Three young Vikings follow strange signs into the misty woods behind Bjørnhavn and discover that someone, or something, may have been watching them all along.
In the valley below the grey ridges, mist drifted between the oaks each morning like scraps of a forgotten spell. That was where Bjørnhavn lay, a Viking village tucked against the river, where sails dried on poles and every child grew up on stories of raids, monsters, and hidden treasure.
Erik, Solveig, and their younger cousin Knut liked the stories best when they had one foot in the real world. Today, the real world had given them something to wonder about.
Erik found it on the riverbank just beyond the last row of fishing nets: a sliver of carved wood, smooth as bone, marked with the shape of a wolf. The carving was so sharp and sure that the animal seemed ready to lift its head and snarl.
Solveig knelt beside him at once. Her eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t made by anyone in Bjørnhavn.”
Knut, already chewing on a dried apple slice, stopped mid-bite. “Maybe it fell from a ship.”
“Ships don’t grow wolves,” Erik said, but he was staring at the carving as if it might answer him.
A little farther back, half hidden in the grass, they found another sign: a strip of old cloth, torn and damp, covered in faded runes. It looked like it had once belonged to someone important. Or someone who wanted to be taken for important.
Knut shifted his leather bag higher on his shoulder. “So,” he said, trying to sound brave, “we follow the clues, yes?”
They crossed the boundary stones and entered the forest.
The pines stood close together, dark and tall, and the mist clung to their trunks in thin white threads. Even the birds seemed to have vanished. The woods felt strangely watchful, as if every root and branch knew something the three cousins did not.
After an hour, they came to a clearing where the ground had been disturbed. Someone had passed through recently, and not carefully. Erik crouched to study the mud. Boot marks. Broken fern stems. A smear of ash.
Then, from behind an old oak, something bright flashed once in the fog.
Solveig froze.
Knut stopped breathing.
Two shining eyes were fixed on them from the shadows, and a branch cracked somewhere deeper in the trees, slow and deliberate, as if whoever was there knew exactly how close they already were....