They said the gods no longer walked Midgard.
But he knew that wasn’t true.
The old man’s name was forgotten by time, yet the ravens still remembered. A solitary figure with a wolfskin cloak and a deep scar across his left eye, he wandered from village to village, never staying, never asking. Only watching. Listening.
Children whispered that he was cursed. The Warriors claimed he was mad. But the runes carved into the shaft of his staff spoke otherwise—deep, ancient runes etched in an age when the stars were closer and the gods still whispered in the wind.
They called him the Wyrd-Walker.
The one who walks with fate.
One winter night, as snow crept down the fjord and ice crusted over the mead barrels, he arrived at a village nestled between stone cliffs and a black forest. He stood at the threshold of their hall, silent, until the jarl granted him fire and food.
He did not thank them.
Instead, he spoke.
“The serpent stirs beneath the world. The roots of Yggdrasil are trembling.”
The fire hissed. The wind howled against the thatch roof. And the old jarl, whose own beard was dusted with frost, narrowed his eyes.
“You speak of Jörmungandr,” he said cautiously. “Why?”
The old man turned to the fire and whispered:
“Because I saw him last night—coiled around the sun, waiting.”
The villagers laughed. Nervously.
But the seer, a young woman marked by the gods, leaned forward.
“Where did you see this vision?” she asked.
“Not a vision,” he said. “A memory.”
That night, the villagers dreamed of a vast sea serpent whose breath froze oceans. When they awoke, the Wyrd-Walker was gone—but not before leaving a single rune carved into the threshold of the longhouse:
ᚠᚱᛁᚷᚷ
Frigg.
The goddess of foresight. Of fate. Of silent power.
Days passed. The seer followed his tracks.
They led not south to warmth, but north—into the endless white.
For weeks, she journeyed across ice-choked rivers and snow-blanketed forests, following signs only the stars and the wind could read. Ravens appeared at every turn. Wolves did not harm her. Fires lit without kindling. She was not afraid.
Finally, atop a frozen ridge beneath the green flicker of auroras, she saw him.
He stood alone, staff raised, speaking not to her but to the sky.
“You came,” he said without turning. “She said you would.”
“Who?” the seer asked.
He lowered the staff. His eyes were pale blue, like a frozen lake.
“Frigg.”
He sat beside a half-buried stone altar, its surface carved with spirals and serpents. “This place,” he said, “is forgotten even by the gods. But it remembers them.”
The seer stepped forward, drawn not by curiosity, but by something deeper—recognition.
“What do you see here?” he asked.
She closed her eyes.
“I see Jörmungandr, curled beneath the sea. I see Fenrir, bound by fate. I see Sköll chasing the sun. I see... a mirror.”
The Wyrd-Walker smiled.
“You’re ready.”
He placed a bone talisman in her hand, etched with a Vegvisir, the wayfinder. “Your path will not be straight. But it will be yours.”
She blinked, and he was gone.
Only his staff remained, planted upright in the snow like a monument.
Years passed. The seer became a skald. The skald became a priestess. Villages knew her name. Jarls sought her wisdom. But she never stayed long.
She walked the land as he once had, listening to the wind and marking the stars. The Vegvisir never left her neck. She never got lost.
They whispered now of her.
The Wyrd-Walker reborn.
But she was not him.
She was her own.
Guided not by voices, but by echoes of something older.
And so the tale passed into legend.
But the staff still stands, somewhere in the north, frozen in time.
Some say it marks where the world serpent sleeps.
Others say it marks where the gods once listened.
But the old seers know better.
They say it marks the place where a soul chose destiny over comfort.
A path walked not with feet, but with faith.
Let the wind howl. Let the serpent stir.
The Wyrd-Walker walks still.