Daughter of ash

When the wind howls through the fjords, the Norns spin their threads in silence.

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Chapter 1: The Girl and the Tree

The cold had a voice in Hjelmfjall.

It howled down the mountains, seeped through the thatch, and whispered warnings in the ears of those who still believed in omens. The old women muttered to each other that the ice had come too early this year. The skald spoke of frost giants stirring beneath the earth. But Eydis heard none of it-not truly. She was too busy listening to the tree.

It stood alone atop a bald hill just beyond the village-a twisted ash with silver-gray bark and roots that plunged into the rock like talons. They called it Gamallaska, the Old Ash. They said it had stood since before the gods walked Midgard, since before even the Norns spun the fates of men.

And it spoke to her.

Not in words-never words. But in pulses, in feelings. A shiver that was not from the wind. A heat behind the eyes that wasn't fever. A pull in her chest, like the tide dragging her heart to sea.

That morning, Eydis had crept from her mother's longhouse before the sun broke the horizon. The snow was ankle-deep and clean, untouched. The village dogs hadn't stirred, and neither had her younger brothers. Only the ravens watched her from the thatched rooftops, their eyes gleaming black as obsidian.

She didn't stop until she reached the ash.

Its roots cradled her as she sat, knees hugged to her chest, and waited.

For what, she wasn't sure.

Sometimes she dreamed of a voice-deep, cold, and endless-that spoke her name not as a command, but as a revelation.

Today, it came as a feeling. Urgent. Cold.

A storm was coming-not wind or snow, but something older. Something wrong.