maps had marked. Dark trees crowded the shore, and half-sunken boats lay abandoned on the beach as if their owners had left in haste and never come back.
No one spoke for a moment. Then the helmsman turned the prow toward land. There was no sense in drifting past an unknown island in that light, under that moon, with the fog pressing in on every side. The drakkar scraped against the shore, and when the young Vikings stepped ashore, the air felt heavier, carrying the smell of wet earth, smoke, and something older.
They pushed through the tangled growth until the trees opened onto a village swallowed by moss and silence. Longhouses leaned in the dark, their doors hanging open. It was as if the people who lived there had gone out only moments before and never found their way back.
A faint sound rose from one of the huts. Not quite a voice. Not quite the creak of old wood either. Svar stopped. Olof's hand went to his knife. Jorunn lifted her spear.
Then something shifted inside the doorway, and a thin shape moved across the threshold, too quick for Svar to see clearly. The branches above them shuddered. The ground gave a low, uneasy tremor beneath their boots.
Svar swallowed hard and took one step forward as the shadow came again, closer this time, from the black mouth of the hut.