Kjartan

The wind howled through the fjord like a hungry wolf, tearing at the thatch of the longhouses and sending embers spiraling from Ragnarstead’s central fire. Kjartan stood at the cliff’s edge, his double-bladed staff-axe gripped tight, runes glowing faintly in the predawn chill. Below, the still waters mirrored the blood-red sky—a sign, the old ones would say. A sign of war. At twenty-six, he was no stranger to death. His ash-blonde hair, wild in the storm, framed a face carved by ice and battle. The trilobite brooch at his cloak caught the light—a relic from a time before kings, before steel. He had earned it not in glory, but in silence, watching, waiting. Now, the Hrafnar came. Their longships, black as ravens’ wings, sliced through the fog. Torches flared. Screams followed. The elders hesitated. The young men trembled. But Kjartan did not. He turned, eyes blazing, and raised his axe. “To the pass!” No grand speech. No boastful cry. Just resolve. And in that moment, the mountains seemed to lean in, listening.  For the first time, the wind carried not just frost—but fate. Later, they would call it the dawn of his rise. But Kjartan felt only the weight. And the visions—drowning men, whispering stones, a figure crowned in antlers—growing louder with every step. Leadership was not won with steel alone. It was paid for in blood, in dreams, in the silence between heartbeats. And his reckoning had only just begun.