Runeblade & Ravenfire- Plague of the Unwarded

Prologue

Snow hissed off the pines like shaken spears as Karin Andersdotter trudged the wolf-track toward her next paid ward-carving. One quick job, she told herself—scratch a luck-rune on some farmer’s threshing stone, collect coin, drink ale. No monsters tonight—just cold and moonlight.

She’d glimpsed the farmer’s wife through frost-smoke earlier, quick to cross herself and hang iron above the lintel. All the old signs—folk never quite trusted a woman who worked the runes, not after so many tales of cold-hearted wise women and soul-splitters. Karin kept her hood up, smile tight.

Fax-Mårten lurched behind her, humming nonsense. Frost glazed his beard like hoar-silver on dead grass, bells on his ragged staff chiming thinly. Every so often he paused, tilted his head, and smiled at nothing.

“Night’s lantern burns too bright—watch the wick, watch the flame,” he murmured, as if greeting shadows. “A clever hand snuffs the candle, but finds the room colder for it.”

“Keep up,” Karin muttered. “Ale gets thin if we’re late.”

“Thinner than breath,” Mårten replied, pinching the air as though weighing it. “Night’s lighter than it should be.”

She almost barked a laugh, but a memory flickered—an old warmth, laughter shared at some summer bonfire, now out of reach. She buried it quick.

Before she could retort, the forest exploded.

A figure barreled from the dark—tall, broad, wrapped in tatters. Snow sprayed under its charge. In each hand it swung a lumber-hook on rusted chains, iron shrieking through air.

Instinct shoved thought aside. Karin yanked a strip of birch bark, scored it with her thorn-stylus: fox-step rune. Fox-blue sparks flared; icy ache raced up her veins—familiar now, the cold that came of power with no warmth behind it—but her muscles thrummed. She slid inside the hook’s arc, braid whipping past steel, axe up—parry—rebound. Pain slapped her wrist, blood cooling under rune-toll.

Boot smashed shin—crack. The brute staggered; she reversed her swing into its ribs: timber-splinter crunch. One final stroke split neck to sternum, red blossoming on white snow.

Silence returned, broken only by Mårten’s soft humming and the thin jangle of bells.

Karin leaned on her axe, breath steaming. The corpse’s eyes stared glassy and wrong—vacant, as if the soul had fled days ago. She knelt, pressed two fingertips to its brow, whispered a seeker-rune. Nothing answered: no guardian spirit, no dim echo—hollow.

The silence pressed close, not just winter’s chill, but the emptiness left by a bargain she never quite forgot.

A chill worse than winter crawled her spine.

Mårten crouched, studying the body with bright interest.

“Hole where the candle should burn,” he murmured.

“No spirit, no flame,” Karin growled, translating his riddle. “Someone tore this man’s vård loose.”

“Seven nights old,” Mårten sang, gaze distant, “riding north on crow-backs.”

Karin frowned, the ache in her veins lingering. “You mean this isn’t the first.” Her pulse drummed. The fox-step had hit too hard because it met no balancing soul. If one guardian could be ripped away… how many more?

Wind shifted; distant screams rode its back—toward the valley farms she’d planned to protect for coin. Panic flickered, then solidified into the hard grin she wore when odds went crooked.

She ripped the bark strip free; sparks died and the cold bite flooded her limbs. “Change of plan. We hunt whatever did this.”

Mårten rose, arms spread to the moonlit pines as though greeting an unseen choir.

“Road bends to blood and fire. Ale must wait,” he chanted, bells chiming approval.

He sashayed ahead, leaving odd footprints and stranger laughter. Karin followed, hefting her axe, senses sharpened by a terrible revelation: her magic had worked too well because something had un-worked an entire layer of the world.

Whatever soul-thief stalked Orsa Finnmark had drawn first blood. Karin Andersdotter would learn its name—and carve it into bone.