Giselle is still draped across the altar, slick and laughing, wild-eyed from everything I just gave her. My blood. My breath. My wrath. She’s radiant in the ruin, but I move fast. My body coils, lifting her into my arms, and I leap from the stone just as a thick section of the canvas splits open overhead.

Flames lick across the tent like eager tongues, tasting every seam. Screams start to rise—real ones. Not the pretty kind. Not the ones we carve for pleasure. These are raw. Screeching. Ending.

The gods will not be pleased.

Tonight was for them. For Disting. For blood and sacrifice on their terms.

Not this.

I shove Giselle behind one of the bone-pillars still standing, my arm thrown across her as another support crashes down near the outer circle. The ground shakes with it. Screams split the smoke, and the flames leap higher as the canvas tears and folds in on itself.

Sparks shower down like molten hail.

Giselle laughs—of course she does—her blood-slicked face wild with glee, like the gods themselves just dropped a curtain for the final act.

But I don’t laugh.

I’m seething.

My hand curls around the haft of my axe, knuckles white, chest rising and falling like I’ve run a warpath. My jaw clenches so hard I feel it crack. My heart pounds with something ancient and furious.

This was our night. Their night.

The altar is still burning in the distance, half-swallowed by a wall of fallen timber. Blood paints the dirt in erratic lines. I can see them—bodies. Dozens. Crushed. Limbs bent the wrong way. A contortionist screaming beneath a collapsed iron wheel. A guest trying to drag their lover free, only to slip in the blood pooling under them.

A section of the crowd tramples itself trying to escape. Others are just... watching. Still moaning. Still aroused. Still believing this is part of the show.

But I know better.

This is sabotage.

Desecration.

I snarl low in my throat, like a wolf with a broken fang.

The gods gave me this night. Lux gave me this night. Disting. The feast of blood. The celebration of old ways. And someone—some coward—dared to ruin it.

I press a blood-soaked hand to the leather straps across my chest. To the rune carved there—ᛏ for Tyr, the god of justice. The one-handed. The sacrificed.

“I did not fail you,” I whisper through clenched teeth. “This was not my hand. Forgive me.”

I close my eyes, breathe through the smoke, and offer a second prayer—this one rougher, more guttural. A string of Old Norse slipping from my lips like a wound reopening. My voice is raw. Furious.

Behind me, Giselle touches my face, breathless and grinning like a girl drunk on war.

“Bjorn,” she gasps. “The gods aren’t angry. Look around.”

I glare at the chaos. The ruin. The screaming.