Vibe: angst, slow burn, dark fantasy, protective, monster x human, soft, forbidden, viking AU
Summary: After awakening a deadly draugr, you find yourself bound to the one monster who chose not to kill you and instead chose you as his reason to live again.
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The wind that night didn't sound like wind. It prowled between the black trunks of the pines, rattling the bone charms hung from the branches, carrying something that resembled a muffled breath. Or a whisper. Or a prayer that was never meant to be spoken again.
The snow crunched too loudly under your boots, making you glance over your shoulder several times, even though you knew exactly that no one was following you. At least, no one living.
"That mound is cursed," old Einar had warned you when you were preparing to ride out that morning. "There is no gold in there for men. Only hunger for the dead."
You had only smirked then. In your village, stories of curses were born faster than children and died as slowly as old dogs by the fire. But the winter was harsh, supplies were vanishing, and your Jarl had promised a share to anyone who found something worth trading.
Old graves, burial mounds, forgotten warrior hoards, it was all better than starving. And no one really minded when the remains belonged to Saxons.
So now you stood alone at the foot of a stony hill overgrown with moss and stunted shrubs, a torch in your hand and an axe at your belt.
The mound was old. Older than the runes carved into the stones around the entrance. Older than your clan. Perhaps older than the names of the gods you had learned to whisper during winter sacrifices.
The entrance was half-collapsed, but someone or something had already pushed several stones aside before you. You didn't like that.
You paused, squinting, scanning the darkness within the opening. The scent wafting from inside wasn't the smell of earth or damp rot. It was something strange that pricked at your nose. You gripped the torch tighter.
"I'll just take what I can and get out," you muttered into the silence. "Nothing more."
As if the mound had heard you, a soft click echoed from its depths. You stepped back, hand sliding to your axe. Nothing followed. Only the wind, the whisper of the pines, and that unsettling silence which is always the worst of all.
Finally, you forced yourself to step inside. The passage was low, the stones damp and slick. The torch flame cast long, jagged shadows against the walls that looked like hands reaching for your ankles.
Runes were carved into some of the stones, with something dark soaked into the grooves. You didn't want to ask if it used to be blood.
The sound of dripping water reached you. Then another. Then something like a distant, hollow creak.
The mound spiraled deeper into the earth. The further you went, the colder the air became. Not ordinary winter cold. This chill had something dead in it, like touching the body of the fallen too long after the battle. The torch crackled in your hand, the flame narrowing for a moment until you felt it might go out.
"Damn it," you hissed.
The passage opened into a circular chamber. In the center lay a stone coffin, wide and low, surrounded by rusted weapons, shattered shields, and bowls filled with long-rotted offerings. Above the casket, a thick root hung from the ceiling, growing through the stone as if the forest itself wanted to keep the dead man pinned underground.
And there it was. At the neck of the sarcophagus, laid like an offering, rested a golden torc inlaid with garnets. Even after all these years, it hadn't lost its luster. It flashed so brightly in the torchlight that for a moment, you forgot the cold.
"So it's true," you breathed.
You stepped closer. The chamber was unnervingly quiet. No dripping. No wind. Nothing. Only your own breathing and the beat of your heart, which suddenly seemed far too loud.
You stopped by the coffin. A man was carved into the lid. Broad shoulders, braided hair, runes around his arms, and a sun-like circle on his chest. The stone had already eroded his face.
You reached for the necklace. Your fingers had barely brushed the gold when a crack sounded. Not from the stone. From beneath.
You jerked your hand back just as the coffin lid lurched upward. An icy blast of air surged from the depths of the chamber, the torch hissed and nearly slipped from your hand. Somewhere behind you, something hit the ground. Metal? Bone? You couldn't tell.
Then the casket opened. First, you saw a hand. Dark, blackened, but not rotted. Fingers long, ending in nails that looked more like claws. Then the second hand. And slowly, far too slowly, the figure of a man rose from the coffin.
He wasn't a skeleton. He wasn't an ordinary corpse, either. He was too well-preserved to be natural, and too terrifying to be alive. His skin was ashen, cracked in places as if heat smoldered beneath it. Black hair fell to his shoulders. Runes on his chest and arms began to glow red, like embers in ash. And his eyes... his eyes opened, and inside them glowed something orange.
You recoiled so sharply your back hit the stone wall.
Draugr. The man straightened to his full height. He was tall, taller than most warriors in your village, and despite death, something fiercely beautiful and menacing remained of him. The old fur on his shoulders was decayed, but beneath it, the silhouette of a body that must have once belonged to a great warrior was still visible. The air around him shimmered with heat and frost simultaneously.
He opened his mouth. You expected a roar. Instead, a long, rasping intake of breath escaped him, as if he were learning to breathe again.
Then his gaze locked onto you. And another sound filled the chamber. A scraping. Footsteps. From the passage behind you, hollow thuds and guttural wheezing began to echo.
You looked back just in time to see more figures in the flickering light. Two, three, no, four dead warriors, tattered, bloodied, with empty eyes and swords in bony hands.
"Shit," you exhaled, drawing your axe.
The first draugr lunged at you. You dodged just in time and swung at his shoulder. The blade bit through withered flesh, but the creature didn't stop. He slammed into you so hard you stumbled to one knee. Another was already raising his sword.
Before the blow fell, fire lashed through the chamber. Not an ordinary flame. Something violent, golden, hot as a cracked furnace. It struck the draugr in the side and hurled him across the room. Another undead had barely turned when something seized its throat.
The first draugr. The one you had awakened. He stood between you and the others, one hand wreathed in a flame that didn't consume his own flesh, but soaked into his cracked skin and lit the runes on his arms. He let out a deep, menacing growl, almost animalistic. The other dead hesitated.
Then they threw themselves at him. What followed wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter. He moved too fast for a dead man. Too smoothly. His flames devoured the ancient flesh, his hands crushed bone, and every few moments an enraged snarl tore from his throat, as if something human inside him were fighting something much older and hungrier.
When the last draugr fell in a heap of black ash, you remained staring at him with your axe half-raised, unable to move.
He turned. That orange light still burned in his eyes. He took a slow step toward you. You tensed like a bowstring. Another step. You tightened your grip on the haft. And then he stopped. He tilted his head slightly to the side, like a wolf that doesn't understand why the deer isn't afraid enough.
"Go on then," you spat through gritted teeth, though you were shaking all over. "If you're going to eat me, get it over with." You weren't going down without a fight.
His expression changed. Only slightly. But enough for you to recognize it. Confusion.
Then he did something unexpected. Slowly, jerkily, as if the body weren't quite obeying, he bowed his head and took a step back. You stared at him. He stared at you.
Eventually, you scrambled to your feet. The torch lay to the side, its flame nearly spent. The chamber was plunged into a gloom where only his eyes and the runes beneath his skin glowed.
"You..." you trailed off, having no idea how to finish the sentence. You what? You're not like them? Why did you protect me? Who are you?
The dead man moved his lips. The sound he produced was hardly speech. More like a scorched whisper.
"No..."
You blinked. "No?" you repeated incredulously.
"No... hurt." His throat rasped again.
You couldn't pretend you were imagining it anymore. A draugr had just spoken to you.
You didn't make it out until dawn. Not alone. He followed you through the entire passage. Not too close, but close enough that you felt his presence like a second shadow glued to your heels.
When you stepped outside, the sky over the forest was grey and mist swirled between the trees. You turned to him, axe still in hand.
"This is where we part ways," you said. He remained silent.
In the daylight, he looked even stranger. Less like a nightmare, more like something that had once been a man and simply refused to fully crumble. The runes under his skin didn't burn as fiercely now. There was something young in his face, despite death. Something defiant. Almost arrogant, if not for those eyes.
"I can't take you to the village," you said. Did he understand? Hard to tell. He only looked toward the forest, then back at you.
"Go your own way," you added more harshly, because the silence made you nervous. You took three steps away. Four. Five. Then you looked back. He was still standing there.
"Can you even hear me?" you snapped.
Again, no answer. You grunted something unintelligible and headed for home. When you looked back an hour later, he was still walking through the woods behind you.
For the first three days, you tried to shake him. It was useless.
When you returned from hunting, he stood among the trees. When you went to the river for water, you saw his reflection in the surface, motionless on the far bank. When laughter and the clatter of horns sounded in the village at night, you felt his presence in the darkness beyond the palisade.
He never crossed the boundary of light. He never approached the others. He just watched. It started to get on your nerves before it started to comfort you.
On the fourth day, you went out to him alone, carrying a piece of dried meat and a torch.
You found him where you expected, by the old oak north of the village. He sat with his back against the trunk, eyes closed as if sleeping. When you drew near, he opened them. They flashed with gold in the twilight.
"If you're going to haunt me until I die, you could at least be useful," you muttered.
You tossed him the meat. He didn't catch it. The piece landed in the snow between you. He looked at it, then at you.
"Ah. Right. The dead probably don't eat," you murmured to yourself.
You sat down cautiously a few paces from him. You were silent for a while. The silence wasn't as terrifying as it had been in the mound, but that strange chill still hung around him. And yet, for the first time, you didn't force yourself to leave.
"Do you have a name?" you asked finally. Nothing for a long time. Then his lips moved.
"Ace," he said hoarsely. The name sounded foreign. Not Norse. But not Saxon either.
"Ace," you repeated softly.
His eyes changed for a moment. As if something brightened within them. As if he remembered that name more fondly than his own death.
From that night on, you began to return to him. Not every night. But often.
You did more of the talking than he did. You told him about the village, about your childhood, about the siblings who died before you knew them, about the winter that came too early this year, about how the men in the warband kept underestimating you until you put someone face-first into the snow. You didn't know how much of it he understood. But he listened.
And the more he listened, the more he changed. His speech returned in pieces. Short words, then sentences. You discovered he could start a fire without wood, using only the power of his palm, and that you could warm yourself by him more than by any other flame.
You discovered he hated other draugrs with something resembling a memory. That he disliked the sound of ravens when they circled too low. That when you laughed, he looked at you in a strange way, as if he were storing it deep in the places where death hadn't reached yet.
One night, as you sat beside him against a rock with snow melting on your furs, you decided to ask the one thing that had been keeping you awake.
"Why didn't you kill me back in the mound?" you asked. He watched the fire rising from his palm.
"I don't know," he admitted finally, his voice gravelly. "I woke... and I felt... you."
"That doesn't sound very comforting," you replied. To your surprise, the corners of his mouth twitched into a fleeting smile.
"Not like that." He closed his eyes for a moment, searching for words. "Not hunger. Not prey. Like... warmth." Something in your chest moved with uncomfortable tenderness.
"I'm a human. We tend to be warm," you retorted. This time you saw the hint of a smile more clearly. It was crooked, a bit rusty, like a knife left in its sheath too long, but it was there.
"You especially." You cleared your throat and looked away toward the forest, because it was suddenly much harder to pretend to be calm.
Then disaster struck. Perhaps you should have known that nothing like this could stay hidden forever. Talk began in the village about a shadow in the woods, an evil spirit prowling the palisade.
When two calves went missing and Bjorn the hunter swore he’d seen glowing eyes between the trees, the Jarl decided. Whatever was circling out there had to go.
There was a hunt for Ace.
That night you ran through the forest faster than was wise. You could hear the barking of dogs, men’s voices, and the clinking of weapons from a distance. You found them in a clearing north of the oak.
Six men. Axes, swords, torches. And in the center, Ace.
He wasn't moving. He was breathing heavily. A spear already protruded from his side, and from the wound dripped not blood, but something dark and smoky. Yet he wasn't fully fighting back. As if he didn't want to kill.
"Stop!" you screamed, throwing yourself between them.
"Get out of the way, it's a draugr!" Bjorn roared.
"He is under my protection," you barked before you could think about what you were actually saying. The men hesitated. Only for a moment, but it was enough.
"Have you lost your mind?" hissed your cousin Halfdan. "This thing is undead!"
"And how many of you has he killed?" you snapped. No one answered. Because they knew the answer. None.
You looked over your shoulder at Ace. His eyes were brighter than usual, full of pain and rage, but he was holding back. Because of you, it suddenly dawned on you.
"Go home," you said more quietly, but with even more steel in your voice. "This fight isn't yours."
Bjorn grumbled something, but the Jarl's men were already backing off. Reluctantly, with curses and looks full of fear and disgust, but they backed off. When they finally vanished among the trees, you turned to Ace.
"You idiot," you breathed. "Why didn't you defend yourself?"
"I didn't want... you to be afraid." He looked at you, then at the bloody wound in his side. That hit you harder than the sight of the spear in his body.
You stepped toward him and, without thinking, touched his face. It was cold. But not entirely. Under your fingers, you felt a faint, almost impossible trace of heat, like the last ember under the ash. Ace went still.
"I'm afraid of many things," you whispered. "Storms. Starving winters. Growing old beside people I don't love." You swallowed. "But not you."
His expression broke into something incredibly quiet, almost human. Slowly he raised his hand and carefully, as if afraid he might burn you, he placed his palm over your fingers on his cheek. He didn't burn.
"You are my mound," he said hoarsely.
"That is the worst compliment I've ever heard." You laughed shakily.
"No." In his eyes, for the first time, was not just death, but something soft. Devoted. "The place where I woke up."
You leaned toward him and rested your forehead against his. You expected ice. You expected deathly stillness. Instead, you met a quiet warmth that grew stronger where your skin touched.
"All right then, Draugr," you muttered. "But if you're going to stay with me, you'll have to stop scaring my people... and the sheep."
This time he truly smiled. It was a bit lopsided, a bit tired, and still a little wild. But it was beautiful.
"I will try."
"And you won't stand like a ghost behind my hut at night," you continued.
"That, I do not promise."
You snorted, and he laughed softly. The sound was rough, as if he hadn't used it in a long time, but it sounded surprisingly gentle in the forest. You found yourself smiling too. Then you took his arm and draped it over your shoulders.
"Come on," you said.
"Where?"
"To the old hunting shack by the river. No one goes there. You can hide there until I figure out how to convince the village you aren't their end."
He looked at you with that long, steady gaze of his, under which you always felt suspiciously transparent.
"And will you come?"
"I just stood up to six armed men for a dead man. Guess." You stopped, turned your head to him, and raised an eyebrow.
For a moment, he looked almost stunned. Then he nodded.
It started to snow on the way to the river. Gently, quietly, flakes caught in his black hair and in the fur on your shoulders. The forest didn't seem as menacing as it had that night you entered the mound.
When you reached the shack, you helped him sit against the wall. It looked as though his wound was slowly closing on its own, as if the fire beneath his skin were smelting back together what should have remained dead. You built an ordinary fire in the hearth and then sat beside him. You were silent.
After a while, you felt his shoulder lean lightly against yours.
"Are you doing that on purpose?" You turned to him.
"Perhaps," he replied.
"You're awfully bold for a dead man."
"So are you," he smiled.
You laughed. Then you leaned into him more and closed your eyes. You expected that death-chill again. Instead came that familiar, strange warmth you had been feeling from him more and more over the last few weeks. Not like that of a living body. Different. Like a glowing stone beneath a layer of snow.
Outside, night fell and the wind rustled in the branches.
"Ace?" you called out to him.
"Hm?"
"Next time someone asks why you didn't kill me, think of something better than 'I was warm'."
"Fine." Beside you, he laughed quietly.
"How about that I was brave? Or beautiful?" you suggested.
"You were mine," he thought for a moment before answering.
"That sounded possessive." You opened your eyes and felt the heat rushing to your cheeks.
"I meant..." He paused, clearly dissatisfied with the words that still escaped him. "My way out. My light."
This time you didn't look away. You just leaned toward him and laid your head on his shoulder.
"That's better," you whispered.
Ace lowered his head toward your hair, and for a long time, neither of you moved. The darkness outside the shack's walls was full of old spirits, cold forests, and ancient curses. But here, in the small space between the hearth and his shoulder, it all seemed far away.
“The belief in living corpses is a universal phenomenon. Fantasies about revenants who return to wreak havoc and carry out nefarious deeds following their death have been present in all ages and in all cultures. […] Precursors of the European vampire mythos can be found in the Icelandic sagas of the thirteenth century, which cover several cases of revenancy from the period of the island's Christianization around 1000 AD. In Old Norse tales, the living corpse or “walking dead” operated under the name of draugr.
This term, which only rarely appears, designates a deceased person who has left his or her burial mound, inflicted harm on surviving relatives and who can only be stopped through the physical destruction of the corpse. In the context of the overlapping of the world of the living and the world of the dead in the popular imagination, the existence of revenants was not questioned. Their personalities were experienced as real and were described vividly. People who had allowed themselves to be brought into connection with magical elements or evil portents seemed to be particularly predestined for revenancy. However, as a rule, it was largely troublemakers who were reported to have returned, and contemporary stories therefore often reflected social conflicts.”
— Thomas M. Bohn; “The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth” (2019)
