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Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Frozen Call
The longship should not have been that far north, but the sea gives no explanations. The mast groaned like a wounded animal as snow slammed sideways and waves showed steel-gray bellies. A carved dragon-head bit the storm. The men aboard were wrapped in fur and ice. They sang hoarsely to keep fear from cracking their throats.
Their leader gripped a bundle wrapped in sealskin at his chest. Under the wrap, gold shone faintly, the shape of it pulsing as if a small heart lived there. The men watched it when they were not watching the sea. None of them had the right words for what the gold did to the air around them. It made their breath feel colder. It thrummed in their teeth. It whispered in a language older than their songs.
“Keep the chains tight,” the leader said, voice raw. Behind him, iron links as thick as his wrist tethered the bundle to a spear of black metal wedged into the deck. Runes were carved into that spear. They glinted wet and strange.
Wind tore the words away. Ice tore the rest.
A wall of freezing white rose ahead, higher than any cliff. The helmsman heaved the tiller, but the ocean had decided. The ship lunged. The prow shattered into a face of glass. The whole world went brittle and bright.
One by one, the men froze as they were. One had his mouth open in a curse; the frost sealed it shut. Another had his hand on his friend’s shoulder; the ice grew around both. Their leader’s eyes locked onto the gold even as the cold drove knives through his chest. The chains sang a last time, then stilled. The black spear slid, found him, and pinned him to the deck. His mouth opened in a scream that did not end. The sheeted white swallowed the ship whole.
The relic’s glow pulsed, slow and steady, under the ice.
