“Good pup,” Johnny giggles, scratching her head. “Gonna let her finish?” Johnny asks me, mock innocence curling in every word.

“Only if she dies with the gods on her lips.”

He grins like a demon let loose.

She’s shaking, convulsing, choking on her pleasure. And as her climax crashes through her, I lean in and whisper⁠—

“Come as I kill you, little lamb. Let the gods feel your ecstasy in their bones.”

Then—

I drag my axe from shoulder to hip.

Slowly. Deeply. Holy.

She screams. She shudders. She comes. She dies.

Perfect.

Blood splashes across my chest like a benediction. Her body collapses in a twitching heap, mouth still gasping like she's trying to speak to Thor himself.

I step back, soaked. Hard. Burning.

The gods are fed.

But I don’t move toward the shadows.

Not yet.

Because someone catches my eye.

Long, dark hair. Fur pelt slung over his shoulders like it was made from the skin of something sacred. Calm, but not the kind that’s afraid to feel.

No, his is the calm of someone who’s felt everything, and survived it anyway.

He stands just outside the altar’s radius, not masked, not branded in red.

Black band.

He didn’t come here to die, or to fuck.

He came because he understands.

His arms are folded, combat boots planted like he’s not just watching the show—he’s part of it.

Like this is his world too.

His eyes lock on mine. Sharp. Steady. Familiar in a way that rattles something primal in my ribs.

He doesn’t flinch when Johnny drives the axe handle between another guest’s teeth, cracking through enamel and cartilage like wet bark.

He doesn’t blink when the blood sprays across Alaska’s grinning face.

He just… watches.

Unphased. Unmoving. Unholy.

And then I see it in his eyes—that same gnawing need. That same reverence for ritual. That same willingness to descend into the fire just to see what burns last.

He knows.

Knows the gods want more than pleasure.

That blood isn’t currency, it’s communion, and that death is just the price of devotion.

“You didn’t come to play, did you?” I mutter, low enough for only the gods to hear. “You came because you crave this. Because you live here… in the rot. In the ruin.”

A breath catches in my chest. Not fear.

Recognition.

“You’re not a guest. You’re a wolf in the wrong skin.”

I grip my axe tighter. My hands are slick with blood, but I barely feel it. All I feel is him, standing there like an unanswered prayer, like the kind of omen they used to paint on cave walls when the sky cracked open.

He doesn’t need to kill to belong.

He just needs to watch.

And I wonder, will you bleed for the gods too, stranger?

Or will you make the whole fucking tent bleed for you?

chapter five