Onl rests in the harbor, her name bright under the morning sun. Astryr sits aboard, carving runes into a strip of wood — not for battle now, but for homecomings to come. He thinks of the boy with too much courage, of the shield-maiden’s steady hands, of the navigator’s quiet maps. He watches the fjord and knows that storms will come, but that the village’s fires will stay lit if people choose to keep them together.
