His head hurt.
Not a sharp pain.
A weight.
As if someone had filled his skull with wet sand and then pressed down with the palm of their hand.
His mouth was dry, bitter.
His tongue felt like sandpaper.
His hoodie smelled of smoke, beer, sweat, and something deeper: a smell of night, of street, of flight.
His jeans were still on.
His Converse untied.
His shirt wrinkled, with a stain he didn't remember getting.
He hadn't undressed.
He hadn't washed.
He hadn't really slept.
He didn't care.
He got up.
The room spun for a second, as if the floor had tilted beneath him.
Then it stopped.
Or maybe he had gotten used to the movement.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
He didn't recognize himself.
Red eyes.
Messy hair.
Pale skin.
A guy who looked like he'd come out of an accident, not a bed.
A guy who hadn't chosen to be there.
He ran a hand over his face.
A day's beard scratched his fingers.
He straightened his hoodie.
Put his headphones around his neck.
He didn't turn on the music.
He didn't feel like it.
Or maybe he did, but his hands wouldn't obey.
He walked out of the room.
The house was silent.
Too silent.
Thora wasn't there.
Mrs. Lund wasn't there.
Just the sound of his steps on the wooden floor, a dry, hollow sound, as if he were walking inside an abandoned house.
Outside, Brooklyn was humid.
Heavy.
Full of smells he didn't recognize: burnt coffee, gasoline, fresh bread, wet leaves, metal, old rain.
The sky was low, gray, as if it wanted to crush him.
He walked toward the subway.
The stairs were dirty, stained with rain and chewing gum.
The train arrived with a metallic noise, a long lament, like a wounded animal.
Askel got on.
Sat down.
Looked at his reflection in the dirty glass.
He didn't see anything he wanted to see.
The campus was already alive.
Students everywhere.
Colorful backpacks.
Coffee in paper cups.
Phones.
Voices mixing with the noise of the city.
Laughter.
Conversations.
Quick footsteps.
Askel walked among them like a ghost.
No one looked at him.
No one noticed him.
And he noticed no one.
He found the building.
The faculty.
The classroom.
The door was closed.
The lesson had already started.
Askel opened the door.
Walked in without knocking.
Without apologizing.
Without looking at anyone.
The professor stopped mid-sentence.
Looked at him.
Askel didn't look back.
He walked across the room with his hands in his pockets, his hood up, his step slow, uneven, as if the floor were tilted.
The students followed him with their eyes.
Someone whispered something.
Someone laughed.
Someone stiffened.
Askel sat in the back.
At the last desk.
His feet on the chair in front.
His headphones around his neck.
He didn't take out anything.
No notebook.
No pen.
No computer.
The professor resumed speaking.
Askel didn't listen.
He looked out the window.
The sky was gray, like in Copenhagen.
But it wasn't the same gray.
This one was denser, dirtier.
As if New York had its own color.
The professor was saying something.
The words were sounds.
Noise.
They didn't get in.
Askel leaned back.
Closed his eyes for a second.
The lesson continued.
The professor walked between the desks.
His voice was monotonous, measured, academic.
He was talking about myths, stories, ancient cultures.
Askel didn't know what about.
He didn't care.
He looked at the other students.
Some were taking notes.
Others were listening.
Others were staring at the professor as if his words were gold.
Askel wondered what they were doing there.
Then he wondered what he was doing there.
The answer didn't come.
The professor stopped near him.
Looked at him.
Askel felt the gaze, but didn't respond.
He didn't look up.
Didn't change expression.
"Are you new?" the professor asked.
Silence.
"Name?"
Askel didn't answer.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because he didn't feel like talking.
Or maybe because he didn't know how to explain who he was.
Not to that professor.
Not in that classroom.
The professor waited a moment.
"The door you came in through is also the door out of this classroom," he said dryly.
He went back to the lectern.
Resumed the lesson.
Askel didn't look at him.
Looked out the window.
He thought about Copenhagen.
About Mimir.
About warm beer.
About what he was doing there.
He stood up.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't look at anyone.
He didn't close the door quietly.
He walked out.
Left the classroom open, the noise of the lesson spilling into the hallway.
He walked without direction.
Hands in his pockets.
Hood up.
Headphones around his neck.
The first day of class was over.
Or at least, for him it was.
---
The shop was called **Needle & Bone**.
A narrow storefront, full of faded posters, drawings hung with tape, neon lights flickering as if they'd been dying for years.
The smell was a mix of alcohol, ink, leather, sweat, and something metallic.
A smell that didn't belong to the city, but to the people who wanted to change it — or change themselves.
Askel walked in.
The door made a dry sound, a *clack* that seemed too loud for that place.
His head throbbed.
His back burned.
The thin smoke that had risen from his clothes the night before still seemed attached to his skin, like a memory that wouldn't leave.
Behind the counter was a girl.
Shaved head on one side, long on the other.
Dark eyes, lined with eyeliner.
Arms tattooed up to her wrists.
A black t-shirt with a stylized skull.
Piercings in her nose, lip, eyebrows.
Her name was Rhea.
And she looked like the kind of person who doesn't scare easily.
"What do you want?" she asked, without looking up from the drawing she was tracing.
Askel approached.
Took off his hoodie.
His shirt stuck to his skin.
"I want to cover a scar."
Rhea looked up.
Studied him.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Not with curiosity.
With professionalism.
"Let me see."
Askel turned around.
Lifted his shirt.
The rune on his back was there: dark, carved into the skin, alive.
Rhea stiffened.
"What the fuck is that…?"
Her voice was no longer confident.
No longer professional.
"A scar," said Askel. "Can you cover it?"
Rhea stepped closer.
Touched the skin around the rune with a glove.
Not the rune itself.
She didn't dare.
"It's… strange. It looks… it looks like it's not old."
"Can you cover it?" Askel repeated, harder.
Rhea swallowed.
"I can try."
She made him sit down.
Turned on the machine.
The noise of the needle filled the room: a metallic hum, familiar, reassuring.
Askel closed his eyes.
Rhea brought the needle to the rune.
And the needle…
melted.
Not suddenly.
Not like plastic in the sun.
It melted slowly, as if something was eating it from the inside.
The metal deformed, became liquid, dripped onto Rhea's glove like a black drop.
Rhea screamed.
"What the—?!"
She pulled back.
The machine fell to the floor.
The liquefied needle was smoking slightly.
"What the fuck are you?!" she shouted. "What the fuck do you have on your back?!"
Askel stood up.
His head was spinning.
The rune was pulsing.
The room seemed smaller.
"It's just a scar."
"That's not a scar!"
Rhea stepped back.
"Get out. Get out of my shop. Now."
Askel snorted.
"Fuck you."
"Out!" she yelled. "Out, freak!"
Askel turned toward the door.
And right at that moment, the door opened.
Ksenia Darvishi walked in.
Black hair, straight, short, tinged with red.
Green eyes, sharp.
Leather jacket.
An aura that seemed to say: don't fuck with this person.
She was beautiful.
But not in a soft way.
In a dangerous way.
A forbidden beauty.
"What's going on?" she asked, looking at Rhea.
Rhea pointed at Askel, trembling.
"Him. He has something. Something… look at his back."
Ksenia looked at Askel.
Not with fear.
With interest.
"Let me see."
Askel pulled his shirt down.
"There's nothing to see."
Ksenia smiled.
A slow smile.
A smile that promised nothing good.
"Oh, I think there's a lot to see."
Rhea pushed him toward the door.
"Out!"
Askel walked out.
The door slammed behind him.
"Idiot!" Rhea shouted from inside. "Don't ever come back!"
Askel turned toward the window.
"Fuck you too."
Ksenia came out of the shop.
Stopped in front of him.
Studied him.
As if she were looking at a rare animal.
"You're not normal," she said.
Askel ran a hand through his hair.
"And who the fuck are you?"
Ksenia smiled again.
A slow, sharp smile that didn't belong to a normal girl.
"The one who's going to ask you questions."
Askel snorted.
His head throbbed.
His back burned under his shirt, as if the rune were breathing.
Ksenia slid a hand into her leather jacket.
Pulled out a badge.
Held it up in front of him.
A dark metal rectangle, with a symbol engraved on it:
FOID — Federal Occult Investigation Division.
"You picked the wrong person to mess with, kid."
Her voice was low, steady.
"You're under arrest."
Askel looked at it.
For a second he didn't understand.
Then he understood too much.
He lunged at Ksenia's hands.
Not with violence.
With anger.
With desperation.
He grabbed the badge.
Ripped it from her fingers.
And threw it into the middle of the street.
The metal bounced off the asphalt, rolled between the cars, stopped near a manhole cover.
"You picked the wrong person to fuck with this morning," said Askel.
His voice was lost.
Empty.
As if it weren't entirely his anymore.
Ksenia stared at him.
She didn't move.
Her eyes dropped to Askel's shirt.
Thin streaks of smoke were rising from the fabric.
Thin.
Almost invisible.
As if something beneath the skin was burning slowly.
Ksenia said nothing.
But she understood.
She understood immediately.
Her breathing changed.
Her body stiffened.
Her hand slid toward her belt, where she kept something Askel didn't see.
"Interesting," she murmured.
Rhea, from the shop door, shouted:
"Ksenia, leave him alone! He's a freak! I swear, he's—"
Ksenia raised a hand without turning around.
"Shut up, Rhea."
Rhea fell silent.
Ksenia took a step toward the street.
Picked up the badge from the ground.
Wiped it with her thumb.
Looked at it for a second.
Then she turned toward Askel.
He was already walking away.
Hands in his pockets.
Hood up.
His step slow, heavy, like a drunk warrior walking toward a battle he didn't want to fight.
The smoke was still rising from his shirt.
Thin.
White.
Ancient.
Ksenia watched him walk away.
His figure seemed larger, darker, heavier.
As if he weren't a boy.
As if he were a Viking shadow crossing Brooklyn.
"Good," said Ksenia, with a smile that promised nothing good.
"Very good."
And she watched him until he disappeared around the corner.
--
Pier 47 had been closed for hours.
The police had cordoned off everything: yellow tape flapping in the wind like flayed skin, portable floodlights spitting white light onto the worn wooden planks, NYPD vans parked in neat rows like soldiers awaiting orders. Officers speaking in low voices, their breath short, as if the sea could hear them. As if the water had ears.
The smell was terrible.
Not just the port's usual smell — fish, seaweed, gasoline, rotting wood sinking into black water. There was something deeper. Older. A smell that didn't belong to this world. Stagnant water that had never seen the sun. Salt centuries old, crystallized in the cracks of the planks like petrified tears. Blood. Blood that wasn't human, but tasted of human. As if someone had mixed flesh and sea in a cauldron and poured the result onto the pier.
The body had been found at dawn by a fisherman who had screamed so loudly he'd woken up half of Red Hook.
Now it was there.
Lying on the wood of the pier. Arms spread, as if he'd tried to embrace something that wasn't there. Legs straight, bare feet, nails black with mud and blood. The skin was gray, almost blue, as if the water had sucked him from the inside. The lips were purple, cracked, crusted with salt. The eyes — what remained of one eye — was fixed on the sky, glassy, as if he'd seen something he shouldn't have seen.
Covered by a white sheet. But the sheet didn't cover everything.
Three crows were driven into the body.
Not resting. Not perched. Driven. Like nails. Like arrows. As if someone had hammered them with superhuman force, with an invisible mallet, with a rage that didn't belong to this world.
One in the heart. The beak had disappeared beneath the skin, through the ribs, driven into the muscle like a feathered dagger. The blood around the wound was dark, almost black, and had crusted into a halo that looked like a malevolent aureole. The feathers around the wound were smeared with blood and mucus, stuck to the skin like a second epidermis.
One in the throat. The beak had penetrated through the trachea, shattering the cartilage, emerging from the back of the neck like a fleshy grappling hook. The crow's body was sunk into the tissue, as if someone had pressed it with all their strength until the bird had become part of the man.
One in the left eye.
That was the worst. The eye had exploded, the sclera was a red and white halo, the vitreous humor had dripped like a tear of blood. The crow's beak had penetrated through the orbit, crushing the bone, and the bird's head was lodged in the cavity as if it had been born there. The crow's body, still warm when found, had become rigid, the wings left half-open, as if it had tried to fly away after being driven in.
The black feathers trembled in the port wind, as if they were alive. As if the crows weren't entirely dead. As if something inside them was still breathing.
The media had gone crazy.
Cameras everywhere. Lights cutting through the air like blades. Journalists shouting questions in a desperate chorus, voices overlapping like an incantation. Microphones pointed at officers like weapons. Flashes illuminating the pier like a battlefield, flickering over the scene like lightning that brought no rain.
"Is it a ritual?"
"Is it a serial killing?"
"Who did this?"
"Why the crows?"
"Why here?"
"What does it mean?"
"What are they hiding?"
The officers didn't answer. They didn't know what to say. Their faces were stones. Their mouths were lines. Their eyes were windows onto a terror they didn't want to show.
The NYPD captain, a massive man with a gray beard and the eyes of someone who had seen too much — murders, accidents, corpses in every state — watched the scene with an expression that was no longer professionalism. It was something closer to terror. Behind him, a younger officer was trembling, trying to hide it with his hands in his pockets.
"It's not human," the captain murmured. His voice was a broken whisper. "No one drives a crow into a heart. No one."
A detective approached. His face was pale, almost transparent under the floodlights. "Chief… look at this."
He lifted the sheet. Just a little. His fingers were trembling.
On the fisherman's chest, beneath the crow, there was a mark.
It wasn't a normal wound. It wasn't a cut. It wasn't a bite. It was a line, a curve, an intertwining of strokes that looked as if they'd been written with a finger of fire. The skin was burned around it, but not randomly. It was carved with precision, with intention, as if someone had used a red-hot burin to draw a symbol that didn't belong to any known language.
The captain stepped back. His body stiffened as if he'd been struck. "What the hell is that…?"
The detective swallowed. His Adam's apple moved slowly, as if he were swallowing a stone. "I don't know. But it's not a wound. It's… it's like a rune."
The wind changed.
A sudden gust, cold, salty. As if the ocean had breathed into the heart of New York. The air grew denser, heavier, as if something invisible had settled on the pier. The floodlights flickered for a second. The yellow tape flapped harder, almost as if it wanted to tear itself free.
The crows trembled. The feathers lifted, as if an invisible wind was caressing them from below. The sheet moved slightly, as if something beneath wanted to wake up. A barely perceptible movement, like a breath.
An officer made the sign of the cross. His hand was shaking so hard the gesture was almost unrecognizable. Another walked away, pale, his face contorted in a grimace that was trying not to become a scream.
The captain turned toward the media. His voice was a command, but his hands were trembling. "Close it all down. No one gets close. No one touches anything."
But the journalists kept shouting. Filming. Taking photos. Their flashes cut through the air like knives, trying to capture something that couldn't be captured.
The detective looked at the sea.
The waves were too calm. Too still. New York's harbor was never this silent. The boats didn't rock. The water didn't move. It looked like a sheet of dark glass, as if something beneath was holding the surface still.
"Chief…" he said. His voice was a whisper. "There's something in the water."
The captain walked to the edge of the pier. His steps were slow, measured, as if he were walking through a minefield. He looked down.
The water was black. Dark. Impenetrable.
But between the waves — between that glassy silence — something was moving.
It wasn't a fish. It wasn't an object. It was a dark mass, larger than a man, moving slowly beneath the surface as if it were breathing. A shadow that had no shape, but had will. A movement that wasn't random, that wasn't animal, that was ancient and hungry.
The captain stepped back. His face was white, his eyes wide, his mouth a thin line.
"Call the FOID," he said. His voice was low. Tense. Frayed. "Now."
The detective looked at him. "The FOID? Really?"
The captain didn't answer right away. He looked at the body. The crows. The feathers. The symbol carved into the skin. The sea that was breathing.
"Yes," he said. His voice was almost a sigh. "Because this isn't a murder."
He breathed in. The port air filled his lungs with salt and death.
"It's a message."
The sea wind blew again. Stronger. The feathers trembled like wings trying to fly. The sheet lifted for an instant, revealing the fisherman's face — his mouth wide open in a silent scream, the remaining eye fixed, the crow driven into the orbit like a seal.
And the chapter closed with a sentence no one said, but everyone felt:
The Father of the Sea had arrived.
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