The Blood of Vaetra

There are flames that come from sorrow. Flames that come from memory. Even flames that come from joy.

The Hunter's Fire

But some flames come from the hunt. From the moment the blade strikes the beast, and the blood boils before it spills.

Jón of Helgabyr knew this fire.

The Serpent's Dream

It called to him not through vision, but through dream. A dream of a serpent, vast and coiling, whose every scale burned like a forge. It hissed a name: Vaetra.

He awoke with blood on his lip, and the scent of fire that wasn't there.

The Eastern Journey

He followed the tale across seas—eastward, into lands where stone turns to sand, and heat rises not from fire, but the sun itself.

There, he found a village whose warriors bore tattoos of serpents along their arms.

"You don't find her," she said. "You find where she died."

The Sacred Canyon

They led him to a canyon, cracked and dark, where nothing grew but a single thorned vine. And among it—tiny fruits, red as heart-blood, pulsing faintly in the shade.

The Vision of Battle

He tasted one.

And the world spun.

He saw the battle. He heard the hiss. He felt the jaws close around a screaming sun.

And in that moment, he knew: this was her blood.

The Legacy of Fire

Vaetra had burned through the world once.

And where she fell, fire was born.

The Hunter's Feast

He harvested carefully, in silence.

Back in Helgabyr, he dried the fruit, powdered it fine, and let it settle deep in the stew's heart.

The warriors who tasted it that night gripped their blades tighter.

Their voices grew lower. Their movements, quicker.

They had been hunted once. But now...

They remembered how to hunt back.

For The Blood of Vaetra does not warm. It strikes.