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 beworthy.
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.”
