The last thing I remember is the screech of tires and the sickening crunch of metal.
Now, I'm drowning.
Cold water floods my lungs as I thrash upward, breaking the surface with a gasp that tears through my chest. My hands—smaller than they should be, callused in unfamiliar places—claw at the rocky shore. I drag myself onto the bank, coughing up what tastes like half the fjord.
"Ragnar! Ragnar, you fool!"
The voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. I look up to see a boy, maybe fourteen, running toward me. He's wearing rough-spun wool and leather, his blonde hair long and wild. Behind him, wooden longhouses dot the shoreline, smoke rising from their roofs into an impossibly clear sky.
This isn't a hospital. This isn't *anywhere* it should be.
"You said you could make the jump," the boy says, grabbing my arm. His grip is strong, real. "Rollo won fifty silver because of you."
Rollo. The name hits me like a physical blow.
"I'm fine," I hear myself say, except the voice isn't mine. It's younger, accented in Old Norse that I shouldn't understand but somehow do. My hand goes to my face—smooth, no beard yet, the features of someone barely past childhood.
No. No, this can't be—
"Come on, before Father sees you've nearly killed yourself again." The boy—my mind supplies a name I shouldn't know: *Kalf*—hauls me to my feet.
I look down at my reflection in the still water near the shore.
Blue eyes stare back at me. A young face, sharp-featured and defiant. A face I've seen dozens of times on a screen, in a show I binged three times through.
*Ragnar Lothbrok.*
My legs nearly give out. Kalf steadies me, mistaking my existential crisis for exhaustion.
"You really did hit your head, didn't you?" he says, concerned now.
I swallow hard, forcing myself to breathe. Around me, the settlement bustles with life—*real* life. A woman carries water from the stream. Men repair fishing nets. A blacksmith's hammer rings against an anvil. The air smells of wood smoke, salt water, and livestock.
This is Kattegat. Or what will become Kattegat.
And I'm Ragnar Lothbrok. Years before the raids. Before Lagertha. Before everything that made the legend.
Before the snake pit.
"Ragnar?" Kalf waves a hand in front of my face. "Brother, you're scaring me."
*Brother.* Gods, I have a brother I never knew about. Or rather, Ragnar does. Did. The memories are there, buried under my own, waiting to surface like bodies beneath ice.
I need to think. I need to understand what's happening. But Kalf is pulling me toward the longhouses, and a large man—Father, my mind whispers—is striding toward us with a expression that promises consequences.
"Walk it off," I mutter, more to myself than Kalf. "I'm fine."
But I'm not fine. I'm a twenty-first century history nerd trapped in the body of a legendary Viking warrior, decades before he becomes legend.
And I know exactly how his story ends.
The question is: do I let it?
---
Father—Sigurd—reaches us before I can spiral further into panic. He's a bear of a man, all broad shoulders and iron-gray beard, with eyes that could freeze the fjord in summer.
"Ragnar." His voice is the rumble of distant thunder. "You bet against yourself?"
The question catches me off guard. Ragnar's memories surface sluggishly, like fish in cold water. The jump. The wager. Rollo had bet I'd fail, and I'd... I'd taken the other side of the bet with Kalf and several others.
"I made the jump," I say, surprised at how steady my voice sounds. "Into the water counts."
Kalf snorts. Sigurd's expression doesn't change, but something shifts in his eyes—amusement, maybe, or approval of the audacity.
"Your brother profited from your failure. He'll buy the ale tonight." Sigurd turns his gaze to the settlement behind us. "The jarl's son is here. He wants to speak with you."
My stomach drops. "Jarl Haraldson?"
"His son, Sten." Sigurd's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "He heard about your... ideas."
*Ideas.* The word lands heavy between us. Ragnar's memories crystallize—I've been talking about sailing west. Not just west for trading, but *west* across the open ocean. To lands I claimed existed beyond the sunset.
In the show, Ragnar doesn't start seriously pursuing England until he's older, until he's met Floki, until he's built his reputation. But this younger Ragnar has apparently already been running his mouth about it.
Stupid. Dangerous. In this time, in this place, innovation is viewed with suspicion. The old ways are sacred. And Jarl Haraldson...
Another memory surfaces: Haraldson is the current jarl. The one who, in the show's timeline, Ragnar will eventually kill to take his place. The one who forbids the western raids.
And his son is here. Wanting to talk to the boy who keeps speaking heresy about sailing into the unknown.
"When?" I ask.
"Now. He's in the hall." Sigurd places a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Think before you speak, boy. The jarl's favor is a fickle thing."
He walks away, leaving me dripping and freezing on the shoreline with Kalf staring at me expectantly.
"Well?" Kalf grins. "Are you going to tell Sten about the lands to the west? Maybe he'll fund an expedition. His father certainly won't."
I look out across the water, toward the horizon where—hundreds of miles away—England waits. Lindisfarne. The raid that will change everything. The raid that, historically, happens in 793 AD.
But I don't know what year it is now. I don't know how much time I have. And I don't know if I should accelerate history... or try to stop what's coming.
"Ragnar?" Kalf's grin fades. "You really did hit your head."
"Yeah," I breathe. "Something like that."
I head toward the longhouse, water still dripping from my clothes, my mind racing through centuries of consequences.
One conversation. That's all this is.
So why does it feel like the entire future is balanced on what I say next?