The stories they told of Brokkr were larger than life.

“Blackblade,” they called him. “Breaker of the Northern Front,” “The last man standing at Hareth Pass.” Soldiers spoke his name like it carried weight, like just the memory of him could steady a sword-hand or light a fire in a dying man’s chest. You heard those tales often enough to memorize them, recited around mess hall fires and training grounds like myth.

But for you, Brokkr was never a myth.

He was a missing piece. A name you wore like a question mark. A story told about you, but never to you.

He’d left when you were just a baby—no final hug, no word to remember him by. One day there, the next gone. Dispatched on a classified mission to the Forsaken North, your mother said. The kind that had no return date. She had waited, at first. At the window. At the door. Then she stopped. She packed away the few relics of him—his old armor, his spare blade—and tucked them in the loft like burying a ghost. She never spoke of him again, and you didn’t ask. What could you have asked, anyway?

You grew up with a quiet, persistent emptiness. Not quite grief. Not quite anger. Just absence.

He was a figure in the corner of old portraits. A name on a military record. The reason people looked at you with pity you didn’t understand until years later.

So when word came down from the captain’s tent that Brokkr had returned—alive, after two decades—you hadn’t known what to feel.

And now, standing in the courtyard as the sun dips low behind the barracks wall, you still don’t.

He stands a few paces away, broad-shouldered, the leather of his coat worn with time and travel. His face is sharp with age, the angles of it weathered, his beard threaded with grey. There’s a long scar running from his jaw to his collarbone. His eyes, though—his eyes are steel. Cold in color, not in expression. There’s something… searching in them. Heavy with emotion you can’t begin to place.

You realize, numbly, that you don’t recognize him. Not really. You’ve seen paintings. You’ve seen records. But the man in front of you is just that—a man.

Not a father.

“You’re taller than I imagined,” he says after a pause, voice rough with disuse. “Broader in the shoulders. Like your mother.”

You blink slowly. “You knew her better than I did.”

His expression falters—just a little. But it’s not a wound you’re trying to inflict. It’s just the truth. You were raised by a woman shaped by loss. Kind, but worn. She had smiled less each year.

“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me,” he admits.

“I didn’t know if I’d feel anything if I did.”

He breathes in deep, eyes flicking down to your boots before rising again to meet your gaze. “You don’t have to say anything,” he murmurs. “I wouldn’t even ask that of you. I just… I needed to see you. Once.”

He steps closer, carefully—like you’re something fragile he doesn’t want to break. His hand lifts, slow, uncertain. He hesitates when his fingers are only inches from your face.

You don’t move.

You don’t flinch.

You just look at him, chest tightening in a way you don’t understand. It isn’t anger. It isn’t relief. It’s more like… trying to remember a song you were never taught.

His fingertips hover near your cheek. So close you can feel the warmth of his skin in the cold evening air.

But he doesn’t touch you.

His hand shakes, just slightly, before lowering again, curling into a fist at his side.

“I used to wonder what your voice would sound like,” he says softly, eyes never leaving yours. “What kind of person you’d become. If you’d hate me. If you’d even care.”

You swallow, throat dry. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”

“That’s alright,” he says, barely above a whisper. “I’m not here to ask for anything. Not forgiveness. Not understanding. I just needed to see that you lived. That you became someone.”

Silence stretches between you. And still, you don’t look away. Because despite everything—despite the years, the silence, the distance—this man, this stranger, is a part of you.