The skalds of the fjord-lands used to say that Eric Bloodstone was born with a quill in one hand and a bearded axe in the other. He was the Iron Sage, a man whose fame rested not just on the mountain of skulls he left behind, but on the libraries he built atop them. He was the heart of his people, a berserker who had tamed the beast within to serve the light of reason.
His death was a masterpiece of iron and blood. At the Black Gate, when the sky turned the color of a bruised lung and the legions of the dead rose like a tide, Eric had not flinched. He stood as a monolith, his twin axes carving a saga into the flesh of his enemies. He felt the cold bite of a dozen blades, the puncture of a hundred arrows, and as his vision blurred into a crimson haze, he smiled. He had bought his kin their lives. He welcomed the darkness, waiting for the Valkyries to carry his soul to the halls of his ancestors.
The darkness did not last.
Eric gasped, his lungs burning with the sudden intake of air so cold it felt like swallowing glass. He sat up, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of an axe that wasn't there. He was alive. His skin, once a roadmap of scars and weeping gashes, was as smooth as river stone. Above him, the sky was a deep, alien indigo, pierced by stars that refused to form the constellations of his home.
He was not in Valhalla. He was in a wasteland of jagged peaks and suffocating silence.
"A new world," Eric whispered, his voice a low rumble that seemed to steady the very air. "A new forge."
He did not waste time with prayer or panic. A scholar observes; a warrior acts. He knelt in the frost, his thick fingers tracing lines into the dirt with the precision of an engraver. These were the Transmutation Runes, the ancient geometry of his people that bridged the gap between thought and matter.
He gathered a shard of flint and a limb of lightning-blasted oak. Placing them within the humming circle, Eric breathed a word of power. The air shimmered, the scent of ozone and burnt sugar filling his nostrils. Before him lay a Crude Pick and a Crude Axe, their forms rough but their balance perfect. They were extensions of his will, birthed from the very ground he stood upon.
Then, he drew a larger, more intricate sigil—the Seer's Compass. He pressed his palm to the frozen earth, closing his eyes.
He felt the mountain groan. Through the rune, his mind dove deep into the bedrock, sensing the veins of the world. He felt the cold shimmer of Iron Ore, the steady heartbeat of an underground spring, and the vast, hollow silence of a cavern system nestled beneath a limestone shelf to the north. It was a natural cathedral of stone, hidden, defensible, and rich.
Eric stood, shouldering his tools. He looked toward the northern ridge, his eyes burning with a sudden, fierce light. This land was harsh, unclaimed, and broken—much like the people he intended to find. He would not just survive; he would build a sanctuary that would make the gods jealous.
"Paradise," he grunted, his boots crunching through the virgin snow. "It starts with a single strike."
******
The wind howled through the jagged peaks of the Dragon Mountains, but Eric Bloodstone did not feel the cold; he felt the potential. As he scouted the perimeter of his chosen valley, he knelt by a patch of frozen moss. To any traveler, it was a barren spot. But Eric adjusted his focus, opening his Mind's Eye—the scholar's sight that peered through the veil of the mundane.
There they were: Ghost-Cap Mushrooms. Faint, translucent, and shimmering with a pale violet hue, they flickered in the moonlight like trapped spirits, invisible to any naked, uninitiated eye. He chuckled, a deep sound like grinding tectonic plates. The flora of his old life had followed him. Their presence confirmed that the spiritual essence of this land was as fertile as the realm he had left behind.
He turned his attention to the limestone shelf. He didn't just need a roof; he needed a citadel.
With his crude axe, he set to work. The forest echoed with the rhythmic thud-crack of falling timber. To a passerby, what Eric began to build looked like a madman's folly. He lashed together thick logs and interwoven twigs, raising a structure that looked like a jagged crown atop the cavern entrance. It was a castle in name only—a deceptive shell of timber and thorn.
The true heart of his haven lay beneath. He carved a grand staircase into the mouth of the cave, descending into the cool, dry darkness of the earth. Here, in the hollow of the world, he placed his first pieces of civilization: a heavy wooden throne hewn from an ancient oak stump, storage boxes for the riches to come, and a massive stone fireplace that breathed warmth into the belly of the mountain. From here, a dark passage stretched even deeper into the earth toward the mines.
But a king must protect his borders. Eric climbed back to the wooden towers of his surface-gate. He bit his finger, using the blood of a berserker to paint Guardian Runes onto the timber battlements. As the blood soaked into the wood, the runes glowed with a faint, predatory amber light. These towers were now alive; they would sense the approach of any hostile soul and automatically fire arrows with tireless precision.
To feed the towers and his own needs, he constructed a Sawmill near the cavern's throat. He knelt beside the central axle and carved the Rune of Constant Motion directly into the heart of the drive-mechanism. The machine shuddered, then surged into a relentless, humming speed, staying active at all times without the need for his manual labor. Now, he could produce tools and planks without wasting his spirit on transmutation.
From the fresh-cut planks, he fashioned a sturdy Wooden Club, a Longbow, and a bundle of Crude Arrows for himself and his towers. He dipped a branch in resin to create a Torch, the flame licking the shadows of the deep tunnel that led toward the iron veins.
"The surface is for show," Eric muttered, checking the weight of his club as he prepared to descend. "The strength is in the bone of the world."
With the torch held high, he stepped into his mines to gather the ores he needed, his eyes already scanning the dark for the hunt that would provide his first meal in this new world.