The last thing I remember is the screech of tires and the metallic scream of impact.
Now, I'm drowning.
Frigid water floods my lungs. I fight upward through the dark, breaking the surface in a gasp that tears my throat. My hands—smaller, rougher, callused—scrape at a jagged shore. I drag myself onto wet stone and spit out what tastes like half the fjord.
"Ragnar! Ragnar, you fool!"
The shout cuts through the ringing in my ears. A blond, wild-haired boy—fourteen, maybe—runs toward me in rough-spun wool and leather. Behind him, wooden longhouses crouch along the beach, smoke curling into a sky too clean to be real.
This isn't a hospital. It isn't anywhere it should be.
"You said you could make the jump!" the boy pants, grabbing my arm with a grip that feels solid. "Rollo won fifty silver because of you."
Rollo.
The name hits like a hammer.
"I'm fine," I manage, but the voice that answers is higher, younger, shaped by an Old Norse accent I shouldn't understand. My hand finds my face—smooth, beardless, alien.
No. No, no, no—
"Come on, before Father sees you've tried to drown yourself again." The boy—Kalf, my mind supplies uninvited—hauls me upright.
The water's reflection confirms the nightmare. Blue eyes stare back from a face I've seen only on a screen: sharp-featured, defiant, impossibly young.
Ragnar Lothbrok.
My legs buckle. Kalf catches me, mistaking existential collapse for exhaustion.
"You really did hit your head," he says, concern edging his grin.
The village bustles around us—women hauling buckets, men mending nets, a blacksmith's hammer keeping time. The air smells of smoke and salt and livestock. This is Kattegat—or what will become it.
And I'm Ragnar Lothbrok. Years before the raids. Before Lagertha. Before the songs.
Before the snake pit.
"Ragnar?" Kalf waves a hand before my face. "You're scaring me."
Brother, he said earlier. And somehow I know it's true—Ragnar's memories tangled with mine, half-buried, stirring.
I need to think. But Kalf is already pulling me toward the longhouses, where a man built like an avalanche strides our way.
Father—Sigurd.
"Ragnar." His voice rumbles like distant thunder. "You bet against yourself?"
The words find me through the haze. Ragnar's memories surface—faint, slippery—of a wager, a jump, a current stronger than pride.
"I made the jump," I say evenly. "Into the water counts."
Kalf snorts. Sigurd's eyes glint, equal parts reprimand and reluctant amusement.
"Your brother profits from your failure. He'll buy the ale tonight." He turns toward the settlement. "The jarl's son is here. He wants words with you."
My stomach drops. "Jarl Haraldson?"
"His son, Sten." Sigurd's jaw tightens. "He's heard about your… ideas."
Ideas.
Memories lock into place—this Ragnar's talk of sailing west across open sea, of lands beyond the sunset. Too early. Too dangerous. In this world, innovation smells like heresy. And Haraldson—the man Ragnar is destined to overthrow—is not known for patience.
"When?" I ask.
"Now. He's in the hall." Sigurd's hand lands heavy on my shoulder. "Think before you speak, boy. The jarl's favor changes like the tide."
He leaves me dripping on the shore. Kalf lingers, eyes bright. "You'll tell Sten about the lands to the west? Maybe he'll fund your madness. His father won't."
I look past him to the horizon—the gray line where the world ends and England waits. Lindisfarne. 793 AD. The raid that starts it all.
What year is this? How far from that moment am I—and should I even try to change it?
History feels fragile in my hands.
Kalf nudges me. "You really did hit your head."
"Yeah," I say. "Something like that."
I turn toward the longhouse, seawater dripping from a body that isn't mine, the weight of centuries pressing behind my eyes.
Just one conversation. That's all this is.
So why does it feel like the future's about to listen?