GOD OF WAR

THE FROZEN PATH

Dawn came like a wound opening across the sky—red and raw and reluctant.

Kratos hadn't slept. He'd sat at the cave entrance all night, axe across his knees, watching the treeline for movement that never came. The creatures had vanished after their warning, leaving only trampled snow and that lingering sweet rot smell that made his stomach turn.

Atreus had tried to stay awake too, but exhaustion had claimed him around midnight. The boy slept now, curled near the dead fire, one hand still clutching his bow. Even in sleep, he looked tense. Ready to fight.

Good. He'd need to be.

Kratos stood, joints protesting from a night of cold and stillness. He was getting old—not by mortal standards, but by the measure of wars fought and blood spilled. Every scar was a calendar marking time he should have been dead. Should have stayed dead.

But death had never been permanent for him. Not when there was still work to do.

He moved to the cave entrance, studying the landscape with a warrior's eye. The forest stretched out before them, endless pine and shadow. Beyond it, somewhere in the grey morning mist, the village waited. And beyond that...

What?

That was the question. The creatures had spoken of someone rising from "deep places, old places." Which meant underground. Caves, perhaps. Or something worse—the kind of primordial depths where the first things had crawled before the world learned shape and meaning.

"Father?"

Kratos turned. Atreus was sitting up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, breath misting in the frigid air.

"We're leaving," Kratos said. "Get ready."

"Where are we going?"

"Back to the village."

Atreus blinked, processing this. "I thought you said going back was bait."

"It is. But whoever sent those things showed his hand last night. He's watching us. Tracking us. Which means running would be pointless." Kratos checked the edge of his axe, found it acceptable. "So we go forward. We find the source. And we end this before it spreads."

"Spreads?" Atreus stood, slinging his bow across his back. "You think this is going to get worse?"

"It already is."

Kratos pointed beyond the cave, to the forest they'd traveled through yesterday. In the morning light, he could see what the darkness had hidden—frost creeping along the tree trunks, spreading in those same reaching, finger-like patterns they'd seen on the well. It hadn't been there when they'd made camp.

"It's growing," Kratos said. "Spreading outward from the village. Soon it'll reach other settlements. Other villages."

"Then we need to warn people. Get them to evacuate—"

"No time. And where would they go? This thing moves through the ground, through the snow, through the very air we breathe." Kratos shouldered his pack, the weight familiar and grounding. "The only way to save them is to kill what's causing it."

Atreus nodded slowly, fear and determination warring in his young face. Determination won. It usually did. The boy had iron in his spine, inherited from his mother.

They left the cave as the sun fully crested the horizon, painting everything in shades of gold and crimson. Beautiful, if you ignored the wrongness spreading through the forest like disease.

The journey back took less time than Kratos expected. The trees seemed to lean away from them, branches pulled back as if the forest itself was afraid. Or anticipating. Making a path.

"This feels wrong," Atreus murmured, arrow nocked but not drawn. "It's too quiet."

He was right. No birds. No animals. Not even the scurrying of rodents or the distant howl of wolves. Just silence, broken only by their footsteps crunching through snow and the wind moving through dead branches.

They reached the village by mid-morning.

It had changed.

Where before there had been empty houses and trampled snow, now there was ice. Everywhere. The buildings were encased in it, frozen solid, walls gleaming like crystal in the pale sunlight. The well at the village center had become a pillar of frost, reaching toward the sky like a grasping finger.

And the bodies—

"Gods," Atreus breathed.

The creatures from last night stood throughout the village, frozen in place. But they weren't statues. Kratos could see their eyes moving, tracking him and Atreus as they entered. Could hear the faint whisper of breath escaping their mouths. They were alive—or whatever passed for alive in their current state—but held immobile. Trapped.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Atreus asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"Because they're not guards," Kratos said, understanding settling cold in his gut. "They're markers. Showing the boundary."

"Boundary of what?"

Kratos nodded toward the well. "His territory. We're being invited in."

The frost-covered stones seemed to pulse with that sick pale light, brighter now in daylight. The breathing sound from yesterday had grown louder, more distinct. Not one breath but many, layered over each other, creating a rhythm that felt almost like a heartbeat.

"We don't have to accept the invitation," Atreus said, though his hand was already moving toward an arrow. "We could find another way."

"There is no other way. He's waiting for us down there."

"How do you know it's a 'he'?"

Kratos didn't answer. He couldn't explain it—the certainty that came from centuries of fighting, of reading battlefields and enemies. But he knew. Knew it in his bones. Knew it in the way a predator recognizes another predator.

Whatever waited below was old, powerful, and male. Male in the ancient sense—not just gender but force, dominance, the crushing weight of will made manifest.

He approached the well slowly, axe ready. The frozen creatures watched but didn't move. Up close, he could see details that made his skin crawl—their faces weren't quite right anymore. Features had shifted, melted, reformed into something that only resembled humanity from a distance. Like someone trying to remember what people looked like and getting it slightly wrong.

The well's interior had changed too. Instead of the normal stone shaft descending to water, there was now a spiral of ice, smooth and perfect, leading down into darkness. Steps carved from frozen water, inviting them to descend.

"This is definitely a trap," Atreus said.

"Yes."

"And we're going anyway."

"Yes."

Atreus sighed. "Sometimes I really hate being your son."

"You'd hate being dead more."

"Would I though?"

Despite everything, Kratos felt the ghost of something that might have been amusement. The boy's spirit was unbreakable. Good. They'd need it.

"Stay behind me," Kratos ordered. "Watch the walls. If anything moves, anything at all, you shout."

"What if it moves really fast?"

"Then you shout really loud."

Kratos placed one boot on the first ice step. It held, solid beneath his weight. He descended slowly, Atreus following, both of them leaving the grey morning light behind.

The spiral went deep. Deeper than any well should go. The ice walls around them glowed with that pale luminescence, providing just enough light to see by. Kratos counted the steps—fifty, a hundred, two hundred. They should have been below the water table by now, should have been drowning. But the ice held, and the air, though cold enough to burn lungs, remained breathable.

"Father," Atreus whispered. "The walls. Look at the walls."

Kratos did, and his grip tightened on his axe.

There were things in the ice. Frozen bodies, preserved perfectly, pressed against the walls like insects trapped in amber. Men, women, children—hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe, stretching back into the darkness above and below. All with their eyes open. All with their mouths frozen mid-scream.

"How long has this been here?" Atreus asked, voice shaking.

"Longer than the village. Longer than any settlement in these lands." Kratos studied the nearest body—a woman, dressed in furs he didn't recognize, jewelry made from bones and stones in patterns that predated the Norse. "These people died before the gods came to Midgard."

"Then what killed them?"

"We're about to find out."

The spiral opened abruptly into a chamber.

It was vast—cathedral-sized, maybe larger, impossible to tell where the walls truly ended. The floor was smooth ice, reflecting the pale light that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. And at the chamber's center, rising from the floor like a throne carved from winter itself, sat a figure.

He was massive—easily twice Kratos's height, maybe more. His skin was the white of deep snow, unmarked and perfect. His hair fell to his shoulders in waves of frost. And his eyes—

His eyes were empty. Not hollow like the corrupted villagers, but genuinely empty. Just smooth skin where eyes should be, as if he'd never needed them to see.

He smiled as they entered, and his smile was beautiful and terrible, like the moment before an avalanche.

"Ghost of Sparta," the figure said, voice resonating through the chamber like wind through a canyon. "I've waited so long for you to arrive."

Kratos raised his axe. "Then your wait is over."

The figure laughed—a sound like cracking ice, like branches breaking under snow's weight.

"Oh, but it's just beginning. Don't you understand? I've been preparing for this moment for centuries. Ever since I felt you enter these lands. Ever since I tasted the death of gods on the wind." The eyeless face turned toward Atreus. "And you brought your son. How... perfect."

"Don't look at him," Kratos growled, stepping between them. "Your business is with me."

"My business is with all who walk upon the frozen earth. But you... you're special. You're the one who breaks things. Who tears down the old order." The figure stood, unfolding to his full, terrible height. "I want to see if you can break me."

The chamber grew colder. The walls began to crack, and from those cracks, more of the pale creatures emerged—dozens, hundreds, pouring out like maggots from a corpse.

"Father—"

"I see them."

The figure on the throne spread his arms wide. "I am Vetrblod—the Winter Blood, the Frost That Feeds, the Cold Before First Light. I was here before your gods. I'll be here after their bones are dust. And you, Ghost of Sparta..."

Vetrblod smiled wider, impossibly wide, his mouth opening to reveal not teeth but shards of ice, each one reflecting Kratos's face back at him a thousand times.

"You're going to help me kill them all."

The creatures surged forward like a wave.

And Kratos, with his son at his back and his axe in his hand, prepared to do what he did best.

Survive.