She walked for seven days.
No cloak.
No food.
Only the hide-wrapped knife at her belt — Ingrit's last gift — and the silver line pulsing faintly on her wrist.
The land changed.
The fjord's frozen arms gave way to marsh — not water, but black fen, thick with reeds that whispered when she passed.
Trees stood half-drowned, bark peeling like old skin, roots coiled above the muck like serpents frozen mid-strike.
The air smelled of iron and rot.
But beneath it —
something else.
Old.
Alive.
On the seventh night, she dreamed again.
Not of the black forest.
Not of the bleeding woman.
But of a temple — not built, but grown — from twisted roots and fused stone, half-buried in the earth.
A ring of standing stones surrounded it, each carved with a single rune — not from the Oath, but older.
And at the center:
A pool of still water.
A woman kneeling.
A song rising — not in voice, but in the roots themselves.
She woke with her mouth full of mud.
She had fallen into the fen.
But the water had not swallowed her.
It had held her.
And ahead —
through the mist —
the trees parted.
And there it stood.
The temple.
It was not stone.
Not wood.
But bone and root fused together, like something grown from a wound.
The walls pulsed faintly — not with breath, but with slow movement, like veins beneath skin.
The doorway was low, arched, framed with antlers — not from deer, but from beasts too large to exist.
She did not hesitate.
She stepped inside.
The air was thick — warm, damp, smelling of loam and old blood.
The floor was not dirt, but living root, coiled tight, forming a path toward the center.
And there —
a pool.
Still.
Black.
Reflecting nothing.
No torches.
No carvings.
No bones.
But she felt them.
The ones who had come before.
She knelt.
And for the first time in ten winters, she spoke aloud.
"I am not yours."
"I did not ask for this."
"I don't know what I am."
"But if you're waiting for a sign —
here it is."
She placed her palm on the root-path.
And the temple answered.
Not with sound.
With memory.
A wave of images — not in her mind, but in the air, like smoke forming shapes:
A woman with ash-streaked hair, cutting her palm and pressing it to the root-wall. Blood spreads — not as wound, but as ink. Words form:
"The Beta does not serve. She remembers."
A man screaming as the Wolf enters him — not through the mouth, but through the eyes.
A second figure — smaller, calmer — steps forward, places a hand on his chest, and sings.
The Wolf stills.
The man weeps.
Twelve figures standing in a ring, each marked differently — on shoulder, on wrist, on throat.
One wears a pelt of shadow.
One carries a staff of bone.
One has no mark — but the earth blooms where she walks.
Then — fire.
Screams.
The temple collapsing.
The pool turning red.
And a voice — not human — whispering:
"When the Blood forgets, the Wolf will wear a king."
The vision ended.
Yrsa gasped — not from fear, but from the taste in her mouth:
Blood.
Salt.
Iron.
And something sweet — like frost-melt.
She looked at her palm.
No cut.
But the silver line on her wrist —
it was brighter.
Pulsing.
And from the pool —
a single bubble rose.
Then another.
Then a ripple.
She stood.
Stepped to the edge.
The water was not black.
It was deep.
Like looking into the sky at midnight.
She knelt again.
And began to sing.
Not the lullaby.
Not the Oath.
But the song from her dream — the one the roots had sung.
It started low — a hum from her chest.
Then rose — not in pitch, but in weight — until the root-wall trembled.
The water stilled.
Then —
a shape rose from the depths.
Not a beast.
Not a man.
But a hand — made of root and bone, fingers long, palm open.
It did not grab.
Did not threaten.
It waited.
She looked at it.
Then at her own hand — trembling.
And placed it in the hand of the temple.
The moment skin met root, the world shifted.
Not in sound.
Not in light.
But in memory.
She saw:
The first winter.
The first Alpha — not a warrior, but a wanderer, half-dead, found in the snow.
The first Beta — a woman who sang to the dying wind.
They touched.
He howled.
She did not flinch.
And from the earth, the Wolf rose — not as beast, but as covenant.
They did not rule.
They balanced.
And the Oath was not carved.
It was sung.
And the Bloodlines were not born of power —
but of love that refused to die.
Then —
the betrayal.
Haldor, on his knees, not in surrender, but in offering.
"Take me," he said.
"Not to serve.
To rule."
And the Wolf — not refusing — but laughing.
And Ingrit — running —
not from fear,
but from the knowledge:
"If he wears it, the Balance is broken.
And the Blood will sleep."
And the child — Yrsa —
not born of blood,
but of silence after the scream.
The vision ended.
She fell back, gasping.
Her hand was blackened — not burned, but marked, the silver line now a living vine of light, crawling up her arm.
And from the pool —
a voice.
Not in her ears.
In her blood.
"You are not the first."
"You are the first to remember."
"The Bloodlines sleep.
The Wolf wears a king.
The world tilts."
"Sing again.
Not to wake the temple.
To wake the ones who forgot their names."
Then silence.
The hand sank back into the water.
The root-wall stilled.
The temple exhaled.
And Yrsa —
alone, marked, trembling —
whispered:
"I will."
She did not sleep that night.
She sat by the pool, arm wrapped in a strip of hide, the mark pulsing beneath.
She thought of Ingrit.
Of the longhouse.
Of the elders who feared her.
And she understood:
She was not exiled.
She was chosen.
Not by them.
By the Blood.
At dawn, she stood.
Walked to the edge of the temple.
Looked out at the fen, the mist, the drowned trees.
Then she raised her voice — not in song, not in scream —
but in a single, clear word, spoken in a tongue she had never learned:
"Vaela."
Her name.
But not as they said it.
As it was meant to be.
And the fen answered.
The reeds bent.
The water rippled.
The roots beneath her feet throbbed.
She turned.
Walked out of the temple.
Not toward home.
But toward the south.
Toward the first of the forgotten places.
Toward the first of the sleeping Bloodlines.
And behind her —
the temple sank deeper into the fen.
The pool turned still.
And the hand waited —
for the next to come.