Eirik was three when his father decided—apparently—that the competition was getting out of hand.
It started small.
Bj?rn began taking him to the garrison yard every other morning—twice as often as before—teaching him the beginnings of footwork, the ugly little truths that lived under everything else. Where your weight belonged. Where your heel shouldn’t land. How to stand like you meant it.
Eirik loved it.
What Eirik also loved—much to Bj?rn’s visible irritation—was the two mornings a week he spent in the healer’s house with Sigrid, learning herb names.
It had begun as a game. His mother laying dried plants on the workbench and naming them the way you named constellations: patiently, again and again, until the shape stuck. Eirik discovered that herbs weren’t just dried leaves. Each one had a faint signature under the skin of the world—a little taste of ?nd that changed from plant to plant, like different kinds of smoke.
His mother knew he was feeling for it.
She didn’t comment.
Which meant she approved.
Bj?rn found this out the hard way.
He came home one afternoon to find Eirik at the workbench with his nose buried near a pile of dried greens like a little woodland animal, trying to tell yarrow from meadowsweet by scent alone.
Bj?rn stared for a full breath as if waiting for the scene to rearrange itself into something more reasonable.
Then he announced—to no one in particular—that herb-sniffing was a fine activity, truly, but had Eirik done his Earthroot practice that morning.
“He did it before breakfast,” Sigrid said, not looking up from the mortar.
“Both sets?”
“Three sets. He added one.”
Bj?rn’s gaze slid to Eirik.
Eirik kept sniffing the herb like it was innocent and he had never once heard the word Earthroot in his life.
Bj?rn stood there in a silence where he clearly wanted to complain and couldn’t find a way to do it without sounding foolish.
“Good,” he said at last, with the energy of a man who had won a point and was pretending he wasn’t keeping score.
Then, because he refused to retreat entirely, he sat down and picked up a sprig of dried herb with the blank determination of someone who had never had an opinion about plants and was not about to start now.
“That’s meadowsweet,” Eirik said.
Bj?rn didn’t even glance down. “I knew that.”
“You were holding it upside down.”
Bj?rn stared at the herb like it had betrayed him. “There’s a right way up for dried plants?”
“There’s a way that doesn’t dump seeds into your hand,” Eirik said.
Sigrid made a small sound that wasn’t quite a laugh—more like warmth escaping her in spite of herself.
Bj?rn pointed the herb at Eirik like it was a warning, then set it down and went to find something heavy to lift near the door.
This was, more or less, how things went.
· · · ? · · ·
Rí—nearly one—had developed a way of moving that could only be described as optimistic.
She hadn’t mastered walking yet. What she’d mastered was walking-while-falling, a headlong little charge that somehow still produced progress. The floor, in her mind, was not a threat. The floor was an inconvenience between her and whatever she wanted next.
Which was usually the healer’s shelf.
Eirik was not officially in charge of watching her.
He was also, functionally, always watching her.
No one had assigned him the task. It had simply happened, the way responsibilities happened when you were the person in the room who noticed things first.
He didn’t mind.
He minded a little.
He minded the way you minded something you’d never actually give up.
He’d redirected Rí away from the herb jars so many times he could feel the run coming before she turned. A prickling sense. A shift in the air. A tiny gathering of intent.
His father watched this one evening from the firebench.
“She’s going for those jars,” Bj?rn said.
“I know,” Eirik replied.
“How do you know?”
“She gets a look.”
Bj?rn snorted. “She’s eleven months old. She has one look.”
“She has four looks,” Eirik said solemnly. “That was the third one.”
Rí launched.
Eirik intercepted her without getting up, the way a river redirected around a stone. A hand, a twist, a small correction of her path—and suddenly she was facing the wooden animals instead.
Rí blinked at the animals like she’d been meant to come here all along.
Then she slapped the wooden wolf twice and made a triumphant sound like she’d conquered it.
Bj?rn watched the whole thing with his arms crossed, the look he wore when something in his head was changing shape.
“How long have you been doing that?” he asked.
“Since she started moving.”
“You never said.”
“There wasn’t much to say.”
A pause.
Then Bj?rn nodded once, like a man accepting a simple truth.
“Good.”
It was the most Bj?rn kind of praise there was—one word, heavy as a stone dropped into water.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
· · · ? · · ·
Knut was not a man who used words unless he had to.
This made him and Leif an odd pairing, because Leif was a person who used words the way other children used sticks: constantly, enthusiastically, and at people who had not asked.
Knut’s answer to this appeared to be living his life as if he couldn’t hear most of it.
Not rude. Just… unmoved.
Eirik had been quietly angling to go ranging with Knut since autumn, the same way he angled for everything: showing up near the perimeter when Knut returned, making himself useful, being present without begging.
It took four months.
That felt fair.
Leif asked directly about forty times.
Knut said “maybe” about forty times.
Then one morning he appeared at the Bj?rnsson door and said, “Come on then,” in the tone of a man announcing nothing special.
Leif nearly exploded with victory.
Eirik only nodded, like he’d expected this all along, because pride was a disease and he was doing his best.
As they followed Knut into the trees, Eirik asked, “Were you going to take us anyway?”
Knut’s mouth twitched—barely.
“Was wondering when you’d ask proper,” he said.
Leif frowned. “He never asked. He just kept being around.”
“That’s asking proper,” Knut said.
Then he said nothing for a long time.
The forest north of Járnvik was older than the settlement’s walls made it feel. Denser. Damp in a way that seeped into bone. The air had that slow-breathed quality of trees that had been standing in the same place for longer than anyone could remember.
Knut moved through mud and root without sound.
Which was unfair.
He stopped sometimes and crouched and pointed at something—no explanation, just a finger—and waited to see what they did with it.
Eirik caught most of them.
A depression in the mud with sharp edges: recent, heavy, not fox.
A scar on bark at chest height: something tall, something with antlers or claws.
A faint smell that Knut named ridge-elk with the tone of a man saying: if you don’t respect these, they will make sure you learn.
Leif caught none of it.
But he did notice wrongness.
At one point he stopped dead and said, “That tree is wrong.”
A birch ahead had a fresh cut in its bark.
Knut stared at it, then at Leif.
“That’s a hunter mark,” Knut said after a beat.
Leif shrugged, pleased with himself for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Bark’s the wrong color.”
“That’s tracking,” Eirik said.
“I wasn’t tracking,” Leif insisted. “I just notice when things don’t match.”
Eirik thought about that as they walked.
Eirik looked for patterns, meaning, the story under the surface.
Leif looked for the place the story tore.
They were—annoyingly—useful in different ways.
Knut probably knew that already.
? Ding ?
? RúNA ACQUIRED ?
Rúna: Keen Eye (Lv. 1) [ Grár — Common ]
You can read disturbances in the natural world—tracks, scent traces, and subtle pattern breaks.
S?fnun: + (gained)
The forest is a language. You have learned your first words.
· · · ? · · ·
The herb incident happened in late spring.
It was entirely Eirik’s fault.
He owned that.
He had been in the cultivation garden behind the healer’s house—the small fenced patch that had a rune carved on the gate that very clearly meant: do not touch these.
Eirik knew what the sign meant.
Eirik was also three.
And there was a plant near the back with an ?nd-signature that didn’t just feel stronger than the rest.
It felt condensed.
Warm and heavy, like a coal wrapped in leaves.
He thought: I’ll just smell it.
He did not just smell it.
He leaned in close enough for a leaf to brush his lips.
The leaf had oil on it.
The oil got on him.
And that was where the world tilted.
Warmth hit first—not the gentle pool in his sternum he knew from practice, but heat with a destination, heat that ran through him like it had been waiting for a door.
Down his arms.
Into his legs.
Up his spine.
His vision flashed white like his eyes were voting to quit.
Then—memory.
Not soft. Not faded.
Sharp as ice.
FRAGMENT — PRIOR LIFE
Cold water.
Bonfire light, distant orange, above the surface.
Amber light falling in columns like a cathedral built underwater.
His hands drifting, slow, patient, like they belonged to someone who wasn’t afraid.
Hardangerfjord.
Midsommar.
Mushrooms and midnight and a thin, luminous thread going taut inside his chest.
Something old watching.
Something old noticing.
He came back to himself on hands and knees in the garden.
Heart hammering.
Mouth tasting green.
Sigrid was crouched in front of him, both hands held near his chest without touching, and the air around her felt pulled tight, like a net.
“Don’t move,” she said.
Her voice was calm.
But it wasn’t her usual calm.
This was calm scraped clean—only the task left.
Eirik didn’t move.
He focused on breathing because breathing was one of the few things he could contribute.
The heat inside him was still there, but it was changing—less wild now, like something had taken a flood and forced it into a channel.
His mother’s hands were the reason.
It took six minutes.
When she finally sat back, the heat had settled deep in him—still present, but no longer trying to burn its way out.
It felt… solid.
Like something had been fitted into place.
Sigrid stared at him for a long moment.
“You touched the Treksblóm,” she said.
“I didn’t eat it. It just got on my lips.”
“That’s eating it.”
“It was an accident.”
Her eyes didn’t soften, but her voice lost the knife-edge. “That plant is a body-cultivation accelerant. For adults. In tiny, dried fractions.” She paused. “You put fresh oil on soft skin.”
Eirik swallowed carefully. “How bad is that?”
“For most children your age?” she said. “Very bad.”
A beat.
“But I’m fine.”
“You’re fine because I was twenty feet away and got here in time to guide it through you properly.” Her gaze sharpened. “And because your channels held better than they should have.”
“Is that good?”
Something moved across her face—half relief, half the look she got when a situation tried to become a problem and she refused to let it.
“It means your foundation is unusually sturdy.” She exhaled once. “It means you are not going near that part of the garden without asking me first.”
“Alright.”
“Do you understand why?”
“Yes,” Eirik said, quickly, because he did. “Because the ?nd in that plant is way beyond what I should be handling and if you hadn’t guided it, it could have burned my channels out.”
Sigrid went very still.
Then she said, slowly, “Where did you learn the word meridians?”
Eirik blinked. “I… didn’t mean that word. I meant… channels.”
“That’s better,” she said, carefully. “Channels is ours.”
Then she stood and picked him up.
She didn’t carry him much anymore.
The fact that she did now told him something about how close the edge had been.
He let her carry him.
He’d learned when to be stubborn.
This was not one of those times.
? Ding ?
? RúNA ACQUIRED ?
Rúna: Toughened Channels (Lv. 1) [ Grár — Common ]
Your ?nd-meridians have survived an overload event and are measurably more resilient.
Passive Effect:
? Increased tolerance to ?nd flooding
? Improved body-cultivation stability
Trek: +1 (channel resilience bonus)
S?fnun: + (gained)
This was not a recommended training method.
? The Wyrd Stirs ?
? TITLE EARNED ?
Title: The Hard Way [ Grár — Common ]
Achieved a cultivation milestone through an inadvisable but effective method.
Passive: Minor resistance to uncontrolled ?nd surges
S?fnun: + (bonus)
Some lessons do not require repetition.
Bj?rn came home that evening to find Eirik sitting very carefully on the bench, looking like a boy who had survived something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to admit.
Sigrid was at the workbench with an expression that could have cut iron.
Bj?rn looked between them.
“What happened?”
“He touched the Treksblóm,” Sigrid said.
Bj?rn’s face did three things in a row: alarm, a fast scan of Eirik that confirmed alive, then—
Then Bj?rn made the worst possible choice.
“Did it work?” he asked Eirik.
Sigrid turned slowly.
Bj?rn kept going anyway, because Bj?rn was built like a man who sometimes drove straight into his own doom out of principle.
“He has Toughened Channels,” Bj?rn said, almost excited. “That’s body cultivation. At three. That takes most people years of—”
“He could have burned his channels out,” Sigrid said.
“But he didn’t.”
“Because I was twenty feet away.”
Bj?rn blinked. “You’re almost always twenty feet away. You work there.”
Sigrid’s stare could have killed a lesser man.
Bj?rn cleared his throat. “We will be discussing how close that was.”
“Yes,” Sigrid said sweetly. “After I am done being furious.”
Bj?rn nodded solemnly. “Of course.”
“That could be some time.”
“I’ll be here.”
Eirik made the only useful decision available to a three-year-old in a room like this.
“I’m sorry I went past the sign,” he said.
Sigrid’s face softened—just a little, only for him.
“I know you are.”
“I really was just going to smell it.”
“I know that too,” she said. “It doesn’t change the sign.”
“No,” Eirik agreed.
From the other room, Rí—who had been put to bed an hour ago and was either awake or had never truly committed to sleep—made a loud, offended sound like she’d been listening and wished to register her opinion.
Bj?rn went to handle Rí.
Sigrid worked her mortar with slow, steady motions that said: I am calming myself by grinding something into dust.
Eirik sat on the bench and felt the new warmth settled deep inside him.
Toughened Channels.
Quiet.
Unshowy.
Just… there.
And in the back of his mind, that flash of ice water and bonfire light still hovered—too clear to be a fading memory, too sharp to be an accident.
Maybe some memories didn’t fade.
Maybe some stayed buried until you were strong enough to carry them without falling apart.
Eirik stared at the wall for a long time.
Then he stood up.
Went to the yard.
And did his Earthroot practice again.