I hadn't moved. Not since I found them.
Einar's axe still lay beside him. Ingrid's body still blocked the back door like a final word, frozen in the act of protecting the only exit they had. Her hands, stiffened by death and frost, were curled like she might rise again, claw her way through the doorway, and make sure I had truly escaped.
Leofric slept against my back, blissfully unaware of the silence where his family had once been loud. His tiny breath fogged the cloth that separated us, a rhythmic whisper that somehow grounded me more than any thought.
I was still kneeling in the snow, eyes burning, when I felt it—
the shift.
That pull.
The air changed.
Smoke rolled low across the clearing, carrying the iron stink of blood and the distant crash of voices in a tongue that wasn't ours. The Northmen were still nearby, picking through what was left, shouting to each other with no fear, no urgency. I could hear their laughter, their talk of spoils, of fire, of meat. They didn't see corpses. They saw prizes.
But one of them walked differently.
Through the haze he came—slow, purposeful. Alone.
The firelight caught his silhouette first: tall, broad-shouldered, wrapped in furs darkened with soot and snow. His steps didn't falter, didn't search. He walked like someone who knew the shape of the world and intended to carve it new beneath his heels.
When I saw his face, it stopped me cold.
The cheekbones.
The beard.
The sharp, Icy blue, calculating eyes beneath a heavy brow.
He looked like he'd walked straight off a screen from a show I had watched in my last life.
—Ragnar.
And I knew.
Not just guessed. Knew. Thanks loki for making recognizing him easy.
It was in the way he moved, like he owned the land he stepped on. Like everything around him was just another chapter in a saga that he was writing with every breath. There was no wasted movement. He didn't scan for threats. He was the threat.
It wasn't him who had killed the ones I loved.
He hadn't torched our home. Hadn't raised the axe against Ingrid or Einar. Just by the way he paused when he saw their bodies—curious, perhaps even respectful, but unbothered. Detached. The sort of man who had seen death so often it was just another shape in the story.
He didn't ask me who I was.
He didn't speak.
Not at first.
He just looked at me.
And I looked back.
That was when it happened.
Something shifted.
It was similar to how it had been with the wolf but different in ways i couldn't explain.
It wasn't magic the way my levitation was magic. There was no current or system to guide me. No dramatic thunderclap to announce the moment.
Just stillness.
And then the world fell away.
The snow stopped biting. The smoke stopped stinging. The ache in my legs vanished. All of it—gone.
And he was all I saw.
It was a soul gaze.
I recognized it instantly.
I'd read about them before, long ago, in the world I'd left behind—magical glimpses into another person's true self, shared between beings whose power ran deeper than blood or bone. It had sounded dramatic on the page, a literary tool. A myth.
But here, in the open ruin of my life, it felt real.
And overwhelming.
I saw Ragnar—not the legend, not the Viking, not the man with a warband and an axe, but him.
And he burned.
Burned with ambition wound through every part of him like sinew—raw and unrelenting. He wanted more than land. More than gold. He wanted to be remembered. To matter. Not for his death, but for the world he changed before it.
But it wasn't all pride.
I saw cracks, too.
Loneliness. Doubt. The quiet, gnawing fear of what might come after him—of whether it would be enough. Whether he would be enough.
There was cruelty, yes. There had to be. The path he walked wasn't built for softness. But there was something else behind it. A searching. A need to understand—and to be understood.
And I knew that he looked into me.
I felt it.
Like a mirror being turned inside out.
He saw me—not just as a girl in rags with a red-eyed stare and a child strapped to her back, but as something else. Something out of place.
Did he see the death I'd once had? The world I'd left behind?
Did he see the magic coiled beneath my ribs? The grief, raw and recent, still bleeding behind my eyes?
I didn't know.
I couldn't know.
Because in a soul gaze you didn't get to see yourself. only the other person would get that honor.
And when the moment passed—when the world returned, and the cold bit at my cheeks again— he staggered and I searched his face for clues.
Anything. A shift in his jaw. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A narrowing of his eyes that might hint at recognition.
But all I found were his piercing blue eyes, locked on me with quiet intensity.
Not judgment. Not reverence.
Just curiosity.
I heard him speak, and at first the description of chewing gravel fit, but then—
A pulse, like warm lightning across my temples. A ping.
[System Notice]
– Language Comprehension Module Engaged –
– Passive Translation Activated –
– Rank: S+ (Automatic)
"Automatically translates any mortal language spoken or heard by the user based off the intended recipient of said spoken word"
("You're welcome. You'll pay me back later.")
I blinked, staggered a bit.
"Oh great," I muttered under my breath. "A system loan. Just what I needed."
I didn't know what "Rank S+" meant exactly, especially since it still specified mortal languages, but the fact that the system chose to flaunt it with a smug little quip didn't inspire much confidence.
Still—translation. Understanding. I could hear Ragnar's voice now and know what he meant, not just what he said. I could feel the rhythm of his speech settle into my bones like a native tongue.
There wasn't time to ponder the implications.
I squared my shoulders, tightened my arms protectively around Leofric, and stepped forward.
"Help me protect my brother," I said clearly, in the strongest voice I could muster. "And I'll do whatever you want."
His eyes studied me again—those cold, intelligent blues that seemed to weigh every part of me without a word. It was as if he could already see the shape of the deal being made, even if the words weren't spoken.
Then he nodded and turned his back on me.
Not out of dismissal. Not arrogance.
It was a kind of command. The kind that didn't need words. The kind that said: Stand up, or be left behind.
Ragnar didn't offer comfort. He didn't offer a hand. Just his presence. His direction. And I understood.
I was shifting Leofric on my back, legs unsteady, when the smoke rippled again and something uglier came through.
A man—larger than Ragnar in the chest, built like a butcher, walking like he'd already killed today and still had steel to spare.
Blood matted the fur draped over his shoulders. His helmet—iron and crude, with a jagged nosepiece—was stained with soot and worse. And his eyes, when they found me, narrowed with immediate disgust.
"The hell is that?" he snarled.
I understood him. Perfectly.
Thank you, System. I'll add it to the list of debts.
The man stepped closer, squinting at my face. At Leofric. At my eyes.
"A child?" he scoffed. "No. Not a child. That one's marked."
I froze. Not in fear—at least, not the kind I'd known before.
This was something colder. Something instinctive.
He was going to kill me.
And I knew he could.
"Witch's spawn," he said, hand drifting to the axe at his belt. "Let me deal with her before she curses the rest of us."
He took a step toward me.
Ragnar moved.
Fast.
He didn't shout. Didn't warn.
He was just there—in front of me like a wall of fur and steel, hand pressed firmly against the other man's chest.
"She's mine," he said, low and sharp.
The man didn't back down. His hand curled around the haft of his axe.
"We don't bring curses aboard," he growled. "We take thralls. Workers. She's a burden."
Ragnar's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.
"You'll step back," he said. "Or you won't step again."
The man laughed. A short, ugly thing. Then he shoved Ragnar's arm aside.
Ragnar didn't give a second warning.
His axe was already moving by the time the man's hand hit his chest.
Steel flashed. Blood followed.
A single blow—diagonal, brutal, perfect. It split the man from collarbone to stomach like he was made of straw.
He collapsed in front of me with a wet, choking gurgle, eyes wide in shock even as life poured from him onto the dirt.
The smell hit a second later.
Hot iron. Bowels. Finality.
Leofric whimpered against my back.
I didn't move.
Couldn't.
Ragnar stared down at the corpse for a moment, then flicked the blood from his blade and turned to me.
No apology. No justification.
Just those same piercing eyes—ice and storm and purpose.
He studied me in silence.
And I wondered what he'd seen in me—back in the soul gaze.
Because whatever it was…
It had been enough to kill for.
Ragnar said nothing.
He didn't have to.
In that moment, I understood.
He didn't know exactly what I was.
But he felt it.
And whatever I was to him—he had claimed it.
With blood.