The realm has slept for nineteen years. Tomorrow it will not.
When the bleeds break across three villages of the Eldhem in a single dawn - dead rooks in a ring around a well, a tide that pulls back wrong, snow the colour of a wound - the Order of the V rd knows the answer they have been preparing for since their last champion fell at the eastern wall. The Galdr has stirred. The Galdr has, at last, found a body.
Asvarr Eldgrim is twenty-five, and the Last Watch of his generation. Orphaned to the Order at three. Raised on the saga of Sigvar the Bright since he was old enough to want to be him. He has trained his whole life for this hour. He has the heavy strike of his oath in his right hand.
The Order sends him west.
On a remote island at the edge of the realm he climbs alone to a high ridge of dark heather where the Galdr is waiting. Hooded. Faceless beneath a working older than the songs.