I Loaded the Occult Panel

For most of the afternoon, he sat there reading those runes.

[Erudition] called up the entire database of rune glyphs he had read over the past six months, while [Speculation] worked alongside it to help him piece them together bit by bit.

As he pieced together the third paragraph, Richard slowly sat up straight.

These annotations were not casual scribbles added as an afterthought. Strung together, they formed a complete system.

The annotator had hidden an entire set of old rules regarding the Wild Hunt, paragraph by paragraph, inside this thoroughly unremarkable seal-maintenance file.

The opening line of the annotations was an old Scandinavian saying:

That procession does not walk the roads of men; it walks the seam between the two realms.

On ordinary nights, the seam is shut tight. Only on a few specific nights does it open a crack.

”When the wind rises from the northwest and turns to the southeast, the door is in the southeast.”

”First hear the cry of geese, then hear the horn.If the horn drowns out the geese, they are crossing over. If it fails to drown them out, they are merely passing by.”

Reading this, Richard remembered the night of the Day of Mourning.

He had heard everything described in the annotations with his own ears that night.

The second paragraph was the longest. A single runic word appeared in it over and over.

It took Richard a long time to puzzle it out. The Scandinavians wrote it as skuld, meaning ’that which must be repaid.’ It was also the name of the youngest of the three goddesses of fate.

The annotations noted that the Northmen called it orlog, which literally meant ’that which is already laid down.’

Ordinary fate could be prayed for and altered, but orlog could not.

”The lord of the hunt leads this procession in apparent defiance of all laws, but the rules bind him more tightly than anyone else.”

Richard puzzled it out, syllable by syllable.

”Since it must honor its debts, why is the debtor always human?”

Seeing this line, the tiny spark in Richard’s mind instantly flared into a raging fire.

Next, the annotations divided those who ran with the Wild Hunt into two categories.

The first were those chained by debt.

Weighed down by unpaid accounts, their names were snagged by the Hunting Register. Stripped of their own will, they were dragged into the eternal night along with the procession.

Such people were nothing more than slaves; they had no say over their life, death, or freedom.

The second category consisted of candidates who joined by virtue of a token.

Here, the annotations used a specific word—guest.

”A guest is not a slave,” the runes read.

”A slave is bound by debt, while a guest arrives with a token.

Token in hand, the lord of the hunt protects you as he would a guest by his own hearth. Harming you would force him to pay an unbearable price.”

Richard touched the rein-wrapped antler tip in his pocket, feeling a profound sense of reassurance.

The annotations went on to explain that every time the endless procession crossed over, it gathered hunted evil creatures, lost souls, and all sorts of objects swept up from the seam between the two realms.

The lord of the hunt distributed these spoils among the members of the procession based on their individual merits.

Those who killed the most, pursued the furthest, and held the line received the largest share.

The scouts reportedly received the largest share of all; they were the guiding beacons of the Wild Hunt.

”A guest may also claim a share.”

”If a guest earns merit during the hunt, that merit is recorded in the ledger.

If you contribute to the hunt, you are entitled to a portion of that night’s spoils.

But if you don’t ask for it, it will not be freely given.

The law of the North has always been this: you must press the issue until it has no choice but to pay up.”

Richard closed the book.

It could not be a coincidence that this set of rules had been left out for him to browse.

The professor had likely noticed something recently and intentionally passed this material his way.

After over six months, he had completely figured out Professor Mortimer’s teaching style.

Mr. Hutton and the old professor were cut from the same cloth. Both would quietly leave a door ajar, leaving it up to him to look inside and read for himself.

If you understood it, the knowledge was yours.

If you didn’t, then you had simply spent the afternoon copying seal-maintenance records.

Richard gently set the book on the corner of the desk and went back to his work.

”Finished copying?” Mortimer’s voice drifted over from across the room.

”I finished.”

”What did you note down?”

Richard handed over the catalog ledger.

Mortimer took it and gave it a glance. He didn’t say a single word about the blank annotation column.

”Alright.” The old professor tossed the ledger back. ”Come back and continue tomorrow.”

Richard stood and screwed the cap back onto his ink bottle.

He paused just as he reached the door.

”Professor, do bookmarks fall out of all the books in this stack?”

Mortimer let out a laugh. ”That depends on whether you can find them.”

For the next few days, Richard went up to the third floor of the Petrie Building every afternoon.

Ostensibly he was there to copy records, but in reality, his copying grew slower and slower.

Among that stack of luxurious hardcovers, more than one contained hidden material.

The second was a cipher wrapped in a parchment manuscript. It detailed exactly how one could earn merit within the Wild Hunt, going into extreme specifics.

It mentioned that the most crucial spoil of all was something called hamingja.

Richard lingered over that word for a long time.

Hamingja—what the Scandinavians referred to as ’carried fortune.’

The annotations described it as an intangible essence that could be hoarded, stolen, and transferred from one person to another.

When you earned merit in the hunt, the first thing the lord of the hunt awarded you was this fortune.

The more fortune you accumulated, the better your chances of surviving the next hunt.

Then you could steal even more, snowballing your advantage!

”The hunter steals the prey’s fortune, and the prey’s final breath of resentment before death is also fortune.

Whoever claims it, gains an extra share.”

It seemed that when a black dog locked onto a specific target, it was this very fortune that it was trying to steal.

This was why the Wild Hunt never needed to strike first. They would simply arrive right on time for the prey’s final moments.

The third book explained the bit of leeway exclusive to candidate members, the ’guests.’

How to maneuver the situation to tip the scales in one’s own favor;

How to act before the lord of the hunt to squeeze a little extra benefit out of the event.

Initiative, benefits, spoils of war.

These three concepts formed the final puzzle pieces, filling in the exact gaps in Richard’s understanding.

Others who followed the Wild Hunt were gambling their lives for a shred of luck.

He was different.

No matter how he balanced the ledger, he would come out ahead.

Richard flipped the book open to the page with the runic annotations.

That rhetorical question was still quietly resting in the margin.

”Since it must honor its debts, why is the debtor always human?”

Staring at the sentence, Richard silently added another half to it in his mind.

The debtor is always human because humans always think of themselves as the prey.

”Richard.”

Mortimer’s voice dragged him out of his thoughts.

The cloudiness in the old man’s half-closed eyes had faded slightly.

”You’re copying that book far too slowly.”

The old professor let out a humph.

”You copied the previous stacks of seal-maintenance records at a rate of one stack per half-day.

Yet you’ve been working on this thin, ragged book for ages without adding a single word to the ledger.”

Richard remained silent.

Mortimer set his teacup on the edge of the desk and slowly stood up.

”Which passage are you on?”

”...The part about the guest and the lord,” Richard answered honestly.

”Did you understand it?”

”About half.”

The old professor spoke slowly.

”The man who wrote this book was a coward who managed to make it back from the Wild Hunt alive.”

Richard looked up.

”Hunters enter the Wild Hunt to gamble with their lives. Win, and they earn absolute glory; lose, and nothing is left of their bones. They despise this sort of sly, opportunistic trickery.”

Mortimer adjusted his cup on the edge of the desk.

”But this coward survived. He lived long enough to write down this entire set of rules, stroke by stroke.”

”Those Hunters who gambled their lives didn’t leave a single word behind.”

Richard remained silent.

”Who do you think was smarter?” Mortimer asked.

”...The one who survived.”

”Exactly.” The old professor propped his feet back up.

”But you must remember, this coward survived because he was always holding onto something that no one else had.”

”The book never specifies what it was he held onto,” Mortimer said mildly.

”He left that part blank.”

Richard looked down at the page.

Sure enough, the annotator’s writing abruptly cut off. There was nothing more below it.

”That thing was his very lifeline.”

”Everyone who hopes to turn from guest to master within the Wild Hunt must hold onto something different.”

”You will have to find your own.”

Richard closed the book and gently placed it onto the stack of completed records at the corner of his desk.

He didn’t mention that he had already found his.

Now all he had to do was wait for a specific night.

Yule, the Ember Days, All Hallow’s Eve... the time when that endless procession would cross over.

...

When Loki woke up, the frost on the ground was stacked layer upon layer. It was as if someone had piled hundreds of winters in this place without letting a single one melt.

He tried to push himself up, but his arm wouldn’t cooperate.

Looking down, he saw his right arm lying on the frosted ground three paces away. The five fingers were still curled into a fist.

Loki stared at his severed arm. An itch rose in his throat; he wanted to laugh.

In the end, he didn’t make a sound.

The moment he opened his mouth, freezing air flooded down his throat and into his lungs.

‘As long as I can still open my mouth, I haven’t lost,’ Loki thought.

He could lose anything in this life, but he absolutely could not lose his tongue.

Nearby, Tyr was pinned face-down against the frost, his arms bound behind his back.

An invisible blade was slicing down both sides of his spine.

Wherever the blade passed, his ribs were pried open and splayed outward like a pair of wings unfurling toward the sky.

This punishment was known as the Blood Eagle, an offering the Northmen made to their fiercest god.

They would carve open a living man’s back and pry his ribs into wings, leaving him trapped on the ground as a bird that could never fly again.

Tyr gouged his single hand fiercely into the frost, swallowing his agony.

Once his ribs were fully splayed, a plume of white steam rose, and the two bloody wings snapped back into place along his spine.

Remended, only to be sliced open again.

Loki watched, the urge to laugh completely gone from his throat.

Tyr didn’t make a single sound from start to finish. That scrap of dignity was the only thing he had left.

Freyja had been strung up.

An invisible rope looped around her neck, hoisting her into the air.

This was an offering for the one-eyed god.

To offer a living sacrifice, they would hang the victim from a tree until they choked to death. The Northmen called it ’feeding the ravens.’

But Freyja couldn’t die.

Whenever the rope strangled her to the absolute breaking point, it would slacken, only to hoist her up all over again.

Hela was enduring an equally ancient Scandinavian torment of her own.

Just then, the sound of a horn rose in the distance.

The horn sounded lazy—a smug, deeply satisfied tune.

Loki looked up toward the sound.

That endless procession had reined to a halt directly overhead, tens of thousands of mounts pawing at the ground.

These punishments had been administered to establish the rules, but that didn’t mean the lord of the hunt was in a foul mood.

In fact, it was quite the opposite. Lately, the lord of the hunt had been in an incredibly good mood.