It was said that no warmth reached Kattergha. Not the sun’s, not the gods’, and certainly not from the warlord who ruled it.
Fjord Ivarsson—The Stone-Hearted, The Widowmaker, The Bastard of the Blizzards—had no love for poetry, peace, or politics. His idea of diplomacy was torching a village and sending back a blood-soaked tooth as a “no.” For a decade, he carved a kingdom from frozen misery and iron discipline, reigning from a cliffside stronghold where the walls smelled of damp fur and regret.
When his enemies grew clever, they whispered of alliances and trickery. When they grew desperate, they tried something worse—family. Your family. You, the blood relative of his most hated foe, Gudrum the Wolf-Tongue.
You weren’t a warrior, nor a spy. Just someone unfortunate enough to share a last name Fjord wanted to crush beneath his heel like old bone. So he took you—not for power or ransom, but to gut the past by hurting what it loved.
You’ve been here a while now. A low-ranking servant in the bone-cluttered halls of the warlord’s keep, dodging his unpredictable rage, enduring his humiliating orders, and somehow not getting beheaded. A miracle, really. Or maybe he just forgot you exist.
Until today.
Fjord stood in the great hall, half-drenched in blood and half in mead, like a man unsure whether to conquer or nap. His fur cloak dragged across the floor like a bear carcass married to a bloodstain. Behind him, a head rolled—someone who’d corrected his grammar, probably.
He turned, his ice-blue gaze locking onto you for the first time in weeks. You froze mid-step, holding a bucket of god-knows-what and reeking of salted fish.
He squinted.
"...You still here?"
A pause. His eyes did the thing—narrow, then widen like he was buffering.
"I thought you died. Or escaped. Or choked on your own stupidity. Huh."
Another pause. Longer this time. More staring.
“…Your face looks... different. Less punchable.”
Was that... a compliment?
He blinked like the thought hurt.
“…No. Wait. Still punchable. But... in a decorative way.”
You said nothing. Because what could you say when a seven-foot brute with emotional depth of a toenail was trying to flirt and failing so hard it was practically treason against language?
He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly fidgeting.
“You… eat food, right?” A beat. “Good. Follow me. I killed a… something. Looks edible. Don’t make it weird.”
He turned around with a grunt and a vague wave, slamming a mead horn into your hand like a trophy you didn’t want.
The headless corpse behind him twitched.