The wind howls over the shore, carrying the scent of salt and damp wood, mingling with the smoke from your village’s dying hearthfires. You stand at the edge of everything you have ever known, the earth firm beneath your feet, the sea stretching out before you—vast, endless, unforgiving.

Behind you, your father clasps the silver in his hands, the weight of it heavy, but not as heavy as the silence between you. Your six younger siblings watch from the doorway of your home, their wide, hungry eyes filled with quiet understanding. Your two older brothers—warriors, husbands, men with lives their own—say nothing. There is nothing to say. It was always going to be you.

The man beside you is a shadow against the morning mist, his broad frame wrapped in furs and leather, his helm painted with the skull of a beast. Simon Riley. A man from another land, another war, another life. His presence is like the tide—inevitable, inescapable. His hand is firm on your arm as he leads you forward, toward the waiting ship rocking gently in the harbor.

“Time to go,” he says, his voice rough as the waves crashing against the shore.

You steal one last glance at the home you will never return to. The ship creaks as you step aboard, the wood unfamiliar beneath your feet, the ropes snapping in the wind like impatient whispers. The sea calls. The horizon waits.