5. The Icy Breath of Yule
Following the mystical blast that shattered the foundations of Helheim, Eirik awoke at the frozen epicentre of Yule, the primordial nexus where matter and mystery intertwine. Though the image of Hel—a gash of darkness and cold in his memory—still lingered like a splinter in his soul, he recalled how the world had dissolved into dusk and silence, leaving behind the sensation of chaos that at the time overwhelmed him like a mote of dust adrift in a boundless void, beyond the very breath of the cosmos. Behind him lay the suffocating atmosphere of the realm of death, that implacable cold that sought to annul his soul; the air of Yule, though gelid, now vibrated with the promise of rebirth.
The spectres had already departed, clearing his
consciousness in their wake, which had been utterly lost in the trance that the
nightmare had induced. From that instant, his path revealed itself before him
with the clarity of fire. Above, the sombre clouds scattered like chimney smoke
in a gale, giving way to the dreamlike image of the mist-shrouded moon and the
northern lights swaying amidst their emerald-green veils.
The last vestiges of twilight had stained the rim of the crescent moon with gold and bronze, appearing like a scythe half-hidden behind the withered leaves of the oaks. The frigid northern lights peeked shivering from beyond the horizon, chanting an ancient song of our ancestors. There was no coincidence in that firmament. Beneath the whisper of a wisdom older than man, the presence of the silver scythe and the retreat of the sun converged to open the threshold where the secret life of the earth rises from its ashes.
(Eirik’s annotations. Yule, 21st
December)
My mystic will rose like a
sword summoned to war. The final third of December was beginning, and with
reverent hand, I detached the sprigs of mistletoe from those copper oaks. I
sought a trunk scarred by the fierce caress of thunder—a giant that had embraced
lightning without being consumed, retaining the fire of heaven in its canopy.
It was the perfect night for the ritual; the firmament itself had woven a pact
to unveil the moon on its sixth day, its golden arc drawing a crescent in the
deepest darkness of the year. With deliberate care, I scattered those branches
around me to cover the white surface, knowing with certainty that the thick
blanket of snow served as an unyielding shield to prevent the berries from ever
touching the bare earth. Thus, that frozen bed was tinged with the muted green
of the small leaves and the milky pearls.
Lost in that trance, his
gaze remained transfixed by the trembling of those tiny lights that flooded
everything, forming a lattice impossible to take in at a single glance. They
seemed like stars reflected in the mirror of a dark lake, silent yet in continuous
vibration. Or perhaps they were bright beads of hail scattered over dark
branches. Or shed tears. Possibly his own tears strewn across the mossy ground,
dancing to the rhythm of his heartbeat. He then felt how each pulsation turned
into a deep chord and, as he stroked the strings of his magical harp in that
evening half-sleep, he released a melody from which burst the magic.
And then those tears dried and dissipated, and the stars
hid in the absolute darkness of the firmament. The sun departed hand in hand
with the aurora borealis, and the moon waned again in its solitude until
returning to its dark phase. Only a void, as vast as an abyss. Possibly,
outside of time and space. The beginning of everything. The silence. The
nothingness. Complete darkness once more.
After moments of lethargy, suddenly, a protracted crack
exploded in the middle of his forehead, piercing his eardrums like thunder,
leaving behind a trail of new silence. And then, as if returning to that
reverie for a moment, he heard a weak beat of his heart, almost imperceptible.
And a second. And then one more, until reaching the rhythm and timbre identical
to that of a distant drum, resonating in the distance lost amongst the branches
of the forest oaks.
The murmur of the wind brought
with it sounds of old, from places distant and hidden in memory, giving off a
scent of brine and wet sand mixed with mistletoe. He was part of an ancestral
rite, where his music and the dance of the oracle wove themselves together. He
visualised the universe as a gigantic bubbling cauldron from Muspelheim,
suspended over the frozen threshold of the abyss, melting the very fabric of
existence, slow, inescapable, fraying reality with its incandescent breath.
Intuition dragged Eirik towards that fiery heart opening before his eyes. It was a titanic crucible that drank in all of existence in long draughts, leaving out all that was perhaps condemned to cease existing—strands of shapeless matter and languishing energy, which unravelled as they moved away, until dissolving completely into the infinity of the distant abyss. The stars themselves, which still retained the snowy appearance of hail, glided in rows towards that rift and disappeared inside, one after the other, abandoning the black firmament.
I stared fixedly at the centre of that black hole in the middle of the vastness of space, half-understanding what was happening. At the gates of that cleft, I began to discern small, diaphanous spheres turning in a hypnotic circle. As I fixed my gaze, I perceived how a silver thread, as fine as a moonbeam, pierced each one, weaving them into the very fabric of the firmament. It was as if the Norns had descended to anchor my own steps to the stars, transforming the dark branches into a tapestry of unknown constellations; knots of light where those spinners had raised the milestones of my own path. I could not tear my gaze away. Spellbound, I saw my own reflection in that distant moment, years prior, when I returned once more to the village under the dark solstice, with the doors adorned with holly and mistletoe.
The early vitkar, guardians of ancestral runic magic, recounted that the mistletoe is the supreme protector of memories past and the great revealer of the uncertain destiny of mortals. They called it 'Urd’s drop', for they believed that within its alabaster seeds lay trapped the frost of what was and the mist of what is yet to be. And it is, in turn, the architect of change for all that walks upon time. When its slender twigs release their scent of aged oak resin —an essence stolen from the tree’s memory— and its pearlescent berries gleam like the snowy gems that fall from the heavens during the storm, the golden twilight of Yule becomes the magical portal giving way to the hereafter: that realm where existence is a mere daydream, and where the end and the beginning of all things clasp hands once more.
For a fleeting instant, I understood that those big ethereal
bubbles were but canvases painted by my own invention, illusions framed by the
crystal of my tears. Tears born of the burning longing that those were not
visions, but real experiences of mine. And the agitated beats of my heart
confirmed to me that they were memories of my true past.
Upon wiping them away, those images disappeared in a slow
spiral turn, and he found himself again before that immense, sombre hollow,
with the absolute conviction of what he was experiencing. He recognised in it
the gateway to his inner universe.
That portal began
to light up little by little. The magnetic cleft began to seethe with a sacred
fire that, without consuming what it touched, restored everything to its purest
essence, brimming with life and renewed energy. With the glow reflected in his
dilated pupils, a pressing intuition pushed him towards the threshold. In his
thoughts, the frigid figure of Hagalaz rose like an inscrutable sign, an
implacable beacon indicating the path he must follow. Without a shred of
hesitation, his arm extended with an irrepressible impulse, and inertia dragged
him towards those glowing jaws. He let himself be devoured. Now his body was a
shadow merging with the fire, only to vanish.
- I. OVERTURE: My Name is Eirik
- II. EXORDIUM: "MYTHOS", Symphony of a Wandering Soul
- III. RESONANCE: My Story and the Secret of the Shadows
- IV. PRELUDE: Eirik's Dirth
- CHAPTER 1: Eirik and the Secret of Avalon
- CHAPTER 2: Discovery in Atlantis
- CHAPTER 3: In the Shadows of Hades
- CHAPTER 4: The Pull of Niflheim
- CHAPTER 5: The Icy Breath of Yule
- CHAPTER 6: Return to Mabon
- CHAPTER 7: Eirik and the Mystery of the Sirens
- CHAPTER 8: The Mirror of the Lake of Shadows
- CHAPTER 9: Finale
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