MEMORY START

I. Smoke and Song

The fire cracked in the longhouse hearth, warm against the chill of English night. Ravens croaked from the rafters, black shapes shifting above the banners of Ravensthorpe.

I sat with mead in hand, watching the flames dance. They whispered like the voices of old skalds, telling stories older than our bones.

Sigurd had gone to sleep, still muttering of Odin and Valhalla, of bloodlines and destiny. I should have followed him to rest. Yet my mind would not still.

My name is Eivor Wolf-Kissed, child of battle and storm. I have seen kings kneel and gods die. I have stood in Asgard’s golden halls and watched them crumble into memory.

And yet — for all I have done, for all I have seen — I no longer know what is true.

Was it the gods I saw in that shining realm? Or echoes of another age, older than even Odin’s name?

What if every myth we tell is only the shadow of something forgotten — something too bright for our eyes?

The skalds call me hero.
But I know better.
I am only a teller of myths that remember me.

II. The Stranger

It began when a man came to Ravensthorpe — cloaked in rags, his face half-hidden, his eyes pale as frost. He spoke with an accent not of these shores.

“You are Eivor Wolf-Kissed,” he said. “The one who walks between worlds.”

“You’ve heard too many mead-tales,” I replied. “What is it you seek?”

He reached into his cloak and pulled out a fragment — a shard of metal, etched with runes that pulsed faintly blue in the firelight.

“This was found in the ruins near Stonehenge,” he said. “When the light touched it, it sang. The men who heard it said it spoke of gods.”

The shard thrummed as if alive. I felt something stir inside me — that same hum I’d known in Asgard’s visions, when Odin’s voice whispered through my skull.

“A myth,” I said carefully.

“Perhaps,” he smiled. “Or proof.”

He asked me to come to the stones with him — to see what the shard would show. Against my better sense, I agreed.

For I am not only a fighter. I am a seeker. And the world is never silent to those who listen.

III. Stones of the Old Gods

We rode at dawn, through mist and frost, until the standing stones rose from the fog like a circle of sleeping giants.

The stranger knelt beside one of them and pressed the shard to the stone. A hum filled the air — deep, resonant, older than thunder. The stones began to glow, their carvings burning with pale fire.

Then light erupted — not the soft dawn-light of the sun, but a column of pure brilliance that tore the air open.

I staggered back, hand on my axe, heart hammering.

“By the Norns…” I whispered. “What trick is this?”

The stranger didn’t answer. He was transfixed, staring into the light.

Then the world shifted.

The grass beneath my boots vanished. The stones melted into glass and gold. The sky became a vault of swirling aurora.

And in that impossible glow, I saw him.

IV. The Allfather’s Shadow

Odin stood before me — tall, cloaked, his one eye bright as the sun, the other dark as winter night.

“Eivor,” he said, his voice the crack of ice across the fjord. “You return to me.”

“This is not Asgard,” I said. “And you are no god.”

He laughed softly. “Still you deny what you are. Still you fight the truth.”

“Truth?” I spat. “You speak of truth, yet all your words are lies dressed as destiny.”

He stepped closer, and for a moment, his face shifted — not a god’s, but something older. A being of light and shadow, neither man nor spirit. His voice deepened.

“You were not made for belief. You were made to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“That every myth is a memory of power lost. You walk the border between faith and fact. That is your curse, Wolf-Kissed — and your gift.”

The light around him pulsed, and for an instant, I saw a machine — vast, alive, and ancient, hidden beneath the stone.

Then the world shattered.

V. The Broken Field

I woke on the ground beside the circle, the shard cold and dead beside me. The stranger was gone.

But the air still hummed, faintly, as if the world remembered what it had just shown me.

I returned to Ravensthorpe with the shard in hand. Hytham saw it first — his Hidden One’s eyes sharp as a raven’s.

“This is no relic of the gods,” he said, turning it over. “The Order once sought such fragments. They called them devices of the First Ones.”

“The same beings your Creed says enslaved mankind?”

He nodded grimly. “A myth, perhaps — but one rooted in truth.”

I laughed without humor. “Then perhaps every myth is.”

Basim entered then, silent as a shadow. His gaze lingered on the shard too long.

“Where did you find this?”

“Stonehenge.”

He smiled, faint and strange. “Of course.”

Something in his tone chilled me.

VI. The Seer’s Warning

That night, I went to Valka. Her hut smelled of sage and smoke, her eyes heavy with visions.

“You’ve touched the old fire again,” she murmured. “I smell its echo on you.”

“I saw him again,” I said. “Odin. Or something wearing his shape.”

“And you still do not understand,” she whispered. “These visions are not gifts — they are burdens. The gods are not gods, Eivor. They are stories that refuse to die.”

“Then what am I?” I asked.

She smiled sadly. “A story that learns it is being told.”

Her words stayed with me long after I left.

VII. The Beast of the Moors

Weeks later, rumors reached us of a creature haunting the wetlands north of Gloucester — a beast with eyes of fire and a voice like thunder.

Some said it was Fenrir reborn. Others, a demon sent by Christians to curse the old faith.

I went to see for myself.

The moor was a graveyard of fog and frost. I found tracks — too large for any wolf. Claw marks gouged deep into the earth.

At dusk, it came.

A shape vast and shimmering, part flesh, part light. Its eyes glowed blue, its form shifting — not fur, but metal. Not beast, but construct.

An Isu guardian — or the myth that became one.

It lunged. I dodged, rolling through the mud, axe drawn. Steel met light, and sparks flew like stars. Every blow sang, not with rage, but with memory.

As I struck its heart, I felt a pulse — the same hum from the shard.

And then… I saw.

VIII. The Memory Beneath the Myth

Visions poured through me — cities of glass and fire, beings of light walking among men, their words shaping worlds.

One stood apart — the same figure I had seen as Odin.

“They called us gods,” the voice said. “We were not. We were builders of stories. Our power became their worship, our science their sorcery. Myth was born of misunderstanding.”

The images shifted — collapse, war, fire swallowing sky.

“We made the humans remember us. Not for glory, but for warning. Yet even memory becomes myth… and myth becomes chain.”

When the light faded, I stood alone. The beast was gone. Only a shattered fragment remained where it had fallen — another shard, twin to the first.

I gathered it, heart heavy.

If the gods were not gods… then what were we worshiping?

IX. The Whispering Shards

Back in Ravensthorpe, I placed both shards upon the table. They pulsed faintly, then hummed together — harmonizing.

Hytham leaned close. “They’re resonating. As if… communicating.”

“With what?”

“Each other. Or something greater.”

Basim watched silently from the shadows, his eyes glinting like gold.

“Perhaps,” he said softly, “they are remembering themselves.”

That night, the shards glowed brighter, their hum rising until it filled the longhouse. When I touched them, light swallowed everything.

X. The Builder’s Dream

I stood in a vast hall of glass and mist — not Asgard, not Midgard. A place between.

Figures surrounded me — beings of light and code, their forms shifting, their voices layered.

“Welcome, Eivor,” one said. “You stand in the remnants of Yggdrasil — the network that binds memory to myth.”

“The World Tree,” I breathed.

“Your ancestors called it that. We called it something else — a lattice of thought, built to preserve what we could not live to keep.”

“And Odin?” I asked.

“He was one of us. A creator of myths to anchor his mind. You carry his echo.”

“His echo,” I repeated. “Not his soul?”

“Souls are myths too,” the voice said gently. “Stories men tell to give weight to the spark inside them.”

The hall trembled. The figures began to fade.

“Remember this, Wolf-Kissed,” the voice said. “Myth is not falsehood. It is the truth told sideways.”

Then the world dissolved.

XI. Fire and Frost

I awoke to chaos. The shards burned red-hot, the air shaking with their power. Hytham shouted for me to drop them.

Basim stood motionless, eyes fixed on the glow.

“They are awake,” he murmured.

“What are they doing?” I cried.

“Calling home,” he said — and smiled.

The shards fused, forming a single disk of light. It pulsed once — and then shot into the sky like a thrown spear.

A moment later, silence.

The stars above shimmered strangely, as if something vast had stirred beyond them.

XII. The Last Skald

In the weeks that followed, the land grew restless. Strange lights in the north. Dreams that bled into waking.

Valka said the world’s weave had been touched. Hytham feared the Order would seek the truth I had found.

Basim… disappeared.

I spent long nights alone, thinking of what I’d seen.

The gods were not gods.
The myths were not lies.
They were memories — stories woven to keep the truth alive long after the world forgot the language of machines and stars.

And we, the living, are their storytellers. Their legacy. Their proof.

XIII. Epilogue: The Weave of Words

Years later, when my hair turned to frost and my blade to rust, I sat again by the fire, telling this story to the young.

They listened wide-eyed, their hearts full of wonder and belief.

“So the gods were real?” they asked.

“As real as you and I,” I said. “But not as you think. They lived, and fell, and left us their echoes. And we, fools that we are, mistook those echoes for eternity.”

One child frowned. “Then why tell the tales at all?”

I smiled. “Because truth without story is cold. And story without truth is hollow. The world needs both.”

The fire crackled. The night deepened.

I raised my cup to the stars.

“Here’s to myth,” I whispered. “The bridge between what was and what we choose to remember.”

And somewhere far above, I swear, I heard the faintest hum — the old voice of the world tree singing in the dark.

Requiescat in pace.

MEMORY END