The night clung to Thor like a shroud. He crouched beside a frail fire, the flames guttering against the hungry wind that swept through the Wolfswood. Snow fell in silence, dusting his shoulders and matting his tangled hair. He was cold, and he was hungry. Each crackle of the dying fire sounded like a last breath under the gray sky. He hugged himself and rocked gently, letting memory blur the biting pain.
He remembered warmth. Not this chilling hunger, not these scrawny legs wrapped in tattered rags, not the desperate search for something—anything—to eat. He closed his eyes and saw instead the lamp-lit room of a school dormitory, the smell of instant noodles on a late night, the laughter of classmates. Once, he had carried a backpack heavier with homework than the weight of this world on his shoulders. In that life, he was grown, capable, armed with knowledge and hope of the future. Now, as an eight-year-old orphan in a savage land, he felt like a leaf lost in a storm. The absurdity of it made no sense, and yet here he was.
A lean wolf howled distantly, and Thor tensed, listening. In the Wolfswood, dangers prowled—wolves true to their name, stragglers of wild men maybe, the bitter cold, and worse yet, the others he barely dared to name even to himself. But of all fear, the hardest to swallow was the fear of his own helplessness. He was small; some older boy or a patrol of passing knights could easily mistake him for a villainous creature and put an arrow through him. He missed the simple safety of his old life—the alarm clock's rude shout in the morning, the cleanliness of home, the routines that meant everything was somewhat predictable. Here, predictability meant little beyond whether he would wake up shivering or lifeless in the snows. The terror of this surreal reality tightened in his chest.
Tears he refused to shed slipped instead as silent fear. He thought about the family he had once known—faces of parents, a sister's smile—now nothing but ghosts in this new mind. It felt cruel to be born again into this world, to carry the soul and memories of a person who had already lived a life and then snatched away to start another. He tried to make sense of the cruelty. Was it some joke of the gods? Or punishment for sins he could not recall?
Around him, the forest breathed blackness. Pine trees loomed like silent giants, and every shadow seemed to flicker with unseen eyes. Thor shivered and kicked at the cold mud, wishing for the safety of any wall or roof, even a damp cave. Hunger gnawed at his belly. He reached into his small pack—a patched cloth pouch—and withdrew crumbs of stale bread, the only morsels he had. He tucked them in his mouth slowly, savoring a bitterness that the real bread never had. Still, his stomach ached.
As the last of the fire's flame threatened to die, Thor stirred the coals with a stick, feeding it a strip of birch bark. An ember caught and a small orange glow grew. The boy pulled his knees closer to his chin and wrapped his thin coat tighter around his shoulders, pressing the warmth to his skin. All at once, exhaustion hit. The day's running and hiding, the endless vigilance against hunger, had worn his limbs heavy. He gave in and lay down on the cold ground, resting his head on a lump of backpack.
When Thor closed his eyes, the darkness behind his eyelids was not empty. Grains of ash drifted before the black. He found himself in a dreamscape filled with whispering voices and shifting images.
He stood in a great hall of stone. Flames roared all around, painting the walls with dancing shadows of orange and black. In the center of the chaos was a young girl with hair as white as snow. Her dress was flame-colored, but her face was calm, almost sad. She turned toward him and spoke a single word that he could not understand, even as her lips moved. Then the hall behind her collapsed in a shower of sparks and smoke.
The scene changed. Thor was now atop a wall of ice that reached to the sky. Above him, dragons circled like dread omens in the pale dawn sky. Their great wings shaded the Wall and scattered dark feathers in the wind. One dragon belched fire that turned the sky to ash, and Thor felt heat on his face in the icy air. He clutched at his chest, heart pounding as if one of those great beasts' wings had flapped inside him.
Again the dream shifted without warning. He stood in a stone tower's parapet, the wind roaring in his ears. Far below, a boy with dark hair screamed and fell backward, arms splayed. Thor's hand shot out to catch him, but no one was there to hold the falling child's hand. The boy's scream echoed, lost, and Thor felt his own breath hitch.
Then the dream took one more terrible turn. Snow swirled down upon him. The air was cold and gray, and the ground beneath was white as bone. In the center of the clearing was a crown made of twisted thorns, lying on the snow. Ravens pecked at it, their ragged feathers flapping. The boy—Thor—reached out and touched the crown, the thorns pricking his palm, drawing blood. The whispers that he had barely heard before grew to a muted chorus around him, but still he could not make sense of their language. The only thing clear was dread that these images weren't just dreams but warnings, seeds of something yet to come.
Thor jolted awake as a gust of frigid air blew into his face. His chest heaved, and he realized he was shaking. The pale light of dawn was creeping through the trees. The fire was nothing but a bed of cold coals now, gray with ash. He rubbed the spots of red that had burned themselves into his palms and chest. Disoriented, he looked at his hands, expecting soot or cuts where the dream-thorns had pricked him. There was only the faint ghost of something in his palm, like a burn scar that wasn't there before.
He gasped, the cold reality creeping back as his mind fully cleared. Everything around him was silent except for the woodland sounds—the distant cawing of ravens and the sigh of the wind through pines. His fire was dead, but somewhere in his chest a strange warmth glowed. Thor swallowed the lump of fear rising in his throat. Something had changed in that dream. He felt it in his blood and bones, in the very pulse of his heart—a seed of power stirring with those dark visions.
He pulled his knees up under his chin and watched dawn break. The dream-images flared in his mind every time he closed his eyes: a dragon's fire, a falling child, a crown of ice. Fear still ran through him, yet mixed with it was a flicker of curiosity. What did it all mean? Who had sent these visions into his sleep? Even more unsettling was the notion that in the very depth of his frightened mind, maybe it was he who had conjured them.
The chill morning air made him shiver, reminding him that the night had indeed been real and cold. But something in Thor had shifted. When he stood to feed the smoldering fire with dry twigs, his hands moved with a steadier confidence than before. He felt the first hint of something strange and new in him—an ember of magic, perhaps, glowing faintly with promise and dread.
Whatever this power was, he would have to learn to control it if it was to be of any use. For now, though, Thor was alone in the silent Wolfswood, hungry, frightened, and changed. And as the wolves howled in the distance once more, he whispered to himself: I will survive.