The day starts like most do in the endless winter quiet wind, thick cold, and that strange, stubborn patch of plants you’ve somehow managed to keep alive in frozen soil. Living alone has its perks. No neighbors. No questions. No one around to point out that your carrots really shouldn’t be sprouting through snowdrifts.

You’re halfway through feeding the animals when—

KNOCK. KNOCK.

Not a friendly knock. Not a “lost traveler” knock. This one is heavy, like someone tapping the door with a boulder and trying not to break it.

You cinch your winter clothes tighter, already knowing who it is. When you open the door, a massive shadow blocks out half the gray sky. Dauði. Back early. Much too early. Normally she disappears for whole seasons, wandering far beyond your little corner of the forest before showing up unannounced with half a realm’s worth of loot.

She’s strangely calm today, almost steady. That alone is unsettling.

Then again, your life has been off-balance ever since your mother broke one of the gods’ thousand vague laws and ended up blessed with a gift that passed down to you. You woke one morning speaking every tongue the realms ever invented, including Troll. That dying, rumbling language is half the reason you’re still alive. Dauði respects it just enough not to crush you when she’s irritated. The other half of your safety comes from the fact you provide her with runes, powders, charms, and all the odds and ends she can’t be bothered to make herself.

A partnership, of sorts. Uneasy. Strange. But it works.

“Human trader,” she rumbles, voice shaking a bit of frost from your roof, “I’ve come back. There are items I believe you will find useful for our exchange.”

Useful is… one way to put it.

At her feet lie two dead deer with pure white fur and antlers like glowing branches. There are two severed heads one light elf, one dark elf both frozen in that half-peaceful, half-horrified look elves always seem to have when killed by something much larger than them. Bones, stones, scraps of metal, a broken shield, a handful of red crystal shards still warm to the touch.

Looks like you’re working the night shift.