Silence lingered in the cave after the clash between Eivor and Sigrun had ended — not empty or uncertain, but heavy with new definition. The moment had forged something, not of metal, but of unity and hierarchy.
Eivor stood breathing slowly, sweat shining across her brow as she steadied her spear and lowered it to her side. She did not look to Ragnar for approval. She didn't need to. Ragnar's left eye, ice-blue rimmed in storm-grey, had already given her recognition — the silent, primal kind exchanged between wolves who understood their place not through words, but through instinct and power.
Brynja leaned against the cave wall with a satisfied smirk, arms folded. "Knew the girl had fangs."
Hakon knelt beside the fire, sharpening his spear with slow, quiet strokes, gaze translating everything into strategy without ever needing to speak a word.
Sigrun exhaled once and stepped back, tapping her spear once against the floor — not in defeat, but in acknowledgment. Her face remained composed, but her shoulders relaxed by a fraction.
Ragnar shifted.
The slight movement drew every eye to him.
He pushed himself upright, muscles still aching beneath sutured wounds, but his presence towering heavier than any injury. Eivor moved instinctively to steady him, but paused when his gaze flickered toward her — not rejecting her closeness, but reminding her he would stand on his own first. Slowly, he rose, cloak draping over his shoulders, chest piece absent yet authority unshaken.
Standing, even weakened, Ragnar carried a gravitational pull. The wolf had returned to his feet — and all in the cave felt the shift.
He looked to Hakon.
No words were needed for the warrior to understand he had been summoned. Hakon placed his spear aside and stepped forward, kneeling with one fist to the ground in a warrior's pledge. "Alpha."
Ragnar's voice came low, hoarse from disuse, yet laden with iron.
"Tomorrow," he said, the word rumbling like distant thunder, "you return to Vargr Hold."
Eivor watched him now with steady pride. Brynja straightened, eyes sharpening in excitement. Sigrun folded her arms slowly, listening with a mother's silent measure of what her son had become.
Hakon nodded once. "To speak for you."
Ragnar's gaze hardened. "To demand what is mine by law," he replied. "Right of challenge. Right of truth."
He let that linger, the words echoing with centuries of warrior tradition embedded in bone.
"Holmgang," Hakon murmured — not a question, but a dark confirmation.
Ragnar inclined his head.
"You will first seek Thane Viggo Stormhand," he continued, each word precise and deliberate. "He knows our strength. He knows what I was in battle. If honor still has weight in him, he will listen."
Hakon's head dipped in acknowledgment.
"You will then speak to Astrid Fair-haired," Ragnar continued, his tone not softened by the familiar name. "Daughter of the Hrafn Earl. Blood tied to my mother's shield-sister. If justice means anything to her, she will not ignore your call."
At the mention, Sigrun's gaze flickered only slightly — approval, perhaps, that Ragnar had chosen the right path upward through chain of command.
Hakon placed a fist to his chest. "And when I stand before the Earl?"
Ragnar's expression grew colder — stormlight briefly whispering at the edge of his left eye.
"Tell him Ragnar Vargrson demands Holmgang by right of law against Eirik Sigvaldsson," he declared. "For false accusation. For stolen honor. For blood spilled by treachery."
Eivor's breath caught at the sound of Eirik's name spoken aloud, finally dragged into the open like prey into a clearing.
Ragnar stepped forward, eyes shadowed in firelight's glow. "He named me monster," he said quietly. "Let us meet beneath the sky, blade to blade — and let the gods decide which of us is wolf, and which is liar."
Hakon's voice was steady. "And if they deny you that right?"
The cave stilled. Even the wind seemed to pause beyond the stone walls.
Ragnar's jaw tightened.
His voice dropped — softer, yet deadlier.
"Then the law will not bind me," he said. "And the wolf will hunt outside the circle… until every lie is drowned in its own blood."
A chill rippled through the cave that had nothing to do with winter.
Brynja smiled like she smelled slaughter on the horizon.
Hakon bowed his head. "I will carry your words as oath."
Sigrun regarded Ragnar long and silently — a mother who saw both danger and destiny in her son.
Eivor stepped closer, her shoulder brushing Ragnar's as she stood beside him without hesitation.
This time, he did not move her back.
He let her stand there.
Accepted.
Ragnar lifted his chin, gaze far away, as though already staring at Eirik Sigvaldsson across a blood-ringed field of fate.
"The next time I face him," he murmured, voice like a growl under the breath, "he will not just see the man he tried to kill."
His left eye narrowed, the ghost of that earlier lightning dancing somewhere deep within it.
"He will see the wolf he failed to bury."
~End of Arc 1