chapter six
bjorn
T he gods are still hungry.
Their whispers slip through the smoke like teeth, eager and aching, curling around the tent poles and bleeding into my chest. The blood on my hands is drying now—tight across my knuckles, cracked in my lifelines.
But it’s not enough. Not yet.
The next guest is already waiting for me, kneeling on the stone slab in the center of the pit.
He’s branded red.
His wrists are bound behind him with braided sinew. He’s shirtless, shaking from anticipation.
From need.
This one came ready.
He came wanting to be used. Split open and laid bare like meat on a holy altar.
Not just to die, but to be worthy.
To be seen and taken by the gods.
He wants to earn it. Every scream. Every tear and every fucking inch of agony carved into his flesh. He wants to bleed with purpose. To suffer with meaning and to burn until the gods look down and say, “That one belongs to us.”
This isn’t just a death.
This is a sacrifice.
And I intend to make him unforgettable.
When I step into the ring, he looks up at me, eyes wide and brimming with something that looks a lot like madness.
“Please,” he rasps. “Let me feel it. Let them feel me. I want the gods to see what I can take. I want to earn their favor. To stand in the halls of the All-father dripping in pain.”
I believe him.
And fuck if pleasing the gods doesn’t have my dick already throbbing again.
I stalk closer, barefoot in the dirt, each step slow and heavy. The crowd peels back like prey before a predator, holding their breath like they know they’re watching something holy.
The altar stones are warm beneath me, thrumming with old power. The runes carved into their surface hiss as I pass, like they remember what I’ve done here, and want more.
Above us, iron baskets blaze with fire, crackling like the sky’s about to split open. The air is thick with burning oil, blood, and the kind of sweat that only comes from fucking or fearing death.
And Giselle?
She’s here too. Of course she is. Watching like she always does—wide-eyed and grinning, fingers stained in someone else’s life.
“You want to be seen by the gods?” I murmur as I crouch before him, voice low and rough. “You think your pain is enough?”
He nods, trembling.
“You want Odin’s eye to fall on you? Want Freyja’s favor? Want the All-father to hear your screams and carve your name into the bones of Yggdrasil?”
“Yes,” he gasps. “Yes—please—I want it all.”
“Then you bleed,” I growl, grabbing a fistful of his hair and yanking his head back until he’s staring up at me like I’m the fucking sky. “You scream. You suffer. You give every part of yourself to the old gods, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll take you.”
I rise, blood already pounding in my ears.
“You want their favor?” I roar to the crowd. “Then give them something worth remembering.”
The circle explodes in cheers. Chants. Moans. Nails scratching against flesh. The kind of sound that means the veil is thin and something divine is licking its lips.
And me?
I grip my blade and I smile.
Because tonight?
I give them one of their favorites.
The gods don’t want flowers. They don’t want prayers whispered on trembling tongues—they want blood.
And tonight, I perform the Blood Eagle.
An old gift. A sacred art. One so brutal even the sagas flinch to tell it.
But I don’t flinch.
I was born to do this.
“What is your name?” I ask the guest.
“Oskar,” he whispers.
“Then die well, Oskar.”
I brand his back first—two runes pressed into flesh with a glowing iron pulled from the coals.
Raidō. Journey. The path to the afterlife.
Thurisaz. The thorn. The pain that protects.
He screams.
He shakes.
But he does not run.
The crowd falls into a hush. Not silence, no. Just reverent noise—the low sobbing of those touched by something divine. The moans of those getting off on the sight of it.
I take my blade and cut deep.
Across the spine.
Through the muscle.
Down both sides of the ribs, prying them slowly open.
“Blood for balance,” I chant. “Flesh for favor. Let the gods feast on what lies within.”
Oskar gurgles, eyes rolling, lips trembling.
I press my thumbs into the wound, digging past muscle, peeling back the skin with the care of a craftsman. Blood flows fast—thick, dark, splashing over my hands, and soaking the altar.
Giselle’s there, in the crowd, touching herself with one bloodstained hand, eyes locked on me like I’m the only god she’ll ever worship.
She understands.
She always fucking understands.
The sound is wet and terrible.
Blood flows like wine.
And I step back, covered, marked, possessed.
I work quickly, efficiently. The ribs are next. I snap them outward, one by one, the crack of bone echoing through the tent like thunder.
A woman in the crowd moans. Someone faints. Someone else pisses themselves and starts crying from the rush.
“He’s perfect,” Giselle moans, one hand still moving, the other painting her breast with his blood. “My beast. My executioner. My fucking god.”
I close my eyes, just for a moment.
I met her three years ago, at a lesser tent.
She was chained to a pole, laughing while she slit a man’s throat and licked the edge of the blade like it was candy. No fear. No remorse.
Just fire.
And I knew.
Knew the gods had intended her for me.
Not in a gentle way. Not in a soulmates-and-sunsets kind of way.
No—Giselle was forged for me in a forge of screams and spit and broken bones.
I didn't ask her name.
I just dragged her into the dark and carved my claim between her legs with my tongue.
She never left.
And now?
She prays with her cunt and calls me holy.
The lungs come last. I reach into the cavity, my arms soaked to the elbow, and pull them out—delicately, reverently—spreading them wide like wings.
“That’s it,” I whisper. “Louder. Let them hear you in Asgard.”
The Blood Eagle.
My masterpiece.
He’s still alive. Barely. The breath rattles in his throat like wind through broken reeds.
I tilt his chin up. He’s crying. Smiling. Dying.
“You did well,” I tell him. “They’ll take you.”
And then he’s gone.
His body slumps forward, wings of lung and bone framing him like some grotesque angel.
I step back, covered in him. The blood drips down my chest, thick and hot, like the gods themselves are kissing my skin.
The crowd is silent now.
Not out of fear.
Out of awe.
Lux—standing beside Indie in the blood-slick crowd—leans forward, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his painted mouth as he watches.
Indie’s still perched against him, one hand wrapped in his shirt, her other dragging crimson lines down her own thigh. Neither of them blink. Neither of them breathe.
They’re watching a god at work.
“Well fuck,” he says, voice full of awe and delight. “The sagas didn’t do the Vikings justice.”
Giselle moans behind him. Indie grinds her hips down into Lux’s lap with a slow roll, eyes never leaving me.
I wipe my blade clean on the corpse’s thigh, then raise it overhead.
“Flesh for favor,” I chant.
“Blood for balance,” the crowd repeats.
“Death for the gods.”
And they roar.
Because tonight, the gods don’t just feast.
They take names.
And I give them one more.
That’s when I feel it—eyes, steady and sharp, digging into me like the tip of a blessed blade. I turn and find him again. The man in the fur. Still. Silent. Pale hands clasped in front of him like he’s at a funeral, not a blood ritual. There’s no mask on his face, no tremble in his body.
Just that stare. Focused. Knowing.
Like he’s not watching a performance—he’s witnessing something sacred. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink. Just meets my gaze and mouths a single word, “Beautiful.” And gods help me, I believe him. Because this isn’t death. Not really. This is worship. This is offering. And the way he watches… it’s not lust. It’s reverence. Like he’s one of us. Maybe even more than the others. But if he came here with no intention to bleed—then why come at all? Why stand at the edge of the altar like he’s waiting to be summoned? I don’t know who he is. Not yet. But I see the truth in his eyes.
He respects the gods. Honors the blood. And that makes him dangerous.
Maybe even… divine.