For almost a year, I’ve been writing Runes of Wyrd. Today, I’m proud to bring its universe to life in a new way. Discover the game: 💙🤍 ---> https://runesofwyrd.com/ <--- 💙🤍 💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍 In the pic, from top left to bottom right - Loki - Hel - Min Shieldthrower - Mikal-Finnvard Arvast - Torstein Orrisson Album : https://suno.com/playlist/d3b85d17-41e5-4f6c-bfbc-4086191ed19e 💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍 Mikell stepped into the centre of the forge and placed the artefacts around the anvil. Beneath the red glow of Surtssmiðja, they seemed almost ordinary, as though their power had fallen asleep among forces far older than themselves. “Form a circle,” he instructed. “And whatever happens, do not try to resist what you feel.” Torstein tightened his grip around the haft of his axe. “That is reassuring. Perhaps you could also tell us that death will be quick.” Ash gave him a darkly amused look. “Nothing says it will be.” “Thank you. I prefer your way of offering reassurance.” Mikell ignored them with the ease of a man accustomed to letting others joke when they were afraid. He lifted his eyepatch, revealing Loki’s eye. The pupil immediately contracted, and a green light kindled within it, so bright that the runes carved into the forge began to appear one after another. They covered the walls, the anvil and even the ground beneath their feet. Some appeared to have been cut into the stone. Others floated beneath its surface, as though Muspellheim had tried to bury them but had never managed to make them disappear. “The borders between realms are not walls,” Mikell explained. “They are disagreements. To open a passage, we must convince two worlds that, for a single moment, they have something in common.” “Fire and ice?” Bruno asked. “Their desire to kill us should be enough,” Ash replied. She took the instrument from her back and ran her fingers across the strings. The first note was faint, nearly smothered by the rumbling of the forge. The second endured a little longer. By the third, the fire around them seemed to hesitate. Ash continued. There was nothing gentle about her melody. It advanced through low, sometimes discordant chords, like a lament that refused to become a funeral song. Yet beneath its apparent harshness, a rhythm began to emerge. The invisible blow of a hammer against an anvil. The beating of a heart beneath the ashes. Mikell raised one hand. The rings answered. Helena approached Johannes, whose body had stiffened at the first notes. His eyes had taken on the wild gleam she now knew all too well. Behind his human face, Sköll was growling, disturbed by a force he recognised without being able to name it. She placed her hands on either side of his face. “Look at me, Johannes.” His jaw tightened. “It is not me looking.” “Then let him look too.” Helena closed her eyes. Almost immediately, she felt the wolf’s fury hurl itself against her, immense and ancient, burdened with a hunger that belonged to no man. She did not try to smother it. She welcomed it with her own stubbornness, her fear of losing Bruno, her anger towards the gods and her almost unhealthy need to protect everyone she loved. Sköll did not grow calm because she was stronger than he was. He grew calm because he recognised in her a creature just as incapable of surrender. Ash’s music changed. Mikal-Finnvard placed one hand upon the burning stone. He should have pulled his fingers away, but the heat turned aside from him. Dark moss appeared within the cracks, soon followed by slender roots that spread around the anvil. In this realm where nothing grew, nature did not seek to defeat the fire. It merely forced it to make room. 💙🤍 𝐄𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 : >>> https://suno.com/song/fb1fa9ca-ec45-46d8-a3e9-0141a8981c44 <<< 💙🤍 💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍 [Loki] They call it fate when consequence arrives. They name it evil when the mirror comes alive. Look at them. Odin gave them silence, and they filled it with the sound of sharpening knives. He closed every doorway, severed every prayer, Gave them room to grow, but they poisoned the air. A second chance wrapped in a winter disguise, Still they crowned their hunger and they worshipped their lies. They blamed every god for the blood on the floor, Then forged new chains while demanding a war. King against jarl, faith against faith, Every hand on the thread, every mouth blaming fate. They want truth, but only truth they can own, Want a god on a leash and a world for a throne. Call themselves righteous while the innocent fall, Build a cage for the wolf, then tear down the wall. Oh, I love how they march with their banners held high, Each one swearing he knows why the others must die. No serpent deceived them, no trickster began it, I only held up the mirror, and humanity ran it. No hand from below, No curse from above, The lock knows their hatred, The key knows their love. Every promise they break, Every truth they distort, Makes the chain a little weaker, Makes the silence fall short. Festr mun slitna, en freki renna! Menn brjóta fjǫtra, menn kynda eld! Úlfr mun vakna, goðin munu falla! Ragnarǫk koma! Ragnarǫk koma! Break it... Name it freedom... Feed it... Name it truth... I have watched every soul bring excuses below, Every tyrant says peace while preparing the bow. Every coward wears honour like gold on his skin, Then arrives at my gates asking who let him in. You pretend to be kings, you pretend to be wise, You pretend to be wise! You pretend not to see through the smoke in your eyes. You pretend you are chosen, enlightened, awake, While the earth bears the weight of the idols you make. Sköll scattered your order, Hati darkened your hall, Yet your queen held the kingdom when the old rulers fell. So the chains tightened harder when courage took form, But mankind is patient in summoning storms. You will envy your neighbour, make virtue a brand, Turn belief into borders and blood into land. Fenrir needs no army, no worship, no throne, Only humans insisting the ruin is not their own. [Loki] Who fed the fear? [Hel] You did. [Loki] Who sharpened the blade? [Hel] You did. [Loki] Who begged for a god, then demanded he fade? [Hel] You did. [Loki] Who loosened the links while pretending to mend them? [Hel] You did. [Loki] Who fathered the wolf? You did not beget him. You became him!! Now they walk through the realms with their relics aligned, Chasing answers through fire, chasing ghosts through the mind. Every hero convinced that the path must be right, Though the doorway drinks memory and feeds on the light. At the Bridge they will witness the masks that they wear, Meet the selves they abandoned, the names buried there. Will they break from the cycle or tighten the noose? Will they learn what they are when there is no more excuse? Oh, my daughter, be still, let the little ones strive, They have never felt more dead while insisting they live. They will call the wolf monster, call his freedom a crime, Though they picked at his prison one fracture at a time. I need not corrupt them, their hunger is plenty, Give humans one future, they will shatter it into twenty. Odin offered them silence to choose what was true, Now the chains sing their answer, and Fenrir hears it too. Festr mun slitna, en freki renna! Menn brjóta fjǫtra, menn kynda eld! Úlfr mun vakna, goðin munu falla! Ragnarǫk koma! Ragnarǫk koma!
