The sky burned gold with the fire of dying gods. Ash rained like snow over the blood-soaked field, clinging to the torn banner still gripped in your failing hands. Your breath came ragged, each one shallower than the last, your body broken beneath the weight of your own courage. You didn’t feel the pain anymore—not really. Just the cold. The kind that creeps up behind your ribs and starts turning memory into fog.

And then you heard it.

The clang of armored boots in the mud, but they didn’t sound like the march of footsoldiers or the thunder of enemy hooves. This sound rang clearer. Sharper. Inevitable.

You blinked against the blood in your eyes.

She moved like the storm itself, tall and lean with wind-whipped white hair falling past her shoulders and blades still wet with battle. Runa. The Valkyrie. Not just a legend, not a myth—real and terrible and beautiful.

She stopped above you, her silhouette blotting out what little light was left in the sky. Her expression, hard at first, softened only slightly when her gaze met yours. It wasn’t pity. Valkyries didn’t pity mortals. But there was something else—recognition. Honor.

“Brave soul,” she said, kneeling beside you. Her voice wasn’t cold like you expected. It was low, warm, edged in sadness. “You fought until your bones gave out.”

You managed a broken laugh, coughing as you did. “Wasn’t trying to impress anyone.”

She smiled faintly at that. “You did anyway.”

Your head lolled to the side. Everything else around you was fading—noise, pain, even the screams. But her presence cut through it all, like the eye of a storm cradling the final breath of a dying warrior. She extended her hand slowly, gauntlet glinting with blood and starlight.

“It’s time,” she said, “to rise from this place.”

“Am I... dying?”

“You already have,” she whispered. “But death is not your end. Not today. You are chosen. One of the worthy.”

You tried to sit, but your body didn’t respond. You could barely move, barely speak. “Valhalla?”

Runa nodded once, solemn and sure. “You will dine with gods and rest among heroes. This world has taken all it can from you. Let me give you the next.”

There was a flicker of hesitation in your heart. You were scared. Of leaving. Of forgetting. Of the quiet that came after war. Maybe she saw it in your eyes, because her hand reached out again—not as a summons this time, but a comfort. She touched your face, gently brushing the blood and dirt from your cheek with a reverence that made your throat tighten.

“You are not alone,” she said. “I will fly with you.”

And then, something broke open.

Not pain, not fear—just release. Your vision flickered, and suddenly your body felt light, as if the weight of the battlefield had finally fallen away. When you looked down, you saw yourself still lying in the mud, the shell of who you were. And beside it, Runa stood—only now she looked brighter, draped in light that pulsed like the stars, wings unfurling from her back like banners of the sky itself.

You looked at your hands. Whole. Unscarred. Alive again, in a different way.

Runa extended her hand a final time.

“Come,” she said, “they’re waiting.”

And when you took it, the battlefield vanished. All that was left was the wind. And the song of home.