The foreign coastline crept closer with every silent dawn.
jagged rocks framed a distant shore crowned by dark pine, smoke drifting faintly from some far village beyond sight. The air tasted different now—salt laced with the promise of iron.
The men spoke less.
Storms had forged them into a single rhythm—but landfall would break that unity, for once ashore, only skill, fear, and blood decided who walked back onto the ship.
Ragnar stood near the prow, hand resting lightly on the wood as the ship cut through the final stretch of waves. Hakon remained seated farther back, sharpening his spearhead with precise strokes. Brynja tested the weight of an axe with a half-smile, humming a battle rhythm under her breath.
Eivor stood beside Ragnar.
She had slept little since the storm.
Not because she feared death.
But because one memory repeated in her mind: the exact feeling of Ragnar's calloused fingers clamped around her wrist—firm, anchoring, instinctive.
It was not safety she had felt then.
It was possession—not of body, but of fate. A shared direction neither had spoken aloud, yet their steps kept converging.
She told herself it was battle bond.
She did not fully believe it.
---
Below deck, where spare weapons and rations were secured, whispers stirred like embers in the dark:
"He moves better with one eye than I do with both."
"That girl beside him—there's something in her eyes when she fights…"
"The spear-man doesn't speak, but he never misses."
"And that axe witch? Laughs like the gods are watching her."
"What are they?"
"Not trainees anymore."
"Then what?"
"…A pack."
Even the warriors avoided speaking too loudly around them now.
Eirik Sigvaldsson stayed silent the most.
He sat apart, repairing a tear in his leather armguard, jaw clenched. His humiliation in the storm had festered. Fear had begun to grow in him like rot—but pride would not let him kneel to it.
He watched Ragnar's pack from a corner of his vision.
The fact that Ragnar did not acknowledge him made it worse.
He wanted Ragnar to look at him.
So he could someday see Ragnar fall.
---
On the fourth night before landfall, Ragnar dreamed.
He stood alone on a battlefield of ash and embers. Wolf howls echoed through a blackened sky. In the distance, hallfires burned—but instead of men seated around them, wolves sat in silence, watching.
Their eyes glowed like molten gold.
One by one, they lowered their heads—as if acknowledging him.
Then he awoke, breath steady, pulse calm.
He didn't speak of the dream.
But he stood taller the next day.
---
On the final morning before they reached the shore, the steersman announced what came next:
"We land at nightfall two days from now. Our first strike will be on a fishing outpost. Small. Isolated. Soft."
His voice darkened.
"If you fail to kill there, you do not deserve to fight alongside those who will bleed when larger prey wakes."
Some warriors nodded grimly.
A few trainees swallowed hard.
Ragnar said nothing.
Eivor gripped the leather of her bracer a little tighter.
Brynja smiled wider.
Hakon tested wind direction in silence.
Eirik closed his eyes and muttered to himself.
---
That night, a war-hymn rose over the deck, slower than the Bloodsong from the storm—this one was not about surviving death.
It was about seeking it—and forcing it onto others first.
Ragnar didn't sing.
But his breathing matched the rhythm.
Eivor didn't sing.
But her pulse beat in time with it.
Brynja sang loudest.
Hakon did not sing—but when the verse spoke of spears piercing the sky, he whispered the line under his breath.
Eirik did not sing.
He only stared ahead, eyes flickering between dread and refusal.
---
And as the coastline grew sharper, as torches were lit along the ship rails and weapons inspected one final time, Ragnar adjusted his eyepatch and spoke for the first time that day.
"We end childhood here."
Hakon nodded once.
Brynja grinned like firelight.
Eivor said nothing—but her heart clenched with the truth of it.
Eirik looked away.
Behind them, the sea fell silent—as if it, too, waited for the killing to begin.
Night swallowed the shore in thick fog as the longships slid silently to land. No war horn sounded. No chant rose. This was the first strike — it had to be quiet.
The fishing outpost sprawled along the coast — a cluster of thatched huts, flickering fires, and a lone wooden watchtower where a half-asleep guard leaned with a spear in hand. The air smelled of salt, smoked fish, and ignorance of what approached.
Ragnar stepped onto foreign sand, dual axes in his hands. The leather of his eyepatch was damp from sea wind, the golden wolf glinting faintly under moonlight. Around him, his pack moved like four shadows with shared breath.
Brynja tightened her grip on her axe, an excited grin slicing across her face. Hakon walked in silence, spear held low. Eivor's heartbeat hammered in her ears — not from fear of death, but from fear of what Ragnar might become tonight… and of how hard she already wanted to walk beside it.
Behind them, Eirik Sigvaldsson walked stiffly, forcing his breathing steady. He should have been leading, but no one followed him tonight. Eyes drifted to Ragnar instead — not in loyalty yet, but in anticipation of what he would do.
A grizzled warrior ahead raised a hand — the signal to move.
They advanced like wolves closing in on sleeping prey.
Ragnar spotted the first threat — a young warrior, perhaps a guard or fisher, now alerted by crunching sand. He shouted something in a foreign dialect and raised his spear.
Ragnar slowed… not in hesitation, but in clarity.
His last kill, back at the wedding massacre, had been born of fear and desperation.
This kill would be by choice.
The man lunged.
Ragnar stepped forward, turning slightly to accommodate his blind side. The spear grazed air where his chest had been.
His right axe came down first — knocking the spear shaft aside.
His left axe followed — biting cleanly into the man's exposed neck.
There was a wet sound like thick rope tearing.
Blood sprayed across Ragnar's eyepatch and cheek.
The man fell wordlessly, lifeless before his body hit the sand.
Ragnar stood still.
His breathing was steady.
He felt no recoil—no panic, no tremor.
Only… focus.
At his side, Eivor's eyes widened. She had watched killings before. She had killed raiders herself. But something about the calm after Ragnar's strike — the way he simply accepted death as if it were always meant to be there at his feet — struck something deep within her.
He is not surviving anymore, she realized. He is choosing. Becoming.
And something inside her broke open like a wound… or a vow.
Behind them, Brynja exhaled a booming chuckle. "The Wolf has tasted again," she murmured.
Hakon nodded once, voice quiet. "His vision is clear now."
Eirik froze several steps behind, face pale. He watched Ragnar wipe blood from his cheek — not with disgust, but with clinical certainty — and a hot wave of fear spread under his skin like a sickness.
Screams rose next as the alarm was fully triggered.
The raid began in full.
Ragnar did not wait for orders.
He moved — dual axes spinning in deadly rhythm. Not wild. Not uncontrolled. Deadly. Calculated. Each strike was heavy, efficient, decisive.
Eivor fought at his flank, fierce and precise, her breaths syncing with his movements like they were born to fight side-by-side.
Brynja dove into harder fights, her wild laughter igniting terror.
Hakon struck from the edge of formation, spear piercing enemies who thought to flank Ragnar.
The village burned.
When it ended, Ragnar stood at the edge of the flames, blood drying on his patch and jaw. Behind him, bodies lay in ruin.
He stared into the fire, feeling nothing but a quiet certainty that his path had now split forever from who he once was.
He spoke only to himself.
"I see enough."
And somewhere behind him, Eivor clutched her chest beneath her armor—
—terrified not of what he was becoming…
…but of how much she needed to follow him anyway.