—If you want to see as I do, then look beyond what you are blind to.
The Hardangerfjord shimmered under a dawn sky, its waters a glassy expanse that held the faint blush of morning light. The air was sharp with salt and kelp, threaded with the earth-y whisper of pine from the hills cradling the fjord near Bergen.
Ragnar sat at the bow of a weathered båtfjord, the small boat swaying gently while its planks creaked like a lullaby half-remembered. His hands were clenched around a fishing rod, the wood cold against his mittened fingers, but his grip was slack, his grey eyes unfocused, staring through the water as if it held some kind of secret.
A strange weight pressed against his mind, a dissonance that made the world feel like an old VCR, fraying at the edges.
The line tugged sharply, the rod jerking in his hands, but Ragnar didn't react. A cod broke the surface, its scales glinting like silver coins before it slipped free, vanishing into the depths.
"Canute!" Einar's voice cut through the haze, like a hearth fire snapping against the cold. "You're letting the fiskelykke slip away, gutt. Wake up!"
Ragnar—Canute blinked, his breath catching as the world snapped into focus.
The fjord, the boat, his father's ever-glowing face—Einar, a broad-shouldered man, his hazel eyes crinkled with concern beneath a knitted cap. For a fleeting moment, a name flickered in Canute's mind—Ragnar—and with it, a vision of a windswept village, stone houses, and a woman's voice calling him by another name.
His heart stuttered, the rod nearly slipping from his grasp, but Einar's hand steadied his shoulder, anchoring him to the present.
"You alright, min sønn?" Einar asked, his Bergen dialect softening the edges of his words. He leaned forward, the fjøl between them cluttered with a knife, bait, and a thermos of kaffe, its steam curling into the chill air.
"Is this you…dad?"
He merely tilted his head in confusion. Canute shook his head, forcing a smile that felt brittle. "Nothing. Was just… daydreaming." He tightened his grip on the rod, the cold wool of his votter grounding him as he pushed the strange name—Ragnar—into the empty space in the back of his mind, burying it.
After all, it felt like a dream. But this…this was real: the fjord, the boat, his father. This was home. He…was home.
Einar chuckled, the sound rolling over the water like a stone smoothed by the tide. "Daydreaming's no good when the cod's biting. Your mamma'd have my head if we came back with nothing but stories." He adjusted his own line, his movements deftly and practiced—a ritual Canute had watched since he was small enough to fit in Einar's lap.
The mention of his mother, Ingrid, sent a very familiar pang through Canute's chest, sharp as a hook catching flesh. He glanced at the distant slopes of Ulvik, where bare apple trees stood firm and tall against the autumn sky.
Ingrid had loved those orchards. But she was gone, lost to a storm-slicked road, a car that skidded too fast because she'd rushed home—for him. Because he'd cried, thrown a tantrum over a forgotten toy. The guilt was a stone in his gut, that resurfaced only when he'd come to fish—it was painful, but necessary—a bittersweet way of remembering her and not completely losing her memory, even though her features felt like something he'd seen in a fever dream.
Einar's gaze softened, as if he could see the shadow crossing Canute's face. "You've got that look again," he said, setting his rod aside. The boat rocked gently as he leaned closer. "What's weighing you down, Canute?"
Canute's fingers tightened around the rod, the wood biting into his palms. "It's mom…mamma," he said at last, his voice barely above a whisper, swallowed by the wind. "That night… maybe she'd still be here. Help us catch some cod, salmon maybe…"
Einar's expression stilled, his eyes darkening with a quiet sorrow. He shifted closer, the boat creaking under his weight, and placed a calloused hand on Canute's knee. "Look at me, min sønn," he said, his tone firm but warm, like the wool of the votter he'd knitted for Canute last winter. "You listen now."
Canute lifted his eyes, meeting his father's gaze. Einar's face was weathered, etched with lines of so many laughter and losses, but his eyes held only love, steady as the mountains framing the fjord. "It was never your fault," Einar said, his words like stones laid to build a bridge over Canute's guilt. "Your mamma loved you more than the stars love the night. She'd have raced home through a hundred storms, not because you cried, but because you were her everything. That's who she was, Canute. Not a choice you made, not a tantrum. The road took her, not you."
Tears stung Canute's eyes. "But…but it was selfish," he whispered, the confession breaking free. "I screamed for her to come back, for a stupid toy. If I'd just been quiet, dad, if I'd been better—"
Einar's hand tightened on Canute's knee, a tether against the tide of grief. "You were a child," he said, his voice soft, like the oak by their cabin that stood through every storm. "Children cry, they want, they feel. That's no sin, gutt. Your mamma's love wasn't measured by your tears. She'd have hated to see you carry this weight. You're not to blame. You hear me?"
He leaned into his father's touch, the warmth of Einar's presence a balm against the ache in his chest.
The sight of white haired woman danced in front of him, and suddenly, his heart skipped a beat. "I miss her," he said as his voice broke.
"I miss her too," Einar murmured, his own voice thick, his eyes glistening in the dawn light. "Every day, Canute. But she's with us." He pointed a finger at his heart and pushed it until Canute winced. "Inside you. In the way you think, the way you strive for a better tomorrow. She'd be so proud of you, min sønn."
Canute wiped his eyes with his sleeve and let out a shaky laugh. "You always know what to say, dad. How do you do that?"
Einar's smile was soft, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Years of loving you," he said simply, ruffling Canute's hair, a gesture that felt like home, like countless mornings by the fjord. "Now, let's catch some torsk before the sun laughs at us. Your mamma'd never let us live it down if we came home empty-handed."
They returned to their lines, the silence between them warm. Oddly warm.
The fjord sparkled, its depths hiding cod and saithe. Canute watched his father, the way Einar's hands moved with quiet confidence and the way his eyes lit up with every glance. This man, who'd carried his own sorrow yet never let it dim his light, was Canute's anchor, his beacon through the fog of loss and uncertainty.
Hours passed and the empty boat was soon filled with cod.
Looking at their rewards, Einar smiled and started to hum a viser, an old tune about the seas, and Canute joined in, his voice unsteady but earnest. They laughed when a fish slipped from Canute's grasp, splashing them both, and shared sips of kaffe from the thermos.
The mountains stood guard, the fjord endless, and for a moment, Canute felt whole, as if the world could never break again. As if the world had never broken around him.
But a sharp and insistent prickle stirred at the edge of his mind like a splinter beneath the skin.
The sun hung too still, the water too smooth, the air too warm for an autumn fjord.
The name—Ragnar—flickered again, bringing with it a flash of stone houses, a woman's voice, a tree vast as the sky. Canute's smile faltered, his gaze drifting to Einar, who watched him with an intensity that felt… so right that it felt wrong.
"Dad," Canute said, his voice barely audible over the grinding of his teeth, a question forming like ice on the water. "You're not real, are you?"
Einar's smile didn't waver, but it grew sharper, too perfect, like a blade honed to a gleam. He extended his arms to the side."I'm here, Canute," he said, his voice warm but layered with a hum that just didn't feel human. "Your dad, right here, like always."
"My father…" Canute looked down and chuckled to himself. "...was never a very expressive man. He was kind, and warm, and lovely and so, so honorable. He loved me a lot, I know that." Canute grabbed one of the cods and slipped it back into the water. "But he struggled with expressing himself, his real feelings. Mom used to complain about it all the time, telling me to not be like you—my father, my real father."
Canute looked at him, and his eyes glowed red. "You are not real. None of this is."
Valknaarrrrrr— A shadow of a whisper ringed in his ears.
Suddenly, Einar's mouth twitched, the smile stretching wide until the sides of his lips tore open and his smile extended to his ears—literally. His hazel eyes gleamed, liquid and strange, like the fjord turned to ink. "I'm your father," he said, but the words warped, a chorus of a hundred thousand whispers slithering beneath them. The fjord's water rippled, the water blackening, the mountains dissolving into shadow.
Suddenly, his arms extended and held Canute by his shoulders. "I am your father, come to me!" He rasped as he got closer, rows upon rows of shark-like teeth reaching out for Canute from his ripped mouth.
Einar's mouth covered his head as he readied to bite Canute's head whole.
Canute's lips quivered, fear pushed back into acceptance as he gulped and then…his lips curled into a smile. "See? You were not my father."
And then, the world dissolved. The fjord collapsed like glass, fragments of sky and water spiraling into a swirling void.
The ground beneath his feet vanished and then he was falling. Ragnar felt like he had travelled through a hundred or so fragile membranes of water before finally landing on his feet.
Blinking his eyes repeatedly and looking through the haze of unshed tears, he saw that he was standing in a library, its shelves stretching into the distance like the ribs of some ancient, eldritch horror.
The space in front of him was dominated by a desk, and behind it sat a sickly old man, his frame frail beneath a tattered robe. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken yet bright with a feverish wisdom, his smile crooked but strangely kind. One of his eyes was covered by an eyepatch.
The one seeing eye felt like the cosmos itself, with a white iris floating inside a sea of different galaxies. His long white beard reached to his chest as he ran his fingers through them.
Two ravens sat on both shoulders, their fur and eyes shiny.
"All is not lost, it seems," he rasped, his voice like parchment crumbling under touch. "You saw through the veil, Wanderer. Few do."
Canute's chest heaved, his hands trembling as he rose.
The air had the scent of old leather and dust.
"You're the god who chose me…" Ragnar mumbled.
"He" tilted his head, the ravens shifting restlessly, their claws clicking against the god's cloak. "Real or not, it was your heart's desire," he said weakly. "To see him, to talk to him, to ease your little self-imposed guilt. And yet you turned away. Why?"
Ragnar's hands clenched into fists, his nails biting into his palms. "Because it wasn't him," he said, his voice steady despite the tremor in his chest. "That life, that… thing. It wasn't my father."
'His' lips curved into a faint, bittersweet smile, the expression both wise and weary. "Wisdom is a heavy burden, Valknarr," he said. "To see what is, rather than what you wish to be, is a rare gift. Over multiple millennia, I have watched the few hundred souls I took interest in disappoint me by lingering in their ideal worlds inside Yggdrasil's roots, content to drown in dreams of what was or what might have been. They build castles of light and call them home, never questioning the fragility of their walls. But you…" He leaned over his desk. "You chose truth over comfort."
Ragnar's chest ached, but there was a clarity in it. "What happens now?"
'He' intoned, 'his' voice a grinding rasp, like iron dragged over stone, "you passed the small trial, and hence, you now bear the mark of the Wanderer Pathway. My path is neither a sanctuary, nor a refuge. It is a road of seekers, of doubters, of those who look for truth. To tread it is to cradle loss, to wield it as both chain and cleaver."
The ravens on Odin's shoulders shifted, their beaks flashing like blood-honed daggers in the library's sickly glow. Their obsidian eyes locked onto Ragnar, boring into him with a ravenous hunger that turned his gut to ice.
Without warning, they erupted from 'his' cloak, wings slicing the air like flensing knives with a feral screech. Ragnar lurched upright, flailing to fend them off, but a raven's talons plunged into his shoulder, shredding muscle and tendon with a wet, ripping squelch.
The agony was sudden, as if a thousand iron hooks had torn his arm from its socket, sinews snapping like ropes. He staggered, blood spraying in crimson arcs. The ravens' eyes blazed as they dove for his face. A beak smashed into Ragnar's left eye, the impact triggering a white-hot explosion behind his eye.
The eye burst like a rotten fruit, vitreous fluid gushing down his cheek, mingling with torrents of coppery blood that stained his jaw and throat. The second raven joined as its claws raked his scalp, peeling flesh in ragged strips, exposing the glistening bone beneath.
Sinew tore with brutal pops as Ragnar screamed in agony, muscle shredding under the continuous beak attacks. Ragnar's scream choked on blood, his hands clawing at air, fingers slick with his own gore as the ravens feasted. After a few agonising seconds, silence fell, a void pierced by 'his' voice. "To see—really see, you must be unmade. To wander, you must be broken. To share my sight, you must embrace the blindness of your flesh."
Ragnar crumpled, one hand clutching the ravaged socket where his eye had been, blood oozing between trembling fingers.
"Wh-What the fuck…! Fuck…fuck you, you old fuck…" Ragnar wailed as snot mixed in with his blood.
"He" loomed over him, his ravens perched on his shoulders once more, beaks crusted with scarlet gore.
He smiled, his old features crinkling. "Welcome to my path, Wanderer," Odin whispered, his voice like a requiem. "You are now an All-Seer."
The world dissolved into darkness, swallowing Ragnar whole as he lost consciousness.