Erik and Freya uncover a forbidden map tied to the vanished oxen and set out into the fog toward Skallagrim, where something waiting in the dark seems to know their names.
Fog pressed down on Ravnheim, sliding over turf roofs and curling around the longboats moored along the fjord. Erik had been restless since dawn. Ever since yesterday's gathering in the longhouse, the village had been on edge: two oxen had vanished in the night, and the only tracks on the shore were unlike anything the oldest hunter had ever seen.
Freya, his thirteen-year-old sister, sat on a branch of the old oak above the yard, studying a faded map she had found in their father's attic. It should have been nothing more than a scrap of old parchment, but this one carried a hand-drawn island no one in Ravnheim knew. A red mark burned at its center, and beneath it, in sharp runes, were the words: Only the brave shall reach the gates of Skallagrim.
Erik climbed up beside her and stared at the map. The missing oxen, the strange tracks, the island that no one had ever spoken of, it all seemed too neatly tangled to be coincidence. Freya folded the parchment with careful fingers. "We go tonight," she said. "Before anyone stops us."
They waited until the hearths dimmed and the village settled into sleep. By starlight they slipped past the houses, past the snoring guard by the landing, and pushed an old fishing boat into the black water. They took a coil of rope, a torch, and a strip of dried meat, then rowed into the fjord as the fog closed behind them like a door.
The farther they went, the stranger the night became. The cliffs on either side vanished into white shadow, and even the oars seemed too loud. Then, after a long hour, the moon caught a shape ahead of them: a low island, jagged and dark, rising from the water like the spine of some sleeping beast.
Erik's breath caught. They were close enough to see the reeds at the shore when a scream tore through the fog. It was neither human nor animal, only a raw, impossible sound that made the hair on his neck rise. Freya grabbed his arm. Something flashed between the reeds beside the boat, and Erik saw it for an instant: a broken shield, half-buried in mud, etched with the same symbol as the map.
Then the reeds stirred again, closer this time, and a shape moved in the dark where no shape should have been.