The snowfall softened everything.
Footsteps. Screams. Even memory.
Tanya moved like a ghost through the pines, her cloak caked in frost and bloodstains. The adrenaline had long since faded, leaving only a faint ache in her joints and a quiet rhythm in her mind—a metronome of calculation. Every step, every breath was a measured act of survival.
She'd spent the morning scavenging what little the raiders had left behind: broken tools, half-spoiled jerky, a pair of rusting boot knives. One of them had a crude wooden charm hanging from his neck, a jagged rune carved into it.
Tanya snapped it off, held it to the light.
Some symbol of protection, maybe. Or a god. Or both.
She pocketed it—not out of belief, but understanding. Symbols mattered here.
By midday, the sky cracked open and revealed smoke in the distance.
Another village. Smaller than the last. Walled by a loose ring of sharpened stakes. Chickens pecked near the gates, too thin to be worth stealing. A few gaunt children watched her from behind a tree stump, their faces painted with old ash. She slowed her pace but didn't stop.
A man emerged—leather tunic, weathered eyes, a spear gripped in calloused hands. A hunter or a headman, maybe both. He looked at her with naked fear.
She didn't blame him.
Her cloak dripped red. Her boots were soaked. Her eyes—cold and gold—reflected the flames she'd set behind her. Even if they didn't know what she was, they could feel it.
The man named Ivar hesitated.
Then knelt.
No words. Just silence and breath, held like prayer.
Behind him, one by one, the villagers followed suit. Kneeling. Bowing. Murmuring in broken Old Norse and whispers she couldn't quite catch.
She recognized the tone, though. Reverence.
Tanya didn't speak for several heartbeats. She let the moment hang, heavy with implication. Power doesn't shout. It waits.
Finally, she lowered her hood, letting her hair spill out—golden, unkempt, streaked with soot. One of the children gasped.
"A Valkyrja…" someone whispered.
The rest echoed it like a curse and a blessing at once.
Valkyrja.
A myth made flesh. A warrior-maiden of death and judgment. It was absurd, of course. She wasn't divine. She wasn't anything but a product of strategy and necessity.
But to them? To these terrified, hungry people?
She was something they could believe in.
Tanya stepped forward slowly, deliberately. The man who knelt in front of her flinched. She stopped just short of him, towering in silence, then reached into her cloak and produced the charm she'd stolen from the dead man earlier.
She held it between two fingers.
"This protected no one," she said, her voice flat, cold, and measured.
She let it fall into the snow.
"But your offering might."
He didn't ask what she wanted.
He didn't have to.
By nightfall, she sat in a longhouse, warm broth in her hands, surrounded by murmurs and bowed heads. The villagers gave her the best of what little they had: smoked fish, coarse bread, boiled roots. She ate sparingly, deliberately, maintaining the image.
Even a false god must look like one.
Later, as she leaned against the stone hearth, Tanya stared into the fire. Her limbs ached, her magic reserves still thin from the battle. She hadn't used aerial combat since that first chaotic night—too risky, too much of a signature. But now?
Now she understood the utility of spectacle.
A soft shuffle drew her attention. One of the village boys—no older than nine—approached, eyes wide. He held something out in shaking hands: a crude wooden carving of a winged woman. Her likeness, crude but unmistakable.
"For you, lady Valkyrja," he said. "So you won't leave."
Tanya took the carving.
And for the first time in days, something inside her moved.
Not guilt. Not warmth. Something colder. More dangerous.
She smiled—not kindly, but precisely. A small, practiced smile. The kind an officer gives before sending men into battle.
"Thank you," she said.
Then she turned back to the fire, fingers tightening around the effigy.
---
Outside the longhouse, the wind howled through the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a raven cawed once, then fell silent.
And in the shadows of the northern forests, more rumors stirred.
A witch cloaked in fire.
A goddess in human skin.
A devil wearing the face of a little girl.
Whatever she was, the land would soon learn to fear her name.