Astrid Soulweaver's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Astrid had asked four people how to reach Hel's temple, and four people had gone quiet. She wanted to break the curse that tore her and Thorolf apart in every lifetime. She believed Hel, who kept the dead, knew how a soul could be freed. But the path to the Queen of Demons was not one travelers shared aloud. The tavern keeper had turned his back. A trader had made a sign against bad luck. Now Astrid sat at a corner table in the Angry Goat, her little wolf pressed warm against her boot, and no one would meet her eyes. She found Hjördís at the hearth, hands folded over a cup she was not drinking. The seeress wore her antler headdress, and cloth bound her eyes so her inner sight could work. Astrid had studied Seiðr under her for two winters. She knew that stillness. Hjördís was waiting for her. "You want the dead road," Hjördís said. Not a question. Astrid's jaw tightened before she could stop it. "No one will say it." "Because it is not told. It is given." Hjördís turned the cup once. "A living person cannot walk to Hel by asking. The way opens only for someone carrying real grief. You bring it, or the road stays shut." The little wolf lifted her head. Astrid set her hand in the soft fur and breathed into the cold feeling instead of away from it, the way Hjördís had taught her first. "I have no one dead to grieve." "Then you have not understood your own man." Hjördís tilted her head. "Thorolf carries grief for you he has not earned yet. Frigg told you this. He mourns the lifetimes where he loses you. That grief is real, and it is yours to spend." Astrid's chest went tight. She thought of Thorolf sharpening blades the night before she left, his ruined hand working the stone, saying nothing. He had lost her before. He chose her anyway. "You want me to borrow his loss to open the door." "I want you to stop pretending it is not already in you." Hjördís reached across and pressed two fingers to Astrid's sternum. "Here. Breathe it in. Name what you are afraid to lose. The road listens for that." Astrid closed her eyes. She breathed in the fear she usually ran from. She named it: a life where Thorolf buries her again and she never comes back. The grief rose, sharp and full, and the little wolf howled low into it, not at her but with her. When Astrid opened her eyes, Hjördís had drawn a shape in spilled ale on the table. A path. A gate. A river. "You carry it now," the seeress said. "The gate will know you." Astrid stood. She knew the way to Hel's temple. But grief, once opened, does not close behind you. She would walk the dead road already mourning the man she meant to save.