The First Defiance

Months after his village was reduced to ash, Rurik has done what grief demanded of him—he has hunted down every man who took part in the raid. The last of them dies beneath his blade in a silent forest. Yet vengeance against men brings no peace.For it was not only steel and fire that stole Sigrid from him.In the smoke of that winter night, Rurik swore an impossible oath: to find the cruel gods who weave suffering into the world and to break the endless wheel that turns love into memory and memory into dust. The sky gave him no answer then. It gives him none now.Haunted by dreams of faces he cannot remember—lives lived and lost before this one—Rurik fears that Sigrid will fade into that same nameless darkness. And so his war changes.No longer against raiders.Against fate itself.As he journeys inland in search of forbidden knowledge, whispers begin to stir—of a seer named Seraphina who speaks not for the gods, but for something older. Something that watches the cracks in the world’s design.If the gods will not answer his defiance, something else might.And it may not demand worship.It may demand rebellion.