From deep within the wound, the nanites infused the metal, rewriting its very essence. The rough-forged blade grew sleek, its color shifting to a dark, gunmetal grey that seemed to drink the light. Along its length, intricate silver filigree etched itself into existence, forming ancient, powerful runes that no living smith could ever hope to replicate.
The sword was being reforged in his very body, in his own blood.
Through clenched teeth, his eyes wide with excruciating pain and blinding revelation, Bjorn spoke. "The proof… is here."
He gripped the transformed hilt and pulled. The sound of the blade withdrawing was as terrible as its entry. And the wound… it closed.
Not instantly, and not cleanly, but with a visible slowness. Strands of silver light, like a thousand tiny needles, stitched the torn flesh together from the inside out, knitting skin, muscle, and bone.
The pain was real.
The scar was real.
But Bjorn Ragnarsson still stood and he held the sword high. It was no longer Haraldson's blade. It was his. Bloodied, transformed, humming with a faint, otherworldly power.
"You wanted a sign," he said, his voice a ragged whisper that carried through the deathly silent clearing. "I am the sign."
All eyes turned to Earl Haraldson. The Earl's face, once a mask of calculated authority, had shattered. The ruddy color drained away, leaving a pasty, sickly white. His lips parted, but no sound emerged.
In his eyes, a storm of emotions raged: the disbelief of a rational man witnessing the irrational; the terror of a politician seeing his power evaporate in a flash of divine light; and the primal fear of a mortal who has just seen a god reach down and touch the world.
Bjorn stood with his chest heaving, the transformed sword humming faintly in his hand. The wound was a puckered, angry red scar, but it was closed.
He looked at the sea of stunned faces.
They stared in silence; warriors, elders, even children, caught between fear and awe, none daring to move or speak.
Then his eyes, burning with a new light, found Haraldson. "The question isn't whether the gods favor me, Haraldson…"
Not Earl Haraldson. Just Haraldson.
And that, more than anything, told the crowd something had changed.
Bjorn, the son of a farmer, is no longer beneath him.
Bjorn didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"…it's whether they still favor you."
He let the words hang, let them infect the silence.
Then he took a step forward, dragging the tip of the sword across the earth. The sound it made was not metal on dirt, it was judgment made audible.
His eyes never left the Earl. He took another step forward. The sword dragged behind him, cutting a shallow, glowing groove into the earth. Every breath he took came with effort but he stood tall.
The crowd flinched slightly as he moved, but everyone remained silent.
Bjorn raised his chin, eyes locked on Haraldson like a hunter locking onto wounded prey. His voice, when it came, was low, and it broke the silence. "Look at me."
But Haraldson wasn't looking at him. His gaze had drifted to the sword. He stared at it absently, as if it might explain what had just happened, as if that were the threat and not the man holding it.
Bjorn's eyes narrowed. He took a step closer, his voice rising, not louder, but stranger.
When he spoke again, it was as though something else spoke with him. "Look at me."
This time, people in the crowd stirred. A few flinched. Even the wind seemed to hush.
Haraldson did. Slowly. His face pale and His jaw clenched. But he looked.
Bjorn took one more slow and deliberate step. The silvered edge of the blade caught the light and vibrated softly, as if sensing its next purpose.
"I stand here." His voice tightened. "Wounded." He tapped his chest lightly with the hilt, right where the scar still glowed faintly. "Half-dead."
He turned his head slightly, just enough to glance at the ring of armed men behind Haraldson, motionless like statues with weapons.
"And still…" A pause. "…not one of your men moves."
Silence.
Bjorn's lips curled, not into a smile but almost pitying.
"That..." He gestured slightly, toward the frozen warriors behind Haraldson. "...is your power now."
He looked back at Haraldson. "That… is what's left of it."
The words cut through the silence.
For a few long seconds, no one moved, they even forgot to breath.
It was no longer a defense; it was an accusation, a verdict.
And now... it was the time to strike.
Bjorn straightened his back. He took a step forward. Then another.
"I challenge you," he said, clearly, so no one could mistake it. "To a Holmgang."
He let it settle. "Single combat. Here, and now."
One final blow: "Let the gods show us who leads our people into the future."
A collective gasp tore through the crowd. This was the final arbiter.
A few men of Haraldson looked at each other, uncertain. Others looked at Haraldson, searching for orders.
But no one spoke.
Svein took a step forward, his face red with rage. "This has gone far enough! We can't just stand here while he—"
"Silence!" Earl Haraldson coldly cuts him off.
Svein froze mid-step. His mouth opened, then closed. His face twisted between confusion and disbelief.
But he obeyed.
Haraldson's eyes never left Bjorn. The mask of political cunning was gone, stripped away by the undeniable power he had just witnessed. What was left was a man staring at his own ruin.
He could refuse, of course. He could order his guards to kill the boy. But he saw the look in the crowd's eyes. They had seen a miracle, even if they didn't know what a miracle is. To them, Bjorn was no longer just a young warrior; he was an instrument of the divine.
To refuse the challenge now wouldn't be seen as wisdom, but as cowardice. He would be an Earl who feared the judgment of the gods. His authority had not just been challenged; it had been incinerated.
He had one path left. The warrior's path.
Haraldson's jaw clenched. His voice came low, like a growl torn from his chest. "I accept your challenge."
Svein blinked, stunned. He stepped closer and whispered urgently, "My lord, you know how dangerous he is. The chance of winning is—"
Torvald cut in, his hand already half-drawn on his blade. "Let me fight for you. You don't need to—"
Haraldson turned, his voice cracking. "I said I accept."
He looked at Bjorn, at the impossible scar, the transformed sword, the searing intensity in his eyes. There was no political calculation left. There was only the hard reality of the ring.
He murmured, almost to himself, "Better to enter Odin's Hall on my feet… than live on my knees."
The crowd scrambled back, a human wave receding to form a wide, trampled circle of dirt and grass. The air, already thick with tension, now vibrated with violence.
Bjorn raised his new sword, its alien metal catching the sun. But as he did, a wave of dizziness washed over him. The world tilted, the faces of the crowd blurring into a smear of color. He felt a sudden exhaustion, a cellular ache from where the sword had pierced him.
Bjorn's voice barely rose above a whisper, laced with confusion. "What…?"
A trickle of dark blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his hand, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of it.
Then, a woman in the crowd screamed while pointing. "His hair!"
Strands of Bjorn's sun-blonde hair, starting at the temples, began to lose their color, shifting to a brilliant, metallic silver, like threads of new-fallen snow catching the light. The change spread with unnatural speed, a creeping frost that consumed the gold. Within moments, the entire left side of his head was a cascade of gleaming silver-white.
Bjorn felt the change, a strange coldness on his scalp. He raised a trembling hand to his head, his eyes filled with a dawning understanding. Something is changing in his body.
Haraldson watched, his face a grim mask. He saw the weakness, the confusion, but he also saw the silver hair shining in the sun.
For a fleeting second, his heart hammered with a forgotten dread, the seer's prophecy. 'You will die when silver touches the sun-haired one.'
But he crushed it. Prophecy was a coward's excuse.
He looked into the sky, and a strange broken sound escaped his lips. It started as a low chuckle of disbelief and swelled into a full, sorry laugh, the laugh of a man utterly and finally betrayed by the cosmic order.
His gaze snapped back to Bjorn, the laughter dying, replaced by the wrath of a man who had ruled too long to die quietly.
His voice rang out like a war horn: "If the gods have chosen this day…"
He took a step forward with burning eyes. "…then so be it!" He paused and his jaw clenched. "But I will not die kneeling."
He turned with sudden fury and ripped a heavy round shield from the hands of a nearby guard, sending the young man stumbling back in fear. With his other hand, he seized a thick-hafted axe, almost too big for one hand, but Haraldson's grip was still iron.
He raised the weapons high. "And if I'm to feast in Valhalla tonight…"
His voice deepened with Defiance. "…I'll not enter Odin's hall with fear in my heart!"
Then, pointing the axe toward Bjorn: "And I'm taking you with me, boy!"
A hush fell over. Even the birds seemed to still.
Bjorn staggered slightly, but caught himself. Blood streaked his chin and his arms trembled. But he didn't fall.
And despite the blood on his lips and the fire in his veins, a flicker of respect crossed his face. "It seems the wolf still has his teeth."
"It seems," he said, voice low but steady, "…the wolf still has his teeth."
A moment passed. Then quick footsteps approached from behind.
Floki.
He moved like a ghost through the ring of silent men. His expression unreadable, neither smile nor madness now, only something close to reverence. In his hands, a battered but solid round shield.
He offered it without a word.
Bjorn looked at him, and Floki nodded once.
"Finish it," he whispered.
Bjorn took the shield, his hand closing over the worn grip. The weight steadied him. Grounded him. He raised it, his stance widening, the trembling slowing.
Then they circled.
Two generations. One throne.
And only one would walk away.
Thank you for reading!See you in the next one.
Just kidding, why so serious?
Haraldson like an old, cornered wolf, roared and charged.
And the clearing exploded into motion.
The clash was thunderous. Haraldson attacked with the desperate fury of a man with nothing left to lose, his axe hammering against Bjorn's shield.
Bjorn was forced back, his movements were clumsy, his body was still reeling from the transformation. He was parrying on pure instinct.
Haraldson pressed his advantage, forcing Bjorn back step by step. He swung his axe in a vicious horizontal arc aimed at Bjorn's neck.
Bjorn, too slow to raise his shield, ducked under it. The momentum of the swing left Haraldson slightly over-extended.
And in that instant, everything clicked.
Bjorn put every strength he had left into this attack.
His transformed blade flashed out, impossibly fast. It wasn't a crude chop. It was a precise, elegant strike that moved faster than Haraldson's eye could follow. The humming steel met the thick oak haft of the Earl's axe. There was no splintering crunch of wood. The blade sliced through it as if it were wet parchment.
It did not stop.
The blade continued its arc, shearing clean through the bone and sinew of Haraldson's right arm just below the shoulder.
For a single, silent heartbeat, Haraldson's warrior's pride fought a war with agony. His lips peeled back in a silent snarl as he stared, uncomprehending, at his own severed arm falling to the dirt, his axe still clutched in its dead fingers.
Then, the dam of his will broke, and an anguished cry, half roar, half gasp of pain tore from his throat. His face went chalk-white, his remaining hand clamping uselessly over the gushing stump.
He staggered but did not fall. He stood, chest heaving, his eyes locked on Bjorn, filled not with hatred, but with a kind of terrible awe. He had just witnessed the end of his age.
In that silent moment, Bjorn stepped forward. There was no malice in his face, only a grim finality.
With a single, fluid motion, he swept the blade across Haraldson's throat. The steel carved through flesh and windpipe without resistance. There were no theatrics, no severed head falling to the ground.
Just a final, wet, gurgling gasp as blood erupted from the wound.
Earl Haraldson crumpled to his knees, his eyes gazing at nothing, before collapsing forward. His head bent at an impossible angle, and a silence fell once more over the clearing, broken only by the sound of hot blood soaking into the cold earth.
Siggy's face went first pale, then drained of all color as the life left Haraldson's body. Her hand flew to her mouth, a frantic useless gesture to stifle a rising cry of anguish. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, stared at the crumpled form of her husband.
A single tear tracked a clean path through the dust on her cheek before she pressed both hands to the sides of her head and let out a raw, keening sob that shattered the clearing's stunned silence. It was a sound of absolute desolation.
A few feet away, her daughter, Thyri, simply collapsed, her legs giving way. She didn't scream or cry out; she sat down hard on the cold earth, her gaze vacant, the world having just been ripped apart before her eyes.
The crowd stood frozen. There were no cheers of victory, no cries of mourning for the fallen Earl. There was only the sound of Siggy's grief and the sight of Bjorn, standing over the body, his chest rising and falling heavily, blood on his lips and half his hair gleaming an unnatural silver.
That was when the second sound broke the silence. The sharp, metallic shing of a sword being drawn from its scabbard.
Torvald, his face a mask of rage held his blade aloft, its point trembling towards Bjorn. "Murderer! Witch-spawn!" he roared.
Behind him, a dozen other bodyguards, men of families whose fortunes and loyalties were bound to Haraldson, stepped forward in unison. Axes were drawn. Spears angled toward Bjorn.
A pocket of the old guard, refusing to die quietly.
The response was instantaneous. The hiss of steel was answered by the western crew. Floki, a manic grin spreading across his face, produced two axes as if from thin air. Leif, Torstein, Arne... all formed a wall of shields. And at the center of it, standing just behind his son, Ragnar Lothbrok drew his own axe. His movement was calm, deliberate, the same for Lagertha, the shieldmaden.
The standoff was absolute. Two armed camps, a ring of terrified onlookers, and a dead Earl between them.
The powder keg was lit.
But before Torvald could take a single step, Hrafn's voice cut through the tension. It wasn't a shout, but a low, dangerous command that carried more weight than any roar.
"Hold."
Torvald froze, his eyes snapping from Bjorn to Hrafn.
Hrafn took one slow step forward, planting himself between the two groups. He didn't raise his axe to threaten. He rested its head towards the ground, a gesture of unnerving confidence. He spoke not to Torvald, but to the entire assembly.
"You have all borne witness here today," Hrafn began, his voice calm and clear. "You saw the challenge, and you saw it accepted. This was not murder." He gestured with his chin towards Haraldson's body. "This was judgment. The gods have given their sign, and they have chosen who will lead us."
Torvald took a step forward, voice thick with disbelief. "So that's it, huh? You change your loyalty now, Hrafn? Just like that?"
Hrafn turned to him, slowly. His tone didn't rise. It didn't need to.
"We followed our lord to the end," Hrafn said coldly. "None here can say otherwise. We stood with him. We bled for him. But our Earl is dead. His time, and his favor with the gods... is over."
Tense silence settled again.
Hrafn turned to the crowd now, raising his voice just enough. "But we do not deny what we saw. Earl Haraldson fought valiantly. He fought honorably. And he died. The gods have witnessed his fall. And this young man..."
His hand gestured toward Bjorn, who now stood apart from them all, staring skyward. His sword hung loosely at his side, but his grip on it was so tight his knuckles had turned bone white. "He defeated the Earl in open combat. His right is earned in blood. And Let all who witnessed stand as proof."
Hrafn paused, letting the weight of the moment sink in.
"You have a choice. All of you." He swept his gaze over the armed loyalists. "You can throw your lives away here, now, fighting a battle the gods have already decided. You can join our master in his journey to Valhalla. Or... you can pledge your fealthy to the young man the gods have clearly marked as our future. And you can live to see your children grow."
He let the choice hang in the air.
Life or death.
Fealty or the grave.
Torvald's hand trembled, his eyes darting from the sight of Bjorn's vacant eyes, to the unyielding face of Hrafn, to the silent, watching crowd who would not lift a finger to help him. He was a loyal man, but he was not a fool. To fight now was suicide.
Slowly, with the posture of a man whose world has ended, Torvald lowered his sword. With a sound of defeat, he knelt, then laid his sword on the ground before Bjorn.
One by one, the other loyalists, their faces a mixture of fear and resentment, followed his lead. The clatter of swords being laid on the dirt was the sound of an era ending.
The fight was over before it began. The new order was sealed, by divine fire, and hard politics.
The men of kategatt, who were watching, who had their weapons on them, raised them, and started shouting, it started by one, then the others joined, "Bjorn! Bjorn! Bjorn!" while holding weapons to the sky.
Lagertha, her eyes never leaving her son, was the first to see it. Bjorn was swaying slightly, his posture no longer that of a victor, but of a man seeing a ghost. His eyes were locked on the empty air above his slain foe.
"Ragnar," she whispered, a new fear in her voice.
Ragnar turned from some of the kneeling lords, his face hardening as he saw his son's strange trance. He followed Bjorn's gaze, squinting.
For a fraction of a second, he saw something, a brief, oily shimmer in the air, a distortion like heat haze on a frozen day, the barest impression of a great shadow passing before it was gone. It was nothing, and yet it was enough to make the hairs on his arms stand on end.
But Bjorn saw everything.
From above, they came.
The Valkyries.
Clad in armor that shimmered like starlight on black steel, they descended on winged steeds that left no hoofprints in the dirt. Their helms bore wings of pale silver, their faces veiled but glowing faintly beneath with an otherworldly light. They did not touch the ground, only hovered, a breath above it, as if the world itself rejected their weight.
Three of them encircled Haraldson's corpse. One knelt beside it with tenderness, and laid a hand on the fallen Earl's chest.
Then his soul rose, translucent, and young again, just a glimpse, barely a moment. He looked confused… then saw them. A flicker of understanding crossed his features.
The lead Valkyrie nodded, and without a word, they turned and vanished skyward, Haraldson's spirit with them, fading like mist into the high air.
And Bjorn saw all of it.
He stood motionless, his chest rising and falling in uneven breaths.
One of the Valkyries, the last to rise, turned her veiled gaze to him.
She said nothing. She only looked. But that stare pierced through bone and soul.
Bjorn felt his knees weaken and plunged the sword into the earth taking support because he couldn't bear the pressure with his weakened state.
Cold sweat beaded along his brow. His heart pounded, but he wasn't scared, he just remained standing there, unfazed, refusing to fall on his knees.
For in that silent gaze, there was no gratitude. No warmth. Only a message he couldn't explain, but understood all the same: "We see you. And we will return for you, too."
Then she rose, vanished into the sky, and the world was mortal again.
Bjorn exhaled shakily, eyes still locked on the empty air.
Floki watched, his head cocked with manic curiosity. He saw no Valkyries, but he recognized the signs of a man touched by a force beyond mortal comprehension. He saw the agony and the ecstasy of it.
The pressure of the valkyries was the last straw that broke Bjorn, he collapsed onto his back with his chest heaving. He stared up at the sky just once. His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, then forced themselves open. One final breath, and they closed again. This time, he didn't wake.
The sword remained, quivering slightly, embedded in the earth.
"Bjorn!" Lagertha's cry was sharp and immediate. She and Ragnar rushed to his side, pushing through the stunned silence.
Rollo was just behind them, his face a mixture of confusion and concern. "By the gods, what happened to him? Did his wound reopen?"
"He is fine!" Lagertha insisted, her hands frantically checking his face, his pulse. "He lives." Her voice was a shield against her own terror.
Ragnar gently lifted his son's head. He looked at the faces of his crew, at the uncertain crowd, and made a decision.
"We must get him to the hall," he announced, gathering Bjorn into his arms. The boy was a dead weight. Ragnar grunted with the effort and looked to his brother. "Rollo. The sword. Bring it."
Rollo nodded, his eyes fixed on the strange blade. It stood alone, a symbol of the day's madness. He felt a pull toward it, a desire to feel its power for himself. He stepped forward and wrapped his left hand around the hilt.
The result was instant and violent. A surge of brilliant blue energy erupted from the sword, coursing up Rollo's arm. He let out a choked, agonized roar; "FREYR'S BALLS!", as his body convulsed, before he was thrown a little backward like a child's toy, landing in a heap on the ground, unconscious.
A new wave of panic ripped through the crowd. They hadn't seen the Valkyries. They had only seen their new leader, the divinely-marked young man, stare at nothing and collapse in a fit.
And now they had seen his uncle, the great warrior Rollo, struck down by his blessed sword.
Ragnar and Lagertha stood alone in the center of the ring, one son unconscious in their arms, another brother lying smoldering at their feet.
Thank you for reading! Let me know as usual what you thought of the chapter, especially on these last two chapters, since they step outside of canon.
If you'd like early access to upcoming chapters, you can find them here: patreon.com/DragonChill
See you in the next one. Sunday.