GOD OF WAR

THE VANISHING

The village shouldn't have been silent.

Kratos stood at the treeline, one hand resting on the Leviathan Axe strapped to his back, his breath misting in the bitter cold. Behind him, Atreus shifted his weight, bow already in hand. The boy had learned well—never assume safety. Never lower your guard.

"Father," Atreus whispered. "Where is everyone?"

The settlement ahead was small, maybe twenty structures scattered across a clearing carved from the pine forest. Smoke should have been rising from hearths. Children should have been playing in the snow. But there was nothing. Just the wind moving through empty doorways like the breath of something watching.

Kratos moved forward, boots crunching through fresh snow. No tracks. No footprints leading away. Just smooth white powder, undisturbed except for their own trail behind them.

"Stay close," he rumbled.

They'd come here following rumors—whispers carried by traders in the last village two days south. People vanishing. Entire families gone in the night. The locals blamed restless Draugr, angry spirits, the usual superstitions. But something in the way the old woman had spoken, the fear behind her eyes, had convinced Kratos to investigate.

The first house stood before them, door hanging open. Kratos pushed it wider with one hand, muscles coiled, ready. Inside, a meal sat half-eaten on the table. Bread, still soft. Stew in wooden bowls, not yet cold.

"They were just here," Atreus breathed, stepping inside. "Look—the fire's still warm."

Kratos knelt by the hearth, holding his palm near the embers. Heat radiated against his skin. Hours, maybe less. He stood, scanning the single-room dwelling. Beds unmade. A child's toy on the floor—a carved wooden wolf, worn smooth by small hands.

No blood. No signs of struggle. Just... absence.

"Check the others," Kratos ordered, moving back outside.

They went house to house, finding the same impossible scene repeated. Lives interrupted mid-moment. A woman's sewing needle still threaded, fabric stretched across a frame. A man's axe embedded in a chopping block, wood chips fresh around it. Everywhere, the evidence of life suddenly stopped, as if someone had blown out a candle.

Atreus emerged from the seventh house, face pale. "Father, this doesn't make sense. Where did they go?"

Kratos didn't answer. He was staring at the village center, at the well that stood in the middle of the clearing. Something was wrong with it. The stones around the rim were wrong. Darker than they should be.

He approached slowly, Atreus following. As they drew closer, Kratos saw what his instincts had noticed—the stones weren't just dark. They were covered in frost, thick and unnatural, spreading in patterns that looked almost deliberate. Like fingers. Like reaching hands.

"Don't touch it," Kratos warned, but Atreus had already stopped, staring down into the well's depths.

"Father... there's something down there."

Kratos peered over the edge. The well descended into blackness, but far below, something gleamed. Not water. Something else. Something that reflected no light but somehow still shone with a sick, pale luminescence.

A sound drifted up from the darkness. Soft. Rhythmic. Like breathing.

Kratos grabbed Atreus by the shoulder, pulling him back. "We're leaving."

"But the villagers—"

"Are already gone."

A crack split the air like breaking ice. Both of them spun toward the sound. It had come from the largest structure in the village—a longhouse at the far end of the clearing. The door, which had been closed when they passed it earlier, now stood open.

And something was standing in the doorway.

At first, Kratos thought it was human. The shape was right—two arms, two legs, head on shoulders. But as his eyes adjusted, as the thing stepped forward into the grey afternoon light, he saw the wrongness.

Its skin was pale as snow, stretched too tight over bones that bent at angles bones shouldn't bend. Its eyes were hollow pits that leaked black mist. And when it opened its mouth, the sound that emerged wasn't a voice—it was the screaming of wind through a frozen canyon, the cracking of lake ice beneath your feet, the last breath of a drowning man.

"Draugr," Atreus hissed, already nocking an arrow.

"No," Kratos said quietly, drawing the Leviathan Axe. "Something else."

The thing tilted its head, studying them with those empty, weeping eyes. Then it smiled—a terrible expression on that corpse-pale face. And it spoke, though its mouth didn't move, the words forming directly in their minds like frost spreading across glass:

"You came. Good. He's been waiting."

More figures emerged from the longhouse behind it. Five, ten, fifteen. All with that same wrong geometry, that same pale skin, those same hollow eyes. They moved in perfect unison, feet not quite touching the ground, spreading out in a semicircle.

"Boy," Kratos said, his voice steady despite the ice forming in his veins. "When I say run—"

The creatures screamed in unison and rushed forward.

Kratos threw the Leviathan Axe in one smooth motion. It spun through the air, frost trailing behind it, and struck the lead creature in the chest. The thing exploded into black mist and ice shards, but the others didn't even slow. They came on like a wave, hands outstretched, mouths opening wider than jaws should open.

"Run!" Kratos roared.

An arrow whistled past his ear—Atreus, already moving, firing as he retreated. The shaft struck one creature in the throat. It stumbled but kept coming, black fluid pouring from the wound.

Kratos caught his returning axe and swung in a wide arc, catching two creatures mid-lunge. They shattered like glass sculptures, but their fragments didn't fall—they hung in the air, reforming, pulling back together with wet, sucking sounds.

"They won't stay down!" Atreus shouted.

Kratos grabbed the boy's collar and pulled him toward the forest. Behind them, the creatures gave chase, their unified screaming rising to a pitch that made his teeth ache. But they were slow, shambling, and he and Atreus had speed.

They crashed into the treeline, branches whipping at their faces. Kratos risked a glance back. The creatures had stopped at the edge of the village, standing in a line, watching with those terrible empty eyes. Not pursuing.

Not yet.

"Father, what were those things?" Atreus gasped, bent over, catching his breath.

Kratos stared back at the village, at the silent houses, at the well with its frost-covered stones. At the creatures that stood waiting, patient as monuments.

"He's been waiting," they had said.

"I don't know," Kratos admitted. "But we're going to find out."

Because he'd seen something else, in those final moments before they fled. Behind the creatures, beyond the longhouse, the well was changing. The frost was spreading, creeping across the ground like living things. And from its depths, something was rising. Something that pulsed with that same sick, pale light.

Something that felt old. Older than gods. Older than the world itself.

The wind picked up, carrying with it a new sound. Laughter. Children's laughter, bright and innocent and completely wrong in this frozen, dead place.

Atreus heard it too. His hand found Kratos's arm, gripping tight.

"Father... those are the missing children. Aren't they?"

Kratos said nothing. But his grip on the Leviathan Axe tightened until his knuckles went white.

Whatever had taken this village, whatever ancient evil had awakened in the frozen north—it had just declared war on the Ghost of Sparta.

And Kratos was going to make it regret that choice.