Duskfire Glacier hel kallar. við svörum.

@Faust — backdated to one hour after the gods call your name

an hour. long enough for the bleeding to slow. long enough for blackfell to watch gjalla breathe—and to feel something in him break.
he is not calm when he leaves the den.
he is not whole.
shoulders heaving, eyes hollowed out and burning red. snow clings to him, but melts too fast. heat pours from his skin like a furnace. the glacier is still blood-wet in his mind. gjalla’s breath—ragged. her voice, thin. her body, broken. blackfell walks alone at first. down from the cliffs, where darukaal's warmth cannot reach. the cold bites harder here.
he stops only once—outside faust’s den. with me. his voice is low, hoarse from the scream he gave the gods earlier. and he turns, expecting the bastard to follow.
they go north, where the ice thins into skeletal trees. where shadows hang like nooses between bare branches. at last, the land opens. a rotted tree stump, blackened and dead, jutting from the earth like a bone. carved into its face is a crooked rune—hel’s mark. the dauðavættur.
he drops the raven that had been clenched in his jaws, seeping with blood. small, limp, caught on the way. it hits the snow with a thud, cold and lifeless. it is blackfell's rageheld voice that breaks the silence. my wife nearly dead. but he lives. it cannot be. his voice is cold. shaking with wrath too vast to hold. hel takes death. always. this is so she takes his. not ours.