The smoke that curled above the ruined ridges carried a bitter tang of ash and wet iron, a stench that lingered long after battle had ended. Shitsubo walked through it like a shadow moving against dusk, his boots dragging faint trenches in the sodden earth. He had left the bones of the Jotun settlement behind—houses cracked like ribs, hearthstones scattered as though the wind itself had grown cruel. And still, he carried their voices. Whispers clung to him like burrs, the muttered prayers of the dying, their syllables scraping the inside of his skull.
He told himself he welcomed the noise. It was proof. Proof that he had bent yet another corner of the world, proof that his will was heavier than their ancient traditions, proof that he was not the boy who once stood shrinking in the shadow of a drunken man's fist.
But there was something different this time. The survivors had not broken so easily. They had clung to one another as he tore through them, their eyes not hollowed by despair but hard, luminous, like stones heated in a forge. A few had even followed him, trailing at a distance, human stragglers with soot-marked faces and trembling hands gripping scavenged weapons.
He hadn't driven them away. Not yet.
One of them—an older man, beard grizzled white beneath the soot—shuffled forward when Shitsubo stopped to drink from a brook. His hand shook as he pointed a makeshift spear.
"You're not one of us," the man said, voice brittle as winter twigs. "But you… you're not them either. Are you with us, or are you just leading us deeper into hell?"
Shitsubo didn't answer at first. He let the water run over his tongue, cold as a knife's edge, swallowing slowly. His reflection in the brook was a mess of blurred light and shadow; he almost didn't recognize himself. When he finally lifted his gaze, it was with the detached calm of someone choosing which limb to sever.
"I am neither with you nor against you," he said flatly. "I walk ahead because I must. Whether you follow is your burden, not mine."
The man's lips trembled, caught between fear and some ragged hope. Shitsubo saw it—the temptation to believe, the dangerous seed of faith.
And against all instincts, he let it grow.
---
They moved through a broken valley where once the Vanir had sown orchards. Dead trees twisted out of the ground like blackened bones, and beneath them the soil gave off the faint stink of decay. Aritas of Vanaheim had once nurtured these groves, coaxing fruits that glowed like amber lanterns, but when the first sparks of Ragnarok touched the realms, the soil soured. Now there was nothing left but husks.
The survivors followed Shitsubo in a loose cluster, their voices subdued, too worn for mourning songs. He felt them measuring him—every gesture, every pause. They didn't dare ask him who he was, but he knew the question sat sharp in their throats.
It was a girl who finally broke the silence. Younger than the rest, perhaps sixteen, her hair cropped unevenly at her jaw. She had lost family—he could tell from the hollow fire in her eyes.
"Why do you keep walking forward?" she asked. "There's nothing here. Just ruins, and more ruins."
Shitsubo didn't slow. "Because the ground remembers," he said. "And where memory lingers, power festers."
The girl frowned, not understanding. But others listened closer. One of the men murmured something about elves who once haunted these orchards, offering charms of protection in exchange for gifts of honey. Shitsubo smirked faintly—half at their naïveté, half at the truth laced within the rumor. The light-elves had fled long ago, but their wards remained, etched into the very roots of the trees. He could feel the faint hum beneath his soles.
When night came, he led them into the hollow of a ridge where half-buried stones formed a crude shelter. They lit no fire, but the survivors huddled together, drawing warmth from bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder. Shitsubo sat apart, the brook's water still damp on his lips.
The girl crept closer after the others had slept. She crouched beside him, eyes glimmering faintly in the dark.
"My name is Nare," she whispered. "If… if you are walking toward power, then maybe it will be enough to stop them."
"Stop who?"
"The ones like the general," she said. "The one called Dagon. My village… it wasn't fire or steel that destroyed it. It was earth itself. The ground split and swallowed the houses, and those who didn't fall were… taken. Changed. Their faces—" She broke off, shuddering.
Shitsubo's eyes narrowed. Dagon. He had heard the name whispered already among the scattered Jotun. The Aggressor general who had broken ranks, carving their own dominion into the bones of Midgard. A traitor, yes, but one clever enough to seed colonies by twisting the very flesh of mortals.
Nare's voice dropped. "If you mean to keep walking forward, then let me walk too. Please."
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Shitsubo almost laughed. A bitter curve at the edge of his lips. "You don't know what you ask."
She didn't flinch. "I've already lost everything worth fearing for."
He said nothing. But when dawn came, and the survivors stirred, Nare was still walking beside him.
---
The days blurred. Through valleys where the air smelled of rot, across ridges where dwarven forges once rang with hammer-song but now stood silent, nothing but broken anvils and half-melted chains. Each ruin was a wound, each hollow settlement a reminder that the world had begun to devour itself.
The survivors dwindled. Some slipped away at night, too afraid of Shitsubo's silence. Others starved or fell ill. The ones who remained hardened, bound by something unspoken. They began to look to him as though he carried a map carved into his bones.
He hated it.
One night, after rain had driven them beneath a shattered arch of stone, he stood alone at the edge of camp. His thoughts wandered unbidden—back to Arita's slurred voice, Odo's heavy fists, the glass shattering across the kitchen floor. He had left them behind, but they lingered like ghosts, pressing their stink into his every step.
And then came the whisper. Not of memory, not of guilt, but of something older, heavier. The soil beneath him shifted with a pulse. He knelt, pressing his palm to the ground.
He felt it: a labyrinth of veins running beneath the ridge, glowing faint with an energy not of man or Jotun. This was Vanir craft—roots tangled with spells of fertility and binding. But now, corrupted. The hum was twisted, like a harp with strings pulled too tight.
Nare came up behind him. "What is it?"
Shitsubo's voice was low. "A wound. Left by gods who fled before their work was done."
He dug into the soil with his bare hand, nails tearing against the grit. The survivors murmured anxiously, watching as he unearthed a shard of something that pulsed faintly in his grip—a stone, dark and luminous all at once, its surface inscribed with runes too faint to read.
Nare leaned closer. "What does it do?"
Shitsubo stared into its heart. He felt the pull, the weight of promises whispered by things older than men. His lips parted, and though he did not mean to, he answered truthfully.
"It remembers," he said.
And when he stood, the stone bled light across his palm.
---
The next morning, the survivors followed him more tightly than ever. He felt their eyes, the way hope had begun to spread like mold. He despised it, but he did not cast them away. Not yet.
Because as he walked, the stone whispered, and for the first time he realized—perhaps he would need them.