Three young Vikings follow a strange map into the fog-shrouded waters of Misty Bay, where an old secret stirs beneath the waves.
The wind raced along the cliffs and drove the mist low over the water, turning Misty Bay into a shifting wall of grey. Most folk in Skalmholt crossed themselves and hurried indoors when the fog rolled in. Ivar, Sigrun, and Runar only stared harder.
Skalmholt clung to the northern coast of the island: turf-roofed houses, nets drying on poles, and boats pulled up on the shore like resting seals. Ivar was twelve, quick-thinking, and far too quiet whenever he was planning something. Sigrun, just as old and far bolder, could hit a gull’s feather with her bow if she felt like showing off. Runar, ten years old and determined to prove himself, carried a wooden staff he insisted was a warrior’s axe.
That morning, they had found the map by accident, wedged behind the wall boards in Grandfather Einar’s hut. It was not like any map they had seen before. The lines twisted and looped like fishing line in a storm, and in the middle of Misty Bay stood a circle of strange symbols. Beside it, tiny boats were painted in a row, except for one - one that seemed to point deeper into the fog, as if the sea itself had chosen it.
Runar leaned so close his nose nearly touched the parchment. “That’s not a map,” he whispered. “That’s a challenge.”
Sigrun grinned. “Or a warning.”
Ivar did not answer at once. He traced the symbols with one finger and felt a strange prickling at the back of his neck. Somewhere out there, beyond the grey water and the cliffs, something had been waiting a very long time.
By afternoon, they had stolen away behind the village with Runar’s crab boat, a sack of dried fish, and Sigrun’s bow. The mist swallowed the shore behind them. Even the oars seemed to move through silence, until the three of them began to laugh at the thought of what they might find: a dragon’s egg, a cursed stone, treasure hidden under the sea, or something no one in Skalmholt had ever dared to name.
Then the laughter faded.
From somewhere in the fog came a sound like chanting - low, rhythmical, and too distant to understand. Ivar slowed his rowing. The boat drifted. Something beneath them brushed the hull, long and heavy, and the water darkened ahead. When Ivar looked down, his breath caught.
Below the surface lay the shape of a giant ship, larger than any vessel in Skalmholt, its timbers pale as old bone. Beside it floated a silver shield, bright as moonlight, though the sun had vanished behind the mist hours ago.
Runar raised his staff. Sigrun drew her bowstring back. No arrow flew.
Then the water surged beside them with a sharp splash, and something rose from the waves...