Valhalla Rising (eBook)

An Epic of Norse Gods and Mortal Defiance

Bilal Salman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
102 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-112519-3 (ISBN)

Infos

What if Valhalla was not a reward-but a cage?

When Eirik dies in battle, he wakes in the golden hall promised to every warrior. Endless feasts. Endless victories. Endless glory.

But something is wrong.

The battles never end. The wounds never last. And beneath the songs and firelight, Eirik begins to see the truth: Valhalla is not a paradise-it is a forge. Souls are broken down, reshaped, and fed back into an eternal war designed by a god who cannot afford doubt.

When Eirik refuses to obey, Valhalla fractures.

Freedom spills into the world-raw, untested, and dangerous.

As gods abandon force for manipulation, belief becomes a weapon. Old loyalties rot. New orders rise. Friends choose certainty over conscience. And rebellion itself threatens to become another form of tyranny.

This is not a story about killing gods.

It is a story about what happens after you stop kneeling-
and whether freedom can survive without becoming something just as cruel.

Valhalla Rising is a dark, philosophical epic fantasy about choice, power, and the cost of deciding for yourself. Gritty, mythic, and emotionally uncompromising, it is a standalone novella that lingers long after the final page.

If you enjoy:

morally complex fantasy

gods who fear irrelevance more than death

rebellions that don't end cleanly

stories that challenge power rather than replace it

this book is for you.

Textauszug

1

 

 

The gates closed behind Eirik with a thunder that shook his chest. Inside, the hall stretched farther than his eyes could follow. Golden beams arched high above, carved with runes that pulsed faintly, as if alive. The air smelled of roasted meat, oak smoke, and spilled mead, heavy enough to drown the breath in his lungs. Every table overflowed with platters of boar, bread, and fish pulled from seas he had never sailed. Warriors shouted and laughed, their voices colliding into a roar that shook the rafters.

Eirik stood still, caught between awe and unease. His fingers twitched, searching for the weight of a sword, but he carried nothing. His body felt whole again, scars and wounds gone, yet some part of him ached as though his flesh remembered its breaking. He swallowed, throat tight, eyes sweeping across the chaos of celebration. Men and women bellowed songs, slammed cups against oak, wrestled on the floor, their laughter shaking the benches.

At the far end of the hall rose a throne hewn from the bones of beasts too large to be real. Upon it sat a figure crowned with a helm of ravens, one eye burning bright as a forge, the other dark and hollow. Even from a distance, Eirik felt the weight of that gaze. Odin. The Allfather. His breath caught, and for a heartbeat he thought his knees might give way.

The Valkyrie who had carried him here stepped closer, her silver armor glowing in the firelight. “You are among the chosen now,” she said, her tone steady, though her eyes searched his face as if weighing what lay beneath his skin.

Eirik tried to speak, but words tangled in his chest. Chosen. The word should have filled him with pride. This was what every warrior dreamed of—feasting with the gods, rising each morning to battle without death’s final grip. Yet a whisper gnawed at him, quiet but sharp: why then did it feel like chains had closed around his soul?

A horn sounded, long and deep, silencing the hall for a moment before another roar of voices rose even louder. The warriors pounded fists against tables, a rhythm that shook the floor beneath his boots. Heat surged from the hearths, flames leaping high, sparks bursting into the smoky air.

The Valkyrie leaned closer, her breath warm against his ear. “Do not falter. Odin watches.”

Her words cut through him like steel. He straightened, though his chest felt tight, and lifted his chin toward the throne. Odin had not moved, yet the weight of his gaze pressed harder, as if he could strip Eirik bare with a thought.

In that moment, fear and pride warred within him. He was Eirik Wolfblood, son of a farmer turned raider, a man who had carved his way through shield walls and storms alike. But before the Allfather, even the strongest felt small.

A cup was thrust into his hand. Mead sloshed over his knuckles, sticky and sweet. A broad warrior with hair like tangled rope grinned at him, eyes blazing with firelight. “Drink, brother! You earned your place!”

Eirik lifted the cup to his lips. The mead was thick, golden, filling his mouth with honey and smoke. Cheers erupted around him, voices crashing like waves, but inside his chest the whisper only grew louder. This was no end, no peace. This was a beginning—and beginnings carried their own kind of doom.

 

The night stretched endlessly inside the hall, though no stars shone through the high rafters. Torches burned along the walls without dimming, their smoke mingling with the scent of spiced meat and pine resin. The air was thick, heavy with sweat and laughter and the iron tang of weapons. Eirik felt it cling to his skin, warm and suffocating, as if the hall itself was alive and breathing around him.

He sat at a table crowded with warriors whose names were shouted across the hall like songs. Men who had once been kings raised their cups beside farmers who had died with pitchforks in their hands. Their faces glowed in the firelight, eyes blazing with pride and hunger, mouths dripping with grease and golden mead. A chorus of voices rose in song, verses about battles long past, each line struck like a hammer, raw and unpolished but filled with fire.

Eirik lifted a piece of roasted boar, the fat dripping onto his fingers, and bit down. The meat was richer than anything he had tasted in life, tender as if it had been pulled straight from the gods’ own hearth. Yet as he chewed, his stomach twisted. Hunger had gnawed at him only moments ago, but the taste now seemed heavy, cloying. He pushed the meat aside and wrapped his hand around the cup, letting its warmth bleed into his palm.

The warrior beside him, the one with rope-thick hair, clapped him on the shoulder. “Eat, Wolfblood. Drink until your heart forgets the weight of earth. Tomorrow, you fight again, and there will be no death to take you.” His grin was wild, teeth flashing, but his eyes burned with a feverish gleam that unsettled Eirik.

“Fight again?” The words slipped from Eirik before he could stop them. His voice sounded small against the roar of the hall.

The warrior laughed, slamming his fist against the table, shaking the cups. “Aye! Each dawn, the field awaits us. Blades clash, bodies fall, blood soaks the ground, and when the sun sets, we rise again, whole and ready for the feast. It is the gift of Odin. The joy of the chosen.”

Eirik forced a smile, though his gut tightened. The promise of endless battle should have thrilled him—hadn’t he lived his life for the clash of steel? But something in the man’s laughter felt hollow, as if behind it lay a truth none dared speak.

He let his gaze drift across the hall. A dozen hearths blazed, casting their light upon faces smeared with mead and blood. Servants carried trays stacked with bread, fish, and steaming joints of venison. Valkyries moved silently between the tables, their silver armor catching the glow of fire, their eyes sharp and watchful, like hunters waiting for the moment prey revealed its weakness.

Eirik found Astrid among them. She stood near the throne, her posture rigid, her gaze fixed not on the warriors but on Odin himself. The Allfather had not spoken since Eirik entered. He sat still upon his throne, ravens perched on either arm, one black as shadow, the other pale as frost. His single eye glowed faintly, cold and unblinking, as if he saw through feasts, through flesh, into the marrow of every soul that sat at his tables.

Eirik’s chest tightened beneath that gaze. He tore his eyes away and gripped his cup harder, letting the mead slosh against his hand. The warmth soothed nothing.

A thought pricked at him, unwelcome yet insistent. If this was paradise, why did it feel so much like a prison with walls painted gold?

The song around him swelled, drowning the whisper of doubt. Warriors raised their voices until the rafters shook, but inside Eirik, silence pressed harder, the silence of questions he dared not speak.

Tomorrow he would step onto the fields of the dead. Tomorrow he would test the truth of this hall of glory.

And already, a part of him feared what he might find.

 

The sound of horns tore Eirik from uneasy sleep. He rose from the bench where he had slumped, disoriented at first by the absence of darkness. The hall never dimmed; its fires burned as if night did not exist within its walls. Yet the warriors stirred around him with the same urgency as men woken before dawn. Cups rolled from tables, laughter shifted to shouts, and the scraping of benches echoed against the golden beams overhead.

The air reeked of mead and sweat, still heavy from the feast. Eirik rubbed his face with the back of his hand, feeling the tacky sweetness clinging to his skin. His head pounded as though war drums beat inside his skull. He had drunk only enough to avoid suspicion, yet the weight of this place—its heat, its noise, its unyielding hunger—left him drained.

Another horn sounded, deeper, closer. The Valkyries moved among the warriors, their voices cutting through the chaos with commands sharp as steel. “To the field! Arm yourselves! Odin waits!” The men obeyed with eagerness, rising from their places, laughter returning as they shoved and jostled each other like brothers ready for mischief rather than slaughter.

Eirik rose more slowly, his legs unsteady, though not from drink. His body felt light, strong, whole—yet his thoughts dragged like chains. He followed the stream of warriors toward the great doors, the thunder of their boots echoing against the stone floor. When the gates opened, a blast of cold struck his face.

The outside world unfolded before him, vast and terrible. A plain stretched farther than the eye could reach, its ground dark and damp, as if it had soaked up centuries of blood. The air smelled of frost and iron. Beyond the plain, jagged mountains loomed, their peaks shrouded in mist that glowed faintly under a sky the color of storm clouds. The ground trembled with the stomping of countless feet as thousands of warriors poured forth, shouting, laughing, raising their weapons to the sky.

Eirik’s hand itched for steel. A spear appeared in his grasp as if willed into being, its shaft smooth beneath his fingers, the tip gleaming with sharpness untouched by rust. He stared at it, uncertain whether it was gift or illusion.

“Do you feel it?” The rope-haired warrior—his name was Bjorn, though Eirik had only caught it in passing—grinned at him, eyes alight with fever. “The joy of battle, brother. There is no death here. Only the fight, and the rising again.”

Eirik managed a tight nod, but his chest twisted with doubt. What joy was there in dying if death had no meaning? He remembered his last breath on the mortal field, the cold...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.12.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 0-00-112519-2 / 0001125192
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-112519-3 / 9780001125193