The blood runs warm.

And me?

I giggle as I toss the axe into the fire and blow the crowd a kiss with fingers still soaked in death.

“Final moan, baby,” I whisper. “Final fucking moan.”

chapter twelve

bjorn

Heresy - Nine Inch Nails

It’s over.

The last scream tore itself from a throat two offerings ago, lost to the choking air. The final axe has long since found its mark, buried in bone and silence. Even the moans—once curling around the torchlight like smoke—have dwindled into stillness, leaving only the thick, smothering weight of what’s been done.

The tent no longer groans under the weight of its occupants, but it does not forget. It breathes in what remains. The stench of it clings to the canvas: blood and semen, smoke and rot, scorched flesh and spilled liquor. Death lives here now.

Not quietly or peacefully.

But proudly, like a beast with a full belly stretched out in the wreckage of its hunt.

Blood gathers at my feet, sluggish and dark. It coats the soles of my boots, the handle of my axe, the carved runes along my chest where it’s dried into a second skin. Bits of bone glint beneath the muck, and a half-severed hand twitches once before going still. The firelight flickers low along the edges of the canvas above me, but the heat remains, smoldering. It feels earned.

I stand alone in the center ring, though the dead surround me. Mangled bodies splay across the floor—some curled into themselves like they died afraid, others stretched out like offerings, split open in supplication. A few still breathe, though shallowly. A cough here, a sob there, and somewhere in the dark, a guest whispers a prayer not meant for me, or my gods. It makes my skin tighten. This is no place for their god.

I lift my head and inhale slowly through my nose. Iron. Smoke. Blood thick enough to chew. The scent sinks into my lungs and lodges behind my ribs like a memory. I let it sit there, heavy and sacred.

“You’ve taken what was owed,” I murmur. “May your bellies be full in the golden hall, your thirst drowned in blood and smoke.”

And why shouldn’t they be?

Odin. Tyr. Skadi. Hel.

They were given everything I promised them. Flesh. Fire. Agony. Surrender. I carved their will into the skin of the living. I painted the ground red and let the echoes carry their names skyward. And they answered, not with words, but with presence. With weight.

I look up toward the ceiling of soot-stained canvas and remember.

Norway.

Just ten winters past. I was seventeen—raw muscle and colder intent, fire coiled low in my belly before I knew what to call it. My father knew, though. He said I bore the mark of the gods. That kind of fire isn’t free. It burns everything.