The corpse twitched.
Tanya narrowed her eyes. The man at her feet was still alive—barely. Half his face had been seared by fire, skin peeling like burnt leather. His right leg was twisted at an unnatural angle beneath him, crushed under the debris of a collapsed hut. Blood soaked the dirt, dark and slow-moving, like ink poured over dry parchment.
He coughed.
She crouched beside him, ignoring the stench of cooked flesh. His eyes, watery and bloodshot, flicked toward her with something between terror and awe. She could already see the question forming in his throat, clogged by blood and faith.
What are you?
"Speak," she said, her tone flat but commanding.
He tried. The words came out in a sputtering mess of consonants, thick with panic and superstition. Tanya adjusted to the dialect—coarser than the Norse she'd heard in the flames. Local. Tribal. But intelligible.
"Valkyrie," he wheezed, then coughed a bubble of blood. "Did… did Odin send you?"
She almost laughed. Not from amusement—but from the tragic simplicity of it.
Even here, in some forgotten corner of existence, the human urge to frame the unexplainable in myth remained unchanged. Just as the soldiers of the Empire once called her a devil in a child's skin, this dying savage now called her a goddess of war.
It was pitiful.
"No," she replied quietly. "Not Odin. Just me."
But the man's glazed eyes had already stopped seeing her. His head lolled to one side, a final breath escaping with a wet sigh.
Tanya stood, brushing ash from her sleeves. She didn't waste pity on him. He had served his purpose. She now knew the language, the level of belief, and the primitive state of their military capability.
It wasn't an army that had raided this village. It was a tribal warband—poorly armed, poorly led, and still clinging to gods who did nothing but watch their people burn.
She scouted the surrounding hills next, following the curve of the coastline until the sun began to bleed behind the jagged cliffs. Her boots sank into the cold mud. Seagulls circled overhead like lazy vultures. The world was gray, quiet, indifferent.
This place didn't know war the way she did.
It would learn.
She climbed to a vantage point—a ridge of rock overlooking a vast, frozen inlet. The sea churned with slow, deliberate waves. From here, she could see the smoke from other villages on the horizon, rising in thin plumes like candles snuffed out one by one.
War was already here. But it was the war of savages. Unrefined. Wasteful. Loud.
She could make it efficient.
She knelt on the rock, drawing symbols in the frost with a shard of bone. Not out of superstition—but because she needed focus. She needed to think. She was a soldier without an army, a strategist without a board, and a god without a temple.
But that would change.
She needed to map this land, identify power centers, and—most importantly—create perception. Fear was a currency here, stronger than steel or gold. If the people already whispered that she was a divine being, she would use that. Not because she believed it.
But because they did.
She turned from the sea and began walking inland.
The terrain grew wilder—forests of twisted pine, frost-bitten roots clawing through ancient stone. She kept low, moving like a shadow through the underbrush. Her body remembered war. Even here, where the magic felt raw and the air held the scent of rot, she moved with the precision of a predator.
As night fell, she found shelter in the hollow of a dead tree. She wrapped herself in the stolen cloak, eating the last of the dried meat. It tasted of salt and decay, but it kept her alive.
Survival. That was the first principle.
She stared into the darkness, listening to the wolves howl in the distance.
This world didn't need a savior. It needed order. And she, as always, would be the one to impose it. Not out of righteousness. Not even revenge.
But because she refused to kneel. Not to men. Not to gods.
And not to Being X.
She whispered a word—an old word, not magic, but memory.
"Empire."
Not the fractured machine she'd left behind, but the idea of it. The logic. The hierarchy. Discipline through fear. Stability through dominance.
It could work here. It had to.
And this time, it would be hers alone.