Einar and Freja follow a fragment of an old map to a buried Viking harbour, where an iron hatch beneath the ice begins to stir before they can turn back.
The wind cut across Einar’s face as he climbed the ridge above the frozen bay, sharp enough to sting through his scarf. His gloves had gone stiff with cold, and the fur at his shoulders felt thin against the frost. Freja kept pace beside him, her red braid whipping out from beneath her wolf cap. Neither of them spoke. The ice beneath their boots gave off a low, uneasy crackle, and crows wheeled overhead in ragged black circles above the broken harbour.
Skjoldu had been empty for as long as anyone in the fjord could remember. The elders still told stories about it as if it were a living place: the greatest harbour on the coast, crowded with dragon boats, salt smoke, and men returning with silver, iron, and stories stranger than any saga. Now the rooftops lay collapsed under snow, the docks were buried in ice, and even in daylight the settlement felt as if it was holding its breath.
Einar did not believe in curses. Freja said she didn’t either. That had been easy to repeat back home, with firelight on their faces and the map fragment spread between them on the table. But the scrap of old parchment had been real enough, hidden in the bottom of his grandmother’s chest, and the runes on it pointed straight here, to the oldest dock and the sealed vaults beneath it. Whatever waited below had been left behind for a reason.
“Ready?” Einar asked.
Freja held up the waxed parchment in one hand and tightened her grip on the knife at her belt. “We go in, we look, and if anything feels wrong, we leave. No games. No hero nonsense.”
They left the path and made their way down over the splintered planks of the old platform. The wood was slick with ice, and every step made Einar think of the dark water under the frozen bay. At the end of the dock, half-buried in snow, lay a heavy iron hatch set flush into the ground. The map had marked this place with a circle of runes so old they looked more like scars than writing.
Freja knelt beside the hatch and brushed away the ice with her bare fingers. “Old World script,” she murmured, leaning closer. “Give me a second.”
Einar kept watch over the harbour, though he could not shake the feeling that someone was standing just out of sight behind him. The crows had gone quiet. Then came a sound from beneath the metal, deep and slow, like a chain dragging through water. A fine crack split across the ice beside the hatch.
Freja looked up. Her eyes widened. “Einar,” she said softly, “it’s moving.”
The iron shuddered. With a groan that seemed to rise from under the whole bay, the hatch began to lift on its own. Cold rushed out in a white, biting breath, and something blue flashed in the darkness below.
Einar drew in a sharp breath. From deep inside the buried dock came the faintest sound of metal scraping stone, followed by a low, broken note that might once have been a song.
Then something shifted just beneath their feet.