The first thing Max felt on waking up was how cold he was, followed closely by pain. Every nerve in his body was on fire, and he swore he’d been hit by a truck.

The first thing Max felt when he woke up was cold—bone-deep, biting cold. A chill clung to his skin like icy fingers, creeping into his bones, and everything ached. No, everything hurt. His nerves were on fire, throbbing and pulsing like he’d just been electrocuted.

He groaned, his breath coming out in short, sharp gasps. Every inch of him felt like it had been shattered and put back together wrong. He tried to move, but his muscles protested, stiff and unresponsive.

I’m dead. The thought came sluggishly, pushing through the haze of pain. Being dead sure hurts like a bitch though.

Max groaned as he opened his eyes, vision swimming in and out of focus. A dull, throbbing pain pulsed through his skull, like he’d gone ten rounds with a bottle of tequila and lost every one of them. His hand automatically went to his head, fingers gripping his temples as he tried to blink away the haze.

When the world finally sharpened, he realized he was lying on the ground, surrounded by trees. Tall trunks rose around him, leaves filtering soft light through their branches. Not a deep forest, but enough to make him uneasy. He recognized the shapes—ash, oak maybe—but that didn’t make sense. Ohio didn’t have places like this, not anywhere he knew.

Max’s heart began to pound. He looked down at his hand, the familiar weight of his staff still clutched in his grip. That was real. Grounding. But the rest of it…

“Where the hell am I?” he muttered, his voice shaky. His eyes darted around, scanning the unfamiliar clearing. The woods were silent, too silent as if the air itself was holding its breath.

He forced himself to his feet, legs wobbling under him. The forest stretched out in all directions, thick and endless. His throat tightened. “This… sure as shit isn’t Ohio.”

Max glanced around again, squinting through the trees as if he could will a solution into existence. His mind scrambled for anything useful from his Boy Scout days.

Moss grows on the north side of trees.

Yeah, great he thoutough. That would be handy if he actually knew which way north was.

As for starting a fire with two sticks? Doubtful.

He wasn’t even sure he did that right back then. And that was with an instructor looking over his shoulder.

His grip tightened on the staff. “No use standing around, Max O’Keefe. You’re not in Kansas anymore, so let’s see where the yellow brick road is.”

The joke fell flat, even to his own ears. His heart pounded in his chest, a constant reminder that he had no idea where he was or what to do next. He looked down at the staff in his hand, the runes carved into it catching the faint light filtering through the trees. It wasn’t much, but it was something—the only thing grounding him.

Max sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, jokes are great, but what the hell am I actually gonna do?” He muttered, pacing in a small circle, the weight of the unfamiliar landscape pressing in on him.

The woods were unsettlingly quiet. No birds, no rustling of small animals in the brush, nothing. Just the sound of his own breathing, too loud in the stillness. He glanced at the trees again, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

Ash and oak, maybe.

Not a deep forest, at least. Light filtered through the branches in patches, but it didn’t offer much comfort.

He took a step forward, his boots crunching softly on the damp earth, and then stopped, glancing back over his shoulder.

Where am I even going?

His sense of direction was shot. Everything looked the same—gray, green, and quiet. Too quiet.

“Right,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. “Keep moving. Standing still’s not gonna help.”

But as he began to walk, his steps were tentative, his grip on the staff tight enough to make his knuckles ache. Each step felt heavier, like he was waiting for something—anything—to happen. He just wasn’t sure what.

Max had been walking for what felt like an eternity. Twenty minutes, maybe more. He wasn’t sure. Time was slippery here, slipping between each heavy step. His legs were already aching, the adrenaline from earlier fading, replaced by exhaustion. He wasn’t sure if he was walking toward salvation or straight into an early grave—possibly as the dinner for some forest creature.

The thought gnawed at him as he pushed forward, glad for the woolen garments he’d worn. The great kilt’s sash doubled as a cloak, keeping him warm in the cool forest air. Without it, he’d be freezing by now. At least I’m dressed for survival, he thought grimly. But it was hard to appreciate the scenery with the constant knot of anxiety twisting in his stomach.

His mind wandered, flitting between thoughts of finding help and being lost forever. The silence around him felt unnatural—no birds, no rustling of small animals. Just his footsteps crunching through the underbrush.

Max stumbled out of the woods and stopped in his tracks, his eyes narrowing as he took in the strange sight before him. A low hill rose from the ground, its slopes unnaturally smooth, almost as if they had been shaped by human hands. He blinked, suddenly feeling as though he had wandered into a place he wasn’t supposed to be.

The ground surrounding the hill was littered with large, rough stones, half-buried in the earth, their surfaces cracked and weathered by time. They were scattered haphazardly, as though thrown there long ago by forces beyond understanding. Some of them bore faint carvings—symbols, maybe, though the lines were too worn to decipher.

A barrow. The word came to Max’s mind unbidden, something he vaguely remembered from the stories his grandfather used to tell him—ancient burial mounds for kings, warriors, or something worse.

He swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry. There was a heaviness to the air, a strange pressure that made his skin crawl. The place felt old—older than anything—and wrong, like the earth itself was holding its breath.

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Max took a step forward, his eyes scanning the stones. Were those... runes? He couldn’t tell. The light was too dim, the shapes too faded. But his gut told him he wasn’t alone.

And then, it happened.

Snap.

The sound of a twig breaking echoed through the stillness, sharp and sudden. Max froze, his grip tightening on the staff, his heart pounding in his chest. His breath caught in his throat as his eyes darted to the trees behind him. The woods were too quiet, unnaturally so, and the snap of the twig seemed to reverberate in the silence, louder than it had any right to be.

Something was out there.

Max stood perfectly still, listening, every muscle in his body tensed. For a long moment, there was nothing. No movement, no sound—just the oppressive quiet that hung heavy in the air.

Then, from the direction of the barrow, came a low, guttural growl.

Max turned, his stomach lurching. The stones around the base of the hill began to shift, grinding against one another with an eerie, scraping sound. His heart raced as he watched in horror.

Max’s blood ran cold as the draugr lurched into view. It was a walking nightmare—a shambling corpse, its body twisted and broken, the remnants of rusted armor clinging to its decaying flesh. Its skin, dried and stained deep brown by the earth, was pulled tight over its bones, except where it hung loose from half its face. The jagged wound in its skull—evidence of an ax that had cleaved through it long ago—seemed to grin at him through the rotted, torn flesh.

It shambled in a halting twisted gait, each step came a half-second too late, its feet dragging awkwardly as moved unnaturally.

The draugr’s eyes—if they could even be called that—glowed like burning coals in its empty sockets. Searing with hatred. Utterly devoid of life, but filled with the hunger for destruction. The moment its gaze landed on Max, it stopped, its head jerking unnaturally as though sizing him up, its mouth hanging open in a twisted, gaping maw.

Max could only stare, his breath caught in his throat. Move, damn it. But his legs refused. His heart pounded in his chest, hammering against his ribs like it wanted to escape, but his body felt frozen, paralyzed by the sheer impossibility of the creature before him.

And then, the sound.

A tortured scream tore from the draugr’s ruined throat, high and keening, like the cry of something that had long forgotten the sound of life. The air itself seemed to shudder with it, vibrating with a cold, oppressive dread that made Max’s spine stiffen. It wasn’t just a scream—it was the sound of death itself, a long, agonized wail that trailed off into a low, feral growl.

It moved like a demented marionette, its limbs jerking violently in every direction as though pulled by twisted, invisible strings. Each step was wrong—unnatural and out of sync, its joints snapping into place with a grotesque, grinding sound. The draugr’s head twitched from side to side, the motion sharp and unnerving, as if it were searching for unseen enemies in the shadows.

Max swallowed hard, his stomach churning as he watched. The creature’s hollow eyes, those glowing coals of hate, darted around the clearing, scanning for other threats. It moved with the instinct of a warrior, even in death—a predator trained to assess its surroundings before making its next move.

And then, its gaze locked back onto him.

“Shit, shit, shit, Max, think!” he muttered, panic creeping into his voice. “What did Gramps say was the way they beat these things? There’s got to be some way!”

He gripped the staff in front of him like a weapon, his knuckles white, his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might break through his ribcage. The thing—the draugr—ambled closer, its movements slow but steady. And the hate... Max could feel it, radiating off the creature in waves. It was like a living force, battering him, pushing against his chest with every breath he took, trying to suffocate him with its malevolence.

He wasn’t a fighter—he never had been. The last time he’d thrown a punch had been in high school, and even then, it had ended with him getting a black eye. He’d never been violent. Chris had tried showing him how to fight, but Max had always brushed it off.

Now, he wished he hadn’t.

His palms were slick with sweat, the staff felt too heavy, too awkward in his hands, like he wasn’t even holding it right. His mind screamed at him to run, to get away from this monster, but his feet wouldn’t move.

“Breathe, Max. Breathe.”

He forced the words out, trying to slow his frantic breaths. It was harder than he thought—his lungs were too tight, his body too tense. But slowly, the act of focusing on his breathing helped him push the panic back, just a little. He couldn’t afford to lose it now.

He cast a quick glance at the draugr. It’s not very fast... but it doesn’t get tired either. The creature’s limbs jerked with every step, its body twisted, but it kept coming, relentless. Max’s chest tightened again.

“Think, Max. Think.” He scoured his memories, clawing through the stories his grandfather had told him—stories about draugr, the undead risen from their graves. He remembered tales of vile, greedy people who refused to stay dead, their souls so corrupt they would rise again to protect their hoards or to wreak havoc on the living.

But what was the weakness? How did they stop these things?

His mind hit a wall. The stories weren’t always clear—sometimes the draugr would guard their graves, sometimes they would rampage. But how did they kill them? Max’s frustration boiled over, his grip on the staff tightening until his knuckles ached.

The draugr’s guttural growl echoed through the clearing, snapping his focus back to the present. The creature’s hollow eyes blazed with unholy light as it shambled closer, its rotten armor clinking with every jerky movement. There was no mercy in its stare, no hesitation—just hate.

***

In the shadowed depths of Yggdrasil’s roots, the Norns worked in silence, their hands moving deftly over the loom. Threads of fate twisted and turned, each one fragile and precarious, the weight of countless lives hanging in the balance. Urd’s ancient eyes, heavy with the knowledge of the past, tracked the thread of Max’s life as it unwound beneath her fingers, his history open to her like a well-read book.

Beside her, Verdandi fretted over his present, her fingers twitching as the skein tangled under her touch.

“This draugr is troublesome,” Skuld hissed, her gaze fixed on the future. She tugged sharply at the thread, her frustration growing as it slipped through her grasp. “It wasn’t supposed to be here yet. It’s too soon.” The thread twisted, frayed, slipping further from her control. “It won’t weave,” she muttered through clenched teeth, trying in vain to work it back into the tapestry.

From the shadows, carried on a wind tinged with frost, came the sound of laughter. Deep, rumbling laughter that echoed through the roots of Yggdrasil like the cracking of ancient ice.

Mimir.

Skuld spat on the ground, her hands tightening on the thread. “That accursed laughter!” she cried, her voice sharp with anger. “He mocks us, sisters! He watches our struggle and laughs.”

Urd, her gaze still fixed on the past, stirred slightly. Her heavy eyes turned toward the youngest sister. “Heed him not,” Urd murmured, her voice deep and slow, like the grinding of stone. “We are as eternal as the past. We will fix this.” She returned to her spinning, her hands moving with unshaken certainty. “What was will be once more.”

Skuld’s lips twisted in frustration, but she said nothing. Her hands continued to tug at the unruly thread, the future slipping further from her grasp.

Meanwhile, Verdandi’s eyes remained on the present, watching Max’s thread with quiet intensity. Her fingers twitched as she reached out to the Well of Urd, her hand hovering just above the waters’ surface. For a brief moment, she hesitated, her gaze flicking toward her sisters.

They were too preoccupied to notice.

With a single, delicate movement, she dipped her finger into the water, sending a ripple across the surface. The ripple did not spread outward, as one might expect, but downward, sinking deep into the well. Max’s thread shifted ever so slightly, its path altered, just for a moment.

Verdandi withdrew her hand, her expression unreadable. The other two did not notice her meddling.

In the shadows, the laughter of Mimir echoed again, low and knowing.