Blood of the Berserker

Rain drummed against the slate roofs of Oslo, a relentless percussion echoing the violence carved into the city’s night. Detective Henrik Almen stood beneath the jaundiced glow of a streetlamp, its light spilling across the ruin of what once was a man. Laying twisted on the cobblestones, the corpse's ribcage shattered outward as if by some monstrous force within. Flesh bore livid bruises, finger-shaped, though grotesquely large—prints no human hand could have made.

Tightening his jaw, Henrik’s tall frame bent forward, trench coat brushing wet stone as he crouched. He was broad-shouldered, the sinew of his Viking ancestry visible in the breadth of his hands, though his face carried the pallor of sleepless nights. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his blue-gray eyes—cold, stormwater eyes—locked on the marks in the victim’s chest.

“Almen,” called a voice from behind. Inspector Ragna, breath quick from climbing the narrow alley, pulled her scarf tighter against the rain. “Witness says he saw… a giant with corpse-blue skin, strong enough to tear through a man as parchment.”

Rising slowly, Henrik's shoulders rolled as though an old weight pressed there. “A drunk’s hallucination,” he muttered, though the faint rasp in his voice betrayed a doubt he could not wholly bury. His gaze drifted to the dark mouth of the alley, as if expecting something more than shadows to step forth.

Ragna studied him. “And yet, every corpse is broken in the same way. Bones splintered. Organs pulverized. Whoever did this—” she hesitated, lowering her voice, “—or whatever did this, it is not of ordinary strength.”

Lingering on the body for a moment more, Henrik flicked his eyes toward her with a severity that silenced further speculation. “Stick to facts. Facts keep us sane.” Even as he spoke, the rain thickened around them, and for a breath Henrik thought he heard a low groan in the storm—a sound tugging at the marrow of him.

At the far end of the alley, a rusted dumpster clattered. Both detectives turned sharply, hands near their holsters. The sound stilled. As it pressed down harder, the rain carried the thick reek of iron and blood through the air.

Ragna exhaled. “Folklore,” she whispered, half to herself. “You can suppress it, Henrik, but you can’t kill it.”

He said nothing. His fists clenched at his sides, nails biting into flesh. Beneath the lamplight and overcoat, he could feel his forearm veins surge darker and thicker, as though the storm itself coursed within them.

Later, Oslo staggered beneath the storm’s wrath—streets drowned in black water, power lines thrashing as serpents, glass blown from windows to litter the gutters with glittering shards. In the museum’s hollow silence, a single glass case stood shattered, its velvet lining bare.

Henrik traced his fingers across the jagged rim, rain dripping from his sleeve. In the broken glass, his reflection swam—fractured and multiplied—an image of himself he barely recognized.

Ahead, a faint glimmer pulsed—a heartbeat in the gloom—and a voice, low, coaxing: Lieutenant Erik Strand’s.

Toward the archway’s edge he slipped, the trench coat heavy on his shoulders as he slowed. Through the broken ribs of a display case, he saw them: the curator, soaked silk clinging to her frame, clutching the relic to her chest as though it were a child. Opposite her, Strand stood with his hand outstretched, rain plastering his hair flat, eyes lit fever-bright.

“You’ve seen what it can do,” he murmured. “You felt it stir. Oslo will drown, and you’ll drown with it unless you put your faith where it belongs.”

The curator’s breath came ragged, terror bright on her face. Still, her hands trembled toward him, fingers loosening around the relic’s glimmering surface.

Henrik stepped forward, water dripping from his coat hem, his voice a stone across the chamber. “Strand.”

Both heads snapped toward him. The curator froze, prey caught between predators. Strand’s lips curled—neither smile nor snarl, but something hungering.

“She gave it willingly,” Strand said, and his fingers closed over the relic. The thing pulsed, veins of light crawling up his wrist, and for a breath his frame swelled with its glow. “You wouldn’t understand, Almen. You’d rather crawl in the dirt with facts and corpses.”

Henrik’s eyes narrowed, stormlight flashing faint in their depths. “Put it down.”

Strand laughed, a broken sound that rang against glass and stone. “Down? This city begged for gods, and I’ve answered. You still think yourself man enough to deny it?”

Across Strand’s cheekbones the relic’s light carved sharp planes, his gaze burning with fevered brightness. Henrik moved with a soldier’s economy—three strides, his broad shoulder slamming Strand back into the jagged case. Across their coats carved lines ran, traced by splinters of glass. Strand’s arm jerked up, gun half-drawn, but Henrik’s hand clamped his wrist, veins bulging as muscle met muscle.

The curator fled, skirts vanishing into shadow, her absence swift as a candle blown out.

“Always so loyal,” Strand spat, his breath rank with hunger and rain. “But loyalty dies quicker than flesh.”

Henrik wrenched the gun free, the steel skittering across marble. His other hand crushed down on Strand’s fist until bones popped like kindling. The relic slipped, clattered once, then bled light into Henrik’s palm.

Burning up his veins, the pulse was a storm threaded into flesh, but he held it fast, jaw locked. Strand writhed, eyes wild, reaching for the glow as though it were breath itself.

Henrik leaned close, voice low enough to vanish beneath the storm’s groan. “You talk of gods. All I see is a man begging for chains.”

Strand’s lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl. “Chains and immortality aren’t promises, but payments. Why die choking on the rot of this city, when you can walk with gods?”

Between them, the air tightened, storm wind moaning through the broken skylight. Henrik’s coat snapped as a sail around his legs, his shoulders squared in defiance, and his hand's palm clenching the relic.

Strand barked a laugh, wild in the cavernous dark. “You can’t fight this tide, Almen. You’re standing knee-deep in your own bloodline and still pretending you’re not one of them.”

Henrik’s jaw clenched. His veins ached, stormlight pulsing beneath his skin, as though the ancient call luring the Draugr now clawed at him. His allies faltered, the line between loyalty and betrayal eroded by the glittering lie of eternity.

“Step aside,” Strand hissed, leveling a gun Henrik missed. “Or you’ll drown with the rest.”

As the storm thundered and the museum trembled around them, Strand’s allies closed in and surrounded Henrik without warning.

Later in Vigeland Park, snow and ash fell over the monoliths of stone bodies, the Draugr loomed—corpse-blue, its skin stretched tight over muscle flexed with impossible strength. Its breath steamed in the night, reeking of sea brine and rot. Beneath the stormlight, its eyes glowed as coals drowned in water.

Henrik staggered into the clearing, trench coat torn, blood painting his knuckles. Behind him, the traitors—men he once called allies—fanned out, guns shaking in hands too eager, too desperate. Strand’s voice cut through the gale: “Give it to them, Almen! The relic belongs to the dead, not to you.”

Henrik’s chest rose and fell, breath ragged. In his palm, the stolen relic glimmered with a hateful pulse, veins of light crawling across its surface. It whispered in his blood, promising power, demanding surrender.

“Immortality,” Strand pressed, eyes fever-bright. “All of Oslo could kneel before us.”

Henrik bared his teeth. The words tore from him as gravel: “No city worth ruling if it’s built on corpses.”

The Draugr lunged. Its hand, larger than a man’s torso, swept aside stone sculptures as if they were paper. Henrik met the charge, something ancient and violent unfurling inside him. A roar split from his throat—deep, primeval, and dredged from a bloodline he had long denied. His muscles surged with berserker fury, veins darkening beneath skin, eyes flashing storm-bright.

Steel met flesh, flesh met stone. With bone-shattering force, his fists pounded into its chest as Henrik grappled the monster, its claws raking his side. Each blow cracked as thunder, echoing through the hollow park.

Behind him, gunfire erupted—betrayers firing not at the Draugr but at him. Appearing out of the shadow, Ragna’s voice cut sharp through the chaos: “Henrik!” She fired back, her shots sparking against marble, her silhouette a shield at his flank.

Pinned between monster and men, Henrik’s choice narrowed to a blade’s edge. He glanced once at the relic, its light spilling down his wrist as chains. Then, with a snarl, he hurled it against the granite base of the monolith.

The relic shattered.

Light flared—blinding and searing. The Draugr screamed, a sound of glaciers cracking apart, its body convulsing before dissolving into mist and silence. To the ground fell Strand’s weapon, his mouth open in disbelief, the fever in his eyes guttering to ash.

To his knees Henrik collapsed, the berserker fire extinguished as swiftly as it had come. His bloodline severed, and the bonds broken. Around him, Oslo lay wrecked—sculptures shattered, streets drowned, leaders dead or faithless.

Ragna lowered her weapon, staring at the ruin. “You’ve saved them,” she whispered, though her voice held no triumph, only grief.

Henrik wiped blood from his mouth, eyes hollow. “No,” he rasped, gaze fixed on the mist unraveling into the storm. “I’ve left them free.”

Runes in the Machine

Leaning closer to the monitor, the glow from cascading lines of corrupted data washed Andreas Winther's face in pallid blue. His jaw was tight, brows drawn as he traced the erratic spike in violent incident reports across the city grid. The data streams juddered, frames dropped, and somewhere in the noise, he saw it again—a flicker.

A fox-like silhouette, luminous and sharp-edged, ghosted across the interface, its eyes two fractured points of amber. As it moved, strings of symbols unraveled in its wake—no ASCII, no Cyrillic, no codepage he knew. The characters bent impossibly, angles meeting where geometry said they shouldn’t.

He exhaled through his nose, slowly. “You don’t belong here,” he murmured, as if the avatar could hear him.

The cursor danced under his command, isolating the segment, stripping away layers until the rogue process remained. The fox twitched, pixel-sheen rippling, and the room’s air thickened—then the screen buckled into black.

Rising out of nothing, a wave towering and gray-green, blotted the sunlight by its height. Copenhagen’s skyline fractured behind it. He heard the low groan of pressure before the collapse. His breath caught—then the vision broke, leaving the hum of servers in its place.

Andreas’ knuckles whitened on the desk. Combing through the fragmented logs, his fingers moved with a surgeon’s focus. The fox’s trail was faint but constant, threading between packet captures and timestamped anomalies. The symbols repeated—always in threes, always slanted enough to feel deliberate.

#

Colder than the rest of the archive, the hall's chill crept into Andreas' bones. Racks of aging servers lined one wall, their fans whispering beneath a low, electric hum. Opposite them, upright stones leaned at quiet angles, each carved with runes that caught and held the dim light like wet ink.

Andreas found Oluf near the far end, bent over a workbench scattered with old vellum sheets and a half-disassembled network switch. Under a heavy wool coat, the older man’s shoulders were broad, his hair silver but unkempt, as though he’d run both hands through it too often.

“You’ve seen them before,” Andreas said without preamble, dropping a printout of the fox’s glyphs onto the table.

Oluf glanced down, and something flickered in his expression—recognition without relief. He reached for a brass desk lamp, angling its light over the page. “Not in this order,” he replied, voice low, as if the stones might be listening. “But they’re kin to the wardings.”

They worked in silence at first, Andreas’ laptop balanced on a crate while Oluf’s fingers traced the lines of an ancient rune, muttering translations. The symbols, once mapped, began to form sequences—loops and calls, strange in their elegance yet executable in structure.

“Test this one,” Oluf said, sliding a string of mapped code to Andreas.

Andreas keyed it in. The system shuddered, then spat static into his headphones. Somewhere deep in the network, the Brunnmigi’s presence flared—a voice fractured into overlapping whispers, each naming a different catastrophe.

“Flood,” one hissed.

“Collapse,” murmured another.

“Fire,” breathed a third.

Andreas’ jaw tightened. “It’s toying with us.”

“Good,” Oluf said, already drafting the next pattern. “That means it’s paying attention.”

With each new sequence, the warding patterns pulsed brighter in the system’s visualization—arcs of light threading between nodes like a tightening net. Corrupted sectors flared, resisted, then folded inward as if dragged by unseen gravity.

At last, the map on Andreas’ screen warped. All remaining anomalies bent toward a single point—a dense, shifting construct at the network’s center. The Brunnmigi’s voice narrowed to a single, drawn-out tone that broke like glass before falling silent.

The server room shuddered as if the machinery sensed the coming turn. On Andreas’ screen, the containment protocols lined up in a row of loaded crossbows, each rune-strand looped tight and humming in the code’s unseen depths.

Oluf’s fingers hovered over his keyboard, his breathing steady but deep. “On your mark,” he said, eyes never leaving the central construct’s shifting lattice.

Andreas nodded. “Now.”

The trap sprung with a soundless jolt—streams of data folding inward, herded through narrowing corridors of light. Runes flared as they snapped into place, each a lock in a chain. The Brunnmigi’s form flickered, its fox-like shimmer shredding into static as the virtual well dragged it in. The walls of the well rose in layers, coded wards curling around it like stone rings descending into black water.

In the city grid display beside them, red warning markers blinked out one by one. Flow rates in the water system steadied, incident reports dropped to baseline. For the first time in hours, the hum of the servers seemed calm, almost relieved.

Andreas sat back, rolling the ache from his shoulders. “It’s in.”

Oluf didn’t smile. He watched the containment metrics with a mason’s skepticism—appreciating the mortar but doubting the wall.

Then Andreas saw a second cluster of signals, faint but unmistakable, blooming on a separate panel, but not here. The identifiers matched—the same pattern, the same heartbeat in the data offshore.

His stomach dropped. “Oluf…”

The older man leaned in, squinting at the traces. “That’s not possible. The wards—”

“They worked here,” Andreas cut in, fingers flying across the keys to confirm. “But it’s already somewhere else. Multiple somewhere elses.”

On the periphery of the offshore map, new points began to wink into existence, far from their containment, a scattering of seeds on the wind.

The well’s rune-barriers pulsed on the main display, holding fast. But Andreas’ gaze stayed on the expanding constellation offshore, his voice flat.

“This wasn’t a hunt,” he said. “It was a pruning.”

The Shape of Fire

Helsinki was swallowed in blackout. Streetlamps hung dead over slushy asphalt, and the snowmelt reflected nothing but the smothering dark. Under a low sky humming with frost and static, the power had failed again—fourth time this week—and Aleksi Vire walked his rounds.

He moved like a man who no longer expected to be surprised—broad-shouldered in a threadbare parka, hood low, hands buried in black gloves worn thin by years. Rising like smoke from a quiet fire, his breath steamed in the air. The pistol at his hip sat heavy and unused. Until now, security work had meant guarding silent substations, breaking up looters, ignoring the quiet rise of candlelight rituals in apartment windows.

Then came the call.

"Unit Twelve, you’re closest to Viiskulma. Building E. Another one."

He didn’t ask another what. The tone was enough.

By the time he reached the scene, the air stank of ozone and burned meat in a wet sock. Cutting through stairwell gloom, flashlights caught cracked plaster and the steady drip from a burst pipe. A uniformed responder stood at the door, pale and speechless, as if the horror inside had knocked the words from his lungs.

“Let me through,” Aleksi said. The man stepped aside.

Inside, the apartment was wrecked in a way that defied logic. The overhead bulb had melted down its filament. The wallpaper had blistered outward—as if from some inner heat. At the center sat the body.

A woman, late thirties maybe, slumped in a crouch against the radiator, arms raised to shield her face. Her eyes were gone, scorched clean out. Mouth open, teeth cracked. Her clothes were intact, but the skin beneath was charred, peeling, and split.

Aleksi stood still. His gaze drifted to the wall behind her, where a symbol was etched—deep, deliberate. A Sámi rune, drawn in soot or ash. Jagged lines intersecting at unnatural angles.

Crouching beside her, he felt the cold floor biting through his knees.

“Same pattern as the warehouse body,” he said.

A voice from behind him was low and sharp. “And the man by the tram line. Eyes gone. Mouth the same.”

He turned. Inspector Leena Rautiainen—tall, thin as a blade, cheekbones sharp as axe strokes, hair buzzed close to her scalp. No badge, no insignia. She didn’t need them.

“You called me,” Aleksi said.

“I didn’t.” She stepped in, pulling the door shut. “But I knew you’d come.”

He rose slowly, watching her. “You're not supposed to be involved.”

“And you’re supposed to be retired.” She nodded at the rune. “You know what it means?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But I’ve seen it before. Laajalahti eco-cell raids.”

“That was seven years ago. Those people are buried or locked up.”

Aleksi shrugged. “Then someone’s picking up where they left off.”

Leena stepped closer, flashlight trembling slightly. “There’s no power in this sector. City says it’s an overload. But these rooms—they’re not losing light. They’re drained. Like something’s feeding on the current.”

Aleksi looked at the corpse. “Or the people.”

#

In Kallio, the university annex stank of mildew and wet paper. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, dim and dying, and beyond the half-frozen windows, the blackout deepened. Waiting in the corridor, Aleksi crossed his arms while muffled swearing echoed from the office.

Inari Vuollo emerged in a cloud of dust, dragging a dented filing cabinet as if it had offended her. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, black ink smudged along one wrist, dark hair twisted in a careless bun. Wire-frame glasses slid low on her nose.

“You again,” she said. “Still think fairy tales will solve your crime scenes?”

“I think people are dying,” Aleksi replied. “And they’re marked with runes no one else can read.”

She gave him a look—exhausted, sharp beneath it. “There’s a reason I left. They turned Sámi folklore into tourist bait. Pretty lies behind glass. I told them the stories were alive. That they change when ignored.” A humorless laugh. “Academia doesn’t like dramatists.”

“I’m not here for drama,” Aleksi said. “This symbol”—he handed her a photo—“matches your thesis cover.”

She glanced at it. Her body stiffened. “That’s Sosiit. The watching flame. From the Tulikettu myth.”

Aleksi frowned. “Fox made of fire, right?”

“Not made—become. Born of disruption. Environmental collapse, desecrated ground... the Tulikettu is a warning. A burning thread across the snow.” She paused. “It doesn’t kill. It cleanses.”

Aleksi exhaled through his nose. “I need someone who sees more than signs. Someone who hears what others don’t.”

Inari raised a brow. “You want Kaapo.”

“Already contacted him,” Aleksi said. “He’s waiting.”

They met Kaapo outside the city limits, where pine gave way to bare rock and snow-furred silence. He stood beneath a leaning birch, coat patched with leather and lichen, a carved staff in both hands. Blind from birth, his eyes were milky, but when he turned toward them, it felt like he saw.

“Detective,” Kaapo rasped. His Sámi accent wound through his words like wind over ice. “And the scholar who fled her stories.”

Inari flinched. “I didn’t flee. I stopped lying about what they were.”

Kaapo smiled faintly. “Then you’ve heard the Tulikettu. The real one. Not the fox in your books.”

Aleksi stepped forward. “People are burning from the inside out. Some say it’s chemical, some electrical. But I’ve seen them. I’ve smelled what was left. This isn’t man-made.”

“It is,” Kaapo said, voice dry as kindling. “The work of men who forgot the ground breathes beneath their machines. The Tulikettu speaks when we steal too much.” His head tilted. “It speaks in fire. And wind.”

Inari folded her arms. “And you heard it?”

“I felt it,” Kaapo said. “The cold stopped. The trees stopped. The sky turned its face. Something moved through the snow without sound.”

Aleksi looked between them. “My question’s simple. Can we stop it?”

“No,” Kaapo said.

“Yes,” Inari said, at the same time.

Their eyes locked.

Inari’s voice steadied. “Myths evolve. Which means they can be unwritten. Stories are shaped by who tells them.”

Kaapo shook his head. “Not this one. This one tells us.”

#

By the third night without power, Helsinki turned feral.

Shattered glass crunched under Aleksi’s boots as he stepped over the gutted storefront on Hämeentie. The pharmacy had been stripped—painkillers, batteries, baby formula gone. A trail of bloody handprints smeared the frozen curb. He didn’t follow it.

Fires flickered in trash bins and stolen oil drums. Pressing in harder now, the cold bit through coats, into bone. City services had collapsed—no buses, no police, no news but rumor. And always, the same whisper: "I saw it." "It was watching." "The fox came for him."

Kaapo moved beside him with slow precision, the rubber tip of his staff tapping over the icy sidewalk. His scarf wrapped high, but breath still steamed through it. His blind eyes stayed fixed ahead, unblinking.

“She’s waking,” he said. “The hunger grows.”

Aleksi didn’t ask who she was, he didn't have to.

Behind them, Inari trudged in silence, shoulders hunched against the wind. Her glasses had fogged, cracked down one side. Her eyes were bloodshot from sleepless nights and too many visions she refused to explain.

They reached the alley off Porthaninkatu, where a man’s body lay twisted in frost and soot. His clothes half-melted to his skin, chest arched backward as if struck by lightning from the inside. His face locked in a rictus grin, eyes wide with the last thing he’d seen.

Burned into the brick above him: a crude outline of a fox, drawn in flame. Charred lines, and something darker underneath.

Aleksi turned away, jaw tight.

“Second one today,” Inari murmured.

“He was on the council,” Aleksi said. “Signed the landfill expansion. The one that paved over the wetlands.”

Kaapo tilted his head, listening to something they couldn’t hear.

“It’s not vengeance,” he said. “It’s rebalancing. You pour poison in the river; the river drinks you.”

Aleksi lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “Funny how the river’s got claws now.”

That night, they took shelter in an abandoned community center—dark, half-frozen, the floor littered with broken chairs and forgotten toys. No one slept.

When the visions came, they came together.

Inari was first—sharp, guttural, stumbling to her knees. “She’s here—no, inside—!”

Aleksi saw the walls ripple with heat that wasn’t there. Peeling open like bark, the floor revealed roots choked in plastic and blood. Smoke curled from the seams in his gloves. He tore them off—his palms glowed faintly, ember-veined beneath the skin.

He looked up—and there it was.

The Tulikettu.

It stepped from the dark like flame unfolding: long-limbed, fur of molten copper and ash, eyes twin embers flickering in sockets too deep for light. Its paws didn’t touch the ground. Its breath melted frost from the air. And it looked at them with judgment.

Inari screamed. The fox turned—and shifted.

In its eyes she saw oil rigs, pipeline maps signed by her father, a forest burning from within, and her own silence.

Kaapo’s lips moved without sound. Tears traced his cheeks.

Frozen, Aleksi’s heart pounded in his throat. The fox turned to him—and he saw the raid seven years ago, shoving a teenager face-down in the slush, ignoring crates marked with Sámi seals as evidence burned beside them.

The fox blinked. And vanished.

In the silence that followed, the building groaned.

Aleksi dropped onto a bench, hand trembling. “It knows.”

Kaapo nodded. “It remembers.”

The next day, they moved to an abandoned church near Kaisaniemi, which reeked of damp stone and old smoke. Stained glass lay shattered across the nave, scattered like brittle autumn leaves. Pushing through broken archways, cold wind stirred burnt hymnals and whispered through the ribbed ceiling.

Inari crouched at the altar, black scarf tight around her jaw. Her eyes—wide, sharp despite exhaustion—scanned the fragment of hide she’d unrolled like scripture. Pulsing faintly in the firelight, symbols burned in red ochre across its cracked surface.

“It’s not a prayer,” she said. “It’s a summons. Sámi shamans called them Gáldu boazut—Flamewalkers. Spirits given form when balance is shattered.”

Aleksi leaned against a half-collapsed pew, arms crossed. “How do we make one?”

Her eyes flicked up. “We don’t make it. One of us becomes it. The rite needs fire, blood, and a gift willingly given—the thing we fear losing most.”

Kaapo sat in the corner, legs folded beneath him, palms resting on his knees. His breath came slow and deep, as if he’d already accepted whatever truth waited.

“A soul lit by pain,” he murmured. “Not burned. Transformed.”

Aleksi exhaled. “And what happens to the person?”

Inari didn’t answer at first. She touched the edge of the hide with care. “The texts say the Flamewalker doesn’t return. Or if they do… they don’t come back whole.”

Silence stretched, taut as wire.

“Then we choose,” Aleksi said. “One of us walks into the fire.”

Inari stood, spine straightening like steel pulled through snow. “I should do it. I found the rite.”

“No,” Kaapo said gently. “You want to because you think you deserve to. That’s not the same as being called.”

Her jaw tightened. “You don’t get to decide.”

Aleksi stepped forward. “Then what are you offering, Kaapo? You’ve been talking to the wind since day one.”

Kaapo’s blind eyes didn’t flinch. “I lost my sight to fire. I’ve felt what she is. I’ve known her name longer than either of you. But I’m too old. My blood would vanish in the smoke before the fox even turned its head.”

Inari looked at Aleksi, voice low. “You’ve seen what she shows. The boy at the raid. The sealed crates. What are you willing to lose?”

Not speaking, the fire cracked beside Aleksi and cast light across his face—the scar under his eye, the unshaved jaw, the weight in his silence. “I already lost my badge. My family. My name, if I’m honest.” He looked down. “The only thing I have left is the truth I’ve been avoiding.”

Inari narrowed her eyes. “And that is?”

“That I liked the power,” he said. “Back then, during the crackdown, I told myself it was justice, but it was control.” He looked up. “That’s what I fear losing now. The part of me that remembers being human.”

Kaapo inclined his head. “Then maybe it’s you.”

They moved out to the clearing behind the church, which was ringed with dead trees, their trunks blackened and hollowed like chimneys. Falling in wet clumps, the snow hissed as it touched the fire Inari had no problem coaxing to life—not an ordinary flame, but something that pulsed red and gold, alive with hunger.

Aleksi stood at its edge, stripped to his thermal undershirt, boots planted in the half-melted snow. Steam rose from his skin.

“You don’t have to do this,” Inari said, her voice barely audible over the crackle. Her coat flapped in the wind. Her cheeks were streaked with ash and tears.

“I do,” he said. “It was always me.”

Kaapo sat cross-legged nearby, singing under his breath—an old Sámi joik, low and sorrowful, drawn from somewhere deeper than language.

Aleksi stepped forward.

The flames didn’t resist. They welcomed him. They crawled up his legs, threading through muscle and peeling back like bark. He staggered, bit down, but didn’t scream.

He saw the boy—facedown in the slush, begging in Northern Sámi as Aleksi’s boot pinned him. The crates. The smell of gasoline.

As the fire rose to his chest, his lungs filled with smoke that wasn’t smoke, but breath from another world.

He remembered his daughter’s face, blurred by guilt. The unopened letter. His hand trembled as he reached for it—then the flames took it too.

His eyes burned last, but did not melt, more remade. When he opened them again, they were lit from within, flickering like embers behind shattered glass.

Inari stumbled back. “Aleksi?”

He stood in the center of the blaze, untouched. Skin charred in lines like old wood grain, flickers of flame coiling from his shoulders, arms, mouth, and his voice was deeper, cracked open like a fault line.

“I remember,” he said. “And I burn.”

#

Stretching endlessly, the Arctic forest was cruel beneath a silver sky. Aleksi moved through it like smoke—unnatural and silent. Snow hissed where he passed.

The trees leaned away, animals fled, and the ice cracked in patterns beneath his feet, like veins under skin.

He felt the Tulikettu’s trail as heat in the back of his skull—ruptures, places where the world had buckled, bent by something older than rage.

By the time he reached the lair, night had swallowed everything. A jagged hollow of stone and snow opened before him, lit from within by shifting orange light. The forest around it pulsed with dread—branches twitching without wind, frost forming shapes that shouldn’t hold symmetry.

He stepped inside.

The ground groaned. Roots recoiled. Ash fell from the ceiling like dead feathers.

And then it appeared.

The Tulikettu.

It flowed into view like living fire poured into the shape of a beast—long-limbed, fur glowing with coals and cinders, and nine tails flicking through the dark like whips of molten wire.

It smiled.

Aleksi stepped forward, fire coiling from his fists.

“You remember me,” he said.

The fox opened its mouth. And the forest screamed.

Lashing toward him, branches sharpened into spears. Ice rose in jagged walls, and roots burst from the ground, clawing at his legs.

The wind inside the lair screamed with voices older than language. Fire twisted through the cavern, veins of living gold. The Tulikettu circled Aleksi, its tails trailing flame, eyes locked with his—waiting.

Standing bruised and smoldering, cracks spiderwebbed across the charred skin of Aleksi’s chest, flame licking along his spine. His breath came slow, each exhale releasing cinders. His humanity clung to him, melting like the last snow in spring.

The fox stilled. Its voice came without sound, deep in his bones: "You came to destroy me."

Aleksi raised his hand. Fire surged across his palm, curling in readiness. The fox didn’t flinch.

“I came to stop this,” he said. “The deaths. The fear.”

"They are not punishment. They are warning. The Earth reclaims what is stolen. Always."

Its gaze burned through him, and he saw—the wetland buried beneath landfill, the river choked in runoff, and forests chewed by machines. Not as images, but sensations: lungs struggling for air, roots drowning in asphalt.

And in every act of destruction—silence.

The Tulikettu had filled that silence with balance.

He lowered his hand. The flame dimmed.

“You’re not the threat,” Aleksi whispered. “We are.”

"You have burned, but not broken. You remember. Will you forget, if I let you live?"

He looked at his reflection in the scorched rock—eyes molten, mouth flickering with heat. Not the man he was, but not the monster he feared.

“No,” he said. “I won’t forget. But I can’t go back. I’m not him anymore.”

Stepping closer, the fox’s breath was the heat of summer storms, of birth and collapse. It pressed its forehead to his.

"Then burn with me, and become the fire that remembers."

The world erupted.

Flame coiled through Aleksi’s chest, fusing every scar, every regret, every act of violence and silence—transformed into purpose.

His body shattered, and something greater rose.

Ash drifted through the Arctic trees for days. Where the lair had been, nothing remained but scorched stone and silence.

But in the shadows of cities and forests, a figure appeared, tall, hooded in smoke, and eyes like dying stars. He left blackened footprints and bodies curled in ash—corporate raiders, poachers, men who signed away rivers.

They said the fox walked again, but it walked with a man now.

And together, they hunted.