“Please,” he rasps. “Let me feel it. Let them feel me. I want the gods to see what I can take. I want to earn their favor. To stand in the halls of the All-father dripping in pain.”

I believe him.

And fuck if pleasing the gods doesn’t have my dick already throbbing again.

I stalk closer, barefoot in the dirt, each step slow and heavy. The crowd peels back like prey before a predator, holding their breath like they know they’re watching something holy.

The altar stones are warm beneath me, thrumming with old power. The runes carved into their surface hiss as I pass, like they remember what I’ve done here, and want more.

Above us, iron baskets blaze with fire, crackling like the sky’s about to split open. The air is thick with burning oil, blood, and the kind of sweat that only comes from fucking or fearing death.

And Giselle?

She’s here too. Of course she is. Watching like she always does—wide-eyed and grinning, fingers stained in someone else’s life.

“You want to be seen by the gods?” I murmur as I crouch before him, voice low and rough. “You think your pain is enough?”

He nods, trembling.

“You want Odin’s eye to fall on you? Want Freyja’s favor? Want the All-father to hear your screams and carve your name into the bones of Yggdrasil?”

“Yes,” he gasps. “Yes—please—I want it all.”

“Then you bleed,” I growl, grabbing a fistful of his hair and yanking his head back until he’s staring up at me like I’m the fucking sky. “You scream. You suffer. You give every part of yourself to the old gods, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll take you.”

I rise, blood already pounding in my ears.

“You want their favor?” I roar to the crowd. “Then give them something worth remembering.”

The circle explodes in cheers. Chants. Moans. Nails scratching against flesh. The kind of sound that means the veil is thin and something divine is licking its lips.

And me?

I grip my blade and I smile.

Because tonight?

I give them one of their favorites.

The gods don’t want flowers. They don’t want prayers whispered on trembling tongues—they want blood.

And tonight, I perform the Blood Eagle.

An old gift. A sacred art. One so brutal even the sagas flinch to tell it.

But I don’t flinch.

I was born to do this.

“What is your name?” I ask the guest.

“Oskar,” he whispers.

“Then die well, Oskar.”

I brand his back first—two runes pressed into flesh with a glowing iron pulled from the coals.

Raidō. Journey. The path to the afterlife.

Thurisaz. The thorn. The pain that protects.

He screams.

He shakes.

But he does not run.