This story takes place in the Jotun Hall of Kaldhall, the fortress where Jarl Kael rules, and where Runa is sent to be his bride. Discover the full tale in Hearts of Flame and Ice (coming soon).
Kaldhall is a living fortress carved into the mountain’s ribs. Its beams groan and breathe; its fires remember every oath ever burned within them. Fire is law. Smoke is memory.
It endures where stone dreams and flame obeys.
Its people are children of frost and storm, flame and smoke.
They are born of frost and hunger, built to kneel only before heat. Every breath in Kaldhall carries the taste of someone else’s will. The high-born burn slow, their power steady as coals. The lower ranks flare bright and vanish, leaving scent and rumor behind.
Desire is law here. Obedience is worship. Touch is trial by flame. To rise, one must burn hotter than those above.
To rule, one must learn how to make others beg for the fire.
The hall feeds on them all, but its true pulse is the tremor of want between command and surrender.
Kaldhall was not built. It grew from the void.
A heart of ice found the mountain’s hollow and refused to die.
From it came the first jotuns — few, and wordless.
They carved wards into the mountain’s ribs and raised a hall around the heart, so its silence would not swallow them whole.
When they pressed their palms to the walls, frost bloomed in the shape of their touch. When they spoke, the echoes coiled together and learned desire.
So the mountain began to want.
From the mingling of frost and flame, body and echo, came the second kind. Smaller, hungrier, quick to worship. They learned that to touch was to risk burning, and that pleasure was another word for endurance.
Kaldhall remembers every shiver. The stones keep count.
Even now, when night deepens and the halls go quiet, the walls still sweat with heat that has no source. Lovers say the heart below still beats, calling the faithful to kneel, to feed it with the only offering it accepts: want.