Silent Gods

Askel walked out of the bar.

The door closed behind him with a dull sound, like a seal closing on something that would never return.

The New York night enveloped him — cold, damp, alive.

The air was thick with smells he didn't recognize: wet asphalt, exhaust fumes, street food, and something deeper, older, that didn't belong to that city.

Behind him, a half-dressed girl followed him.

She had an unbuttoned shirt, bare shoulders, dark hair falling over her face.

She laughed softly, with that laugh that tastes of alcohol and night.

In Askel's hand was a bottle of whiskey, half empty.

He passed it to the girl.

She drank, then gave the bottle back to him.

Askel took it, brought it to his lips, and when she came close again, they shared the whiskey from mouth to mouth.

A slow, dirty, desperate gesture.

A way to forget.

"Now let's go have a good fuck," the girl said, laughing.

They walked like that for a few meters, stumbling between the streetlights and the noise of horns.

The whiskey warmed his throat, but not his heart.

Then Askel saw them.

Thora.

And beside her, Mia.

They stood still in the middle of the street, like two statues carved by the wind.

Thora's face was tense, her eyes glossy.

Mia was motionless, wrapped in her dark cloak, the runes on its edges gleaming with a cold light, like dying stars.

Askel stopped.

The girl leaned on his arm, still laughing.

Thora took a step forward.

"Áskell, you should be ashamed," she said.

Askel raised the bottle.

"Sister, don't start."

Mia opened her mouth to speak, but Askel interrupted her before she could say a word.

"Fuck you," he said.

His voice was hoarse, slurred.

"Fuck you, her, and all your fucking destiny."

Thora stared at him.

Mia didn't move.

The drunk girl laughed louder.

She approached Mia, staggering on her heels.

"Look what they gave my stallion tonight," she said, showing Askel's hand.

In his hand, the hawk feather and the two pearls glowed under the streetlight.

The feather was warm.

The pearls pulsed softly, like two hearts breathing.

Mia looked at them.

Her face didn't change expression.

But her eyes did.

They grew darker.

Deeper.

Older.

"You don't know what you carry," she murmured.

The girl laughed again.

"No, but it's cute."

Askel pulled her away.

"Let's go."

Mia took a step forward.

"Áskell—"

"I said fuck you!" he shouted.

His voice echoed between the buildings, cut through the night.

The rune on his back pulsed.

A dry, violent beat.

A blue flash crossed the street, like a breath of the sea.

Thora stepped back.

Mia remained still.

The silence between them grew heavy, as if the city had stopped breathing.

Then the air changed.

It grew dense, heavy, as if something was compressing the world.

It didn't appear.

It shaped itself directly from the shadows.

The streetlights flickered.

The shadows of the buildings stretched, twisted, merged into a dark mass that took shape before them.

A cloud from the abyss, alive, pulsing, smelling of salt and iron.

From that darkness came tentacles, long, fluid, like solid smoke.

They wrapped around Askel's neck, lifted him off the ground with an unnatural slowness.

He tried to breathe, but the air had become liquid.

The whiskey bottle fell, shattered into two pieces on the asphalt, and the glass mixed with the blood dripping from his lips.

Two ruby eyes ignited in the shadows.

Famished.

Ancient.

Hungry as famine.

The hybrid goddess made her entrance.

Askel looked at her, suspended, his face lit by the red glow of her eyes.

He saw the hunger that dwelt within her — two blood-red gems that reflected on his face like two infernal suns.

Runa.

The goddess born from the fusion of two divinities and the blood of Odin.

The creature that belonged neither to heaven nor to earth.

Her veins moved beneath her skin, black, pulsing, like pistons of an ancient machine.

Each beat seemed a hammer blow on the heart of the world.

She was beautiful as no other.

And deadly as the blade that slits throats without asking permission.

Mia stepped back.

Thora stood petrified.

The wind of death blew between the buildings.

Runa lifted her gaze toward the moon.

Her veins glowed.

The sky trembled.

And Askel, suspended between the shadows, understood that that night no longer belonged to men.

The girl with the unbuttoned shirt, clearly outside the lucidity of the world, melted against that crooked, confused figure with red eyes.

She staggered, picked up a piece of the whiskey bottle that had fallen to the ground, and finished smashing it against her forehead.

"Filthy whore, let him go… tonight it's my turn to have him in bed!" she shouted, spitting the words.

Then she picked up another piece of the broken bottle and smashed it into her face.

The lips black as obsidian of the creature opened. Her tongue tasted the blood dripping from the wound, a dark thread trembling in the air like a wounded serpent.

"Are you a goddess?" Runa asked, her voice a whisper that seemed to come from a bottomless well. There was no anger. No offense. Only an ancient curiosity, like that of a child watching an insect before crushing it.

The drunk girl snorted. "What the fuck do you want?"

The air around them grew dense, heavy, as if the world had held its breath. The shadows rose from the sidewalk, enveloped the girl in an instant, like a living cloak.

There was no scream. Only a breath.

And when the shadows withdrew, the girl was no longer standing.

The girl's body was still there, but it was no longer her.

The skin had turned gray, as if the color had been sucked away by an invisible void. Her eyes were open, fixed on the night sky, but there was no longer any life in them. They had become opaque, like two silver coins thrown into a well.

Her mouth was still open, her lips still wet with alcohol. But around them, something had changed. Thin black lines had formed on her skin, like spiderwebs of cracked glass, like cracks in a forgotten icon.

The girl's fingers were still clenched around the neck of the broken bottle. But her nails... her nails had become long, sharp, as if something inside her had tried to come out before the body surrendered.

Around her, the air still trembled. A halo of heat, like that which rises from asphalt after a storm, rose from her body. But it wasn't heat. It was something older, deeper. The smell of sulfur and salt mixed with that of her now cold skin.

Beneath her head, a black puddle spread slowly. It wasn't water. It was the shadow that had withdrawn, the shadow that had touched her, the shadow that had taken her.

In the reflection of the puddle, for an instant, something appeared: two red eyes watching her from the depths.

Then the reflection disappeared.

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The girl was dead. But her death had not been an event. It had been an instruction. A message.

The hybrid goddess turned toward Askel.

"Now it's your turn, Viking," she said, her voice a muffled roar.

"You'd better wake up."

Thora had never seen nor heard of Runa.

But when the hybrid goddess turned toward her, Thora stood petrified.

Mia didn't move.

The runes on her cloak trembled like stars about to go out.

Áskell, still lifted by the shadows, looked at those ruby eyes staring at him.

Inside them was hunger, storm, abyss.

Mia took a step forward.

The runes on her cloak ignited like stars in a dead sky.

"Rúna… let him go. We have to go to the court of Ragnarök, and in a hurry."

The voice of the Valkyrie of the Moon was firm, but beneath it was a tremor no one had ever heard.

Not even Thora.

Runa slowly turned.

Her ruby eyes settled on Thora, and the world seemed to tighten around her.

"The blood of the Vikings flows in you too," said the hybrid goddess, her voice a muffled roar vibrating in the air.

"Make sure Áskell can find his way as well."

Thora couldn't speak.

Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to break her ribs.

Runa stepped closer, her black veins pulsing beneath her skin like gears of an ancient god.

"Otherwise," she continued, "we will have to face him as an enemy."

The word fell like a stone into the silence.

Mia took a step forward, but she didn't have time to say anything else.

Runa's shadows rose, enveloped the Valkyrie like a living cloak.

A dark vortex, cold, smelling of storm and ancient blood.

The two goddesses dissolved into the air.

They didn't vanish:

they shattered into shadow and light, like two stars colliding and breaking apart.

Askel fell to the ground, his breath coming back in gasps, the rune on his back pulsing like a crazed heart.

Thora ran toward him.

The world around was still.

The moon seemed to hold its breath.

And the New York night, for an instant, witnessed something it should never have seen.

---

Thora dragged Askel away from the still trembling street.

He staggered, his breath broken, the rune on his back pulsing like a crazed heart.

The shadows that had lifted him still seemed attached to his skin, like fingers that didn't want to let him go.

"Move, Áskell," Thora said, her voice tense.

It wasn't an order.

It was fear.

She took him to the dormitory, climbed the stairs almost lifting him by force.

The room was dark, silent, too small for everything that had just happened.

Askel collapsed onto the bed.

Thora stayed there.

Sitting beside him.

All night.

Sometimes he trembled.

Sometimes the rune glowed beneath his shirt.

Sometimes the air grew colder, as if something was still trying to reach him.

Thora didn't sleep.

She didn't close her eyes.

She didn't move.

When morning came, light entered through the window like a knife.

Áskell opened his eyes.

His head throbbed.

His throat was dry.

The world seemed distant.

"You have to go to class," Thora said.

He didn't answer.

Turned to the other side.

Thora grabbed him by the arm.

"Áskell. Get up."

He didn't move.

Thora dragged him out of bed, took him to the bathroom, turned on the shower and threw him under the ice-cold water.

Áskell screamed.

"Christ—!"

"Better?" said Thora, crossing her arms.

He spat water.

"No."

"Perfect. Then it's working."

When he left the dormitory, still half wet, Thora tossed him a clean hoodie.

"I have to call Uncle," she said. "To send me the axe."

Áskell looked at her.

"Why?"

Thora lowered her gaze.

"I'll explain when you get back."

Áskell didn't answer.

He turned and walked toward the faculty.

The classroom was full.

The professor was speaking.

The students were taking notes.

The world seemed normal.

Áskell sat in the back, as always.

Headphones around his neck.

His head still full of shadows.

Then it happened.

A noise.

A beat of wings.

A shadow crossing the window.

Then another.

Then another.

The students turned.

Someone screamed.

Someone stood up.

A flock of crows crossed the campus.

Hundreds.

Black as night.

Fast as arrows.

They moved in a single direction, as if guided by a higher will.

Toward the west. Toward the goddess of war, toward the Kingdom of Ragnarök.

The sky darkened for an instant.

The sound of wings filled the air like an omen.

Áskell looked out the window and understood that those beasts would reach their destination within a short time.

---

The sun of the new day stood over the towers. The afternoon of the people passed among the stalls of the court market and the flames of the forge. The castle was not made of mere medieval stone.

It was made of the memory of heroes fallen in battles no mortal remembered. They were intertwined like timber, interlocked like bricks, held together by dry blood and broken promises. The walls pulsed, alive, as if the castle itself breathed.

The light of the castle did not come from the sky. It came from the ground. Black flames, low, licking the bones without consuming them, as if fire were a domestic animal that had tamed itself to death.

At the center of the hall, the throne of Freyja. She, the goddess and queen of her realm.

It was not a throne in the human sense of the word. It was a mass of bones and hardened blood, of horns and claws and pieces of forgotten worlds. The arms of the throne were two ribs of a god with no name. The backrest was made of skulls interlocked like precious stones. The cushion was of human skin, still soft, still warm.

On the throne, Freyja sat.

The goddess of war, seduction, and death. She who chose the warriors for Valhalla and who had shed golden tears for her Gunnr and had burned alive her daughter who had allied herself with Loki. Her hair was a cascade of copper and blood. Her eyes were two pools of dark honey, and her body was wrapped in a cloak of falcon feathers that seemed made of frozen fire.

In her hand, a chalice of curved horns. Horns of an animal that no longer existed, inlaid with threads of gold and silver, intertwined with threads of fate.

She drank. The wine was dark as blood. It flowed slowly down her throat, like lava cooling, like a secret revealing itself.

Her eyes watched Gunnr as her free hand gripped the dagger of black coral wrapped around her fleshy thigh, forbidden to the eyes of the realm's servants.

---

Gunnr was hanging from the ceiling.

Not with a rope. With barbed wire.

She had wrapped the wire around the man's throat like a collar, then pulled him up, slowly, as if lifting a trophy. The barbed wire had dug into his skin, cut the blood vessels, lodged between the vertebrae of his neck like a hand that didn't want to let go.

The man was still alive. His eyes were wide open, full of terror, tears, blood. His body convulsed, trying to breathe, but the barbed wire cut his throat every time he tried to inhale.

Blood flowed down his bare chest, down his legs, to the floor. A dark puddle spread slowly, like a stain spreading on a fabric that can no longer be cleaned.

His hands were tied behind his back with more barbed wire. The barbs had dug into his wrists, palms, between his fingers. His feet dangled, and with every spasm the barbed wire tightened harder, sinking deeper into his flesh.

His mouth was open. But no sound came out. Only a hiss, like a wounded animal that no longer has the strength to scream.

Gunnr watched him from above. The Valkyrie of the Black Sea was tall, slender, and seductive, with hair falling like a curtain around her face. Her eyes were not eyes. They were wells of darkness. Her body was wrapped in a cloak black as night, and in her hand she held the barbed wire, still taut, still tight.

There was no pity in her eyes. No anger. Only justice.

The thug had tried to abuse a servant. He had grabbed her by the hair, dragged her into a corner. He had believed no one would see him.

But Gunnr had seen him.

And now Gunnr was hanging him.

The barbed wire tightened one last time. The man let out a final breath, a wet, broken sound, like an air bubble escaping from a surrendering body. His body relaxed, but the wire kept him suspended, like a trophy, like a warning.

Gunnr let go of the wire. She tied it to an iron hook driven into the bone wall. The man remained suspended, blood still dripping, legs dangling, eyes staring at nothing.

She turned toward the throne.

Freyja looked at her. The horn chalice was still in her hand. The wine was still warm.

"It's all done, my Queen," said Gunnr. Her voice was low, like a distant rumble of thunder.

Freyja smiled. It was not a smile of joy. It was the smile of a goddess who knows that justice has been done.

"Well done," she said. Her voice was a velvet caress, but beneath it was steel. "My realm does not tolerate abuse. Take him to the walls. Let the crows tear him apart."

Gunnr nodded. Turned toward the body.

But before she could move, the air grew colder.

A mist began to form at the center of the hall.

It wasn't normal mist. It was thick, dense, pulsing. As if darkness itself had decided to take shape.

The mist thickened, rose, took form.

Two figures emerged.

Mia. The Valkyrie of the Moon.

Runa. The hybrid goddess.

Their bodies were wrapped in mist, as if they had been born from the night itself. Their eyes shone in the darkness — Mia with a lunar glow, Runa with two ignited rubies.

Freyja didn't move. The chalice was still in her hand. But her eyes had grown darker.

"Mia," she said. "Runa."

Her voice was calm, but beneath it was something. A shadow. An omen.

Mia took a step forward.

"Freyja. The Father of the Sea has arrived. The primordial void has shaped him."

Silence fell over the hall.

The horn chalice stopped halfway to Freyja's lips. The dark wine trembled slightly, as if even the liquid had heard those words.

Freyja set down the chalice.

"When?"

"Tonight. At the Lofoten. He emerged from the sea."

Runa stepped forward.

"There is a young Viking who is the direct heir of a dynasty of warriors. If the primordial void has him, he will be its blade."

The light in Freyja's eyes grew more intense.

"The primordial void has taken form… a form you know well, goddess of war."

It was not a question. It was a statement.

"Speak, keeper of Odin's ring," said Freyja.

"Goddess of war, you must go to Porto Silvae, to Rae's beach. She knows the truth," Mia replied. "Do it quickly."

Freyja left the hall and, as she headed toward her horse, she saw her Gunnr.

---

The valkyrie immolated the body of the executed man. She impaled it on an iron spike that jutted from the ground like an accusing finger.

Then she stepped back.

The body remained there. Suspended. Bloodied. Dead.

The wind changed. The sky darkened.

Then the sound.

A beat of wings. Hundreds. Thousands. Then more.

A flock of crows descended upon the walls. Coming from the ocean.

Black, glossy, hungry. They came from everywhere — from the night, from the sky, from every crack in the castle. They settled on the bones, settled on the body, settled everywhere.

Their wings filled the air with shadow. Their beaks sank into the man's flesh.

The body was devoured in silence.

Only the sound of beaks, of feathers, of tearing flesh.

The mist rose.

The crows took flight. A storm of death and darkness that rose from the walls and headed toward the beach of Porto Silvae.

---

Freyja rode to the beach in fury, and when she arrived, the goddess of the black sea was waiting for her, suspended on the waves at the shore.

"Queen of Ragnarök, I have no good news for you."

"Tell me, Rán…" Freyja's gaze grew dark.

"The Ginnungagap has taken form through the anguish of a father, through the pain of a rejected man… your husband Njord."

"There is no certainty that the world as you know it will survive his fury. But one thing is certain: if the young heir should choose the wrong side of the battle, the blood of your Gunnr will stain the ground."

Freyja felt those words like a blade piercing her chest.

"Njord…" Freyja whispered with contempt.

The goddess Rán withdrew into the waters. The sea became black as obsidian, and the goddess of war now had only to think of her beloved Gunnr.

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