"A cultivator who understands their own build is dangerous. A cultivator who understands it early is unreasonably so."
· · · ? · · ·
Four days before departure, Bj?rn sat down at the kitchen table after dinner, folded his hands, and said, “We should talk about how Classes work.”
Eirik had been waiting for this conversation for approximately six years.
He managed—heroically—to look like a normal child who had simply been curious, and not like someone who had been quietly building an internal library of half-answers and forbidden questions since he’d been tall enough to trip over his own feet.
He sat.
Rí, who had been halfway to bed, froze mid-step like a little animal that had sensed a weather change. Then she turned around and sat too, hands folded very seriously in imitation of Bj?rn.
Sigrid stayed at the herb bench, doing something with dried roots, but her attention drifted toward the table like a knife sliding into its sheath.
“You’re going to see cultivators in Steinvik,” Bj?rn said. “Real ones. With Classes.”
“I’ve seen Ulf,” Eirik said.
Bj?rn’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. A weather event. “You’ve seen Tier One. You’ve grown up in a place where most people never get far enough to matter outside a single valley.”
He tapped the table once with two fingers.
“Steinvik will have Tier Twos. Some Tier Threes. Maybe higher passing through. You need to understand why they feel… heavier.”
Eirik nodded. “Okay.”
Bj?rn began the way he always began: from the beginning, in order, as if the world was a wall you climbed one handhold at a time.
“The Class is offered on Naming Day,” he said. “The Wyrd looks at your stats, your skill history, your S?fnun accumulation—”
“And the spooky part,” Eirik supplied.
Bj?rn looked at him.
Eirik lifted one shoulder. “The part nobody understands.”
Bj?rn accepted this as accurate. “And the something else. It gives you options. Usually three. Sometimes two. Rarely one.”
Rí raised a hand like she was in a lesson. “What if it only gives you one and it’s a dumb one.”
Bj?rn blinked once. “Then you have a problem.”
Sigrid, without looking up, said, “Or a blessing that looks like a problem.”
Bj?rn made the tiny sound he made when both statements were true but he didn’t like the second one’s tone.
“What determines the options?” Eirik asked.
“What you’ve built,” Bj?rn said. “The Wyrd doesn’t offer you a Fisherman Class if you’ve never touched a net.”
“Unless you fall in a river,” Rí muttered.
Sigrid made the almost-laugh sound.
Bj?rn kept going, stubbornly refusing to be derailed by a five-year-old’s heckling.
“When you accept a Class, you pick your foundation—your class skills. Three to five at Tier One. Those become the core. They grow differently than normal skills. Deeper. They evolve with you.”
“How many regular slots?” Eirik asked.
“Twelve at Tier One,” Bj?rn said. “More as you climb.”
He paused, then said it like he was telling Eirik the price of bread.
“You have fourteen skills.”
Eirik had already counted. Still. Hearing it said out loud made it feel… real.
“So I need to merge or prune,” Eirik said.
Bj?rn nodded. “Before or after. The Wyrd is flexible. But you can’t carry everything forever.”
Rí tilted her head. “What if you just don’t pick one.”
Both parents looked at her.
“What?” she said, reasonable as sunrise. “What if you say no.”
Bj?rn stared at her like she’d just suggested refusing gravity.
“You stay unclassed,” he said.
“Forever?”
“Until you say yes or you die,” Bj?rn said, in the tone of a man who believed those were the only two outcomes worth discussing.
Rí absorbed this with the seriousness of someone planning a long-term strategy at age five.
“I’m going to think carefully about mine,” she announced.
“You have five years,” Bj?rn said.
“I know,” Rí said. “I’m starting now.”
Sigrid’s almost-laugh returned.
Eirik hid a grin behind his cup.
- · · ? · · ·
“The merging,” Eirik said, because he couldn’t not.
Bj?rn nodded, like he’d been expecting him to tug that thread. “Two compatible skills, sufficient depth, and the Wyrd might offer a merge. Merged skills are rarer. They take one slot instead of two. You get everything the old skills did, plus whatever new edge comes from them meeting.”
“And you can’t predict it,” Sigrid said.
“The shape can be guessed,” Bj?rn corrected. “The details can’t.”
Eirik let himself ask the question that had been gnawing at him like a mouse behind the wall.
“I do intervals. Stump jumps. Carries. Post work. Conditioning. Why haven’t I gotten something like Athletics?”
Bj?rn’s eyes flicked briefly to Sigrid.
Sigrid said, flat as a chopping block, “Swimming.”
Eirik stared. “What.”
“You don’t swim,” she said.
“I—” Eirik tried to argue and ran face-first into reality. He had not swum since he was four. He lived by water. That was… objectively ridiculous.
Bj?rn looked mildly satisfied. “The Wyrd likes a complete picture. You’ve built running and power work and strength endurance. You’re missing water.”
“I can fix that,” Eirik said.
“In Steinvik there’s a river,” Sigrid said.
“I’m also going swimming,” Rí declared.
Eirik pointed at her. “You’re five.”
Rí pointed back. “I know what swimming is.”
Sigrid, traitorously, nodded at her in the exact same tone she’d used with Eirik. “We’ll see.”
Eirik had the strong sense this had just become a family plan with no formal meeting.
“What about Affinities?” he asked, and immediately regretted it because the air in the room changed.
The look passed between Bj?rn and Sigrid—quick, practiced, heavy.
“Tier Three,” Bj?rn said.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it for now.” Bj?rn’s voice was calm, but it had the finality of a door gently shut.
Eirik didn’t push.
He held it instead—quietly—like you held a hot coal you weren’t ready to drop or swallow.
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“So,” he said, carefully pivoting to safer ground, “what do you think my Class will be?”
Bj?rn’s posture changed by a degree, like a man finally invited to talk about a subject he actually enjoyed.
“Combat,” he said. “Your build points there. The Hugr makes it strange. You’ll probably get a Berserkr-adjacent option, something technical, and maybe a hybrid.”
“Berserkr sounds like the wrong direction,” Eirik said.
Sigrid, still at the bench, said, “A true Berserkr isn’t just ‘take hits.’ It’s a relationship with extremity. It grows Tróttur into something other Classes can’t touch.”
“She’s thinking of it as a foundation for something else,” Bj?rn told Eirik, like this was a known symptom.
“Because that’s what good selection is,” Sigrid said, not looking up. “What it is at Tier One matters less than what it becomes at Tier Three.”
Eirik stared at them both.
“What did you choose?” he asked.
Sigrid suddenly found her herbs fascinating.
Bj?rn’s face did something complicated.
“We’ll have that conversation,” Bj?rn said. “Eventually.”
“Tier Three?” Eirik tried.
Bj?rn exhaled once. “Not exactly.”
Rí stood up decisively. “When I get mine, I want it to have a good name.”
Bj?rn said, “That is not a criterion the Wyrd responds to.”
“It should be,” Rí said firmly, and marched off to bed as if she’d just issued a policy ruling.
- · · ? · · ·
The ranged weapons session happened the next morning, on Bj?rn’s initiative and with the slightly grim enthusiasm he got when he’d identified a problem and decided it would not be allowed to exist unaddressed.
“The road isn’t a garrison corridor,” Bj?rn said, setting up a bow at the far end of the yard. “There are trade-road bandits. There are travelling dungeons. And there are animals that don’t care how brave you are if you’re too far away to hit them.”
Eirik took the bow with the confidence of someone who was generally athletic and proceeded to discover that archery did not care about general athleticism.
The first arrow went into the fence post to his right at a very determined angle, like it had personal issues with that fence.
Bj?rn watched it. Then looked at Eirik. “Your draw is wrong.”
“I noticed,” Eirik said.
“Anchor point—”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everything about that was—”
“I know.” Eirik reset. Picked a spot on his cheek that felt reasonable. Drew. Held. Released.
The arrow went straight up.
Eirik watched it arc into the sky with the slow inevitability of a mistake that had achieved full expression.
It landed somewhere near the wood stack.
Bj?rn, after a long moment, said, “Hm.”
The throwing axe was worse.
The knife was—technically—better, in the sense that one of his throws hit the target.
Wrong target.
But something.
Bj?rn sat down on the bench like a man accepting an ancient curse.
“You take after me exactly,” he said.
Eirik blinked. “You’re also bad at ranged weapons?”
“I have never,” Bj?rn said, with solemn sincerity, “hit anything with a ranged weapon that I intended to hit.”
Sigrid, passing through the yard with a bundle of herbs, said without looking up, “That is not true. You once hit a tree.”
“I was aiming for the deer,” Bj?rn said.
“The deer was not in the tree,” Sigrid replied, and walked away.
Bj?rn watched her go, then looked back at Eirik. “My solution was simple. I stopped being far enough away for it to matter.”
“That’s… a strategy,” Eirik said.
“It is a very effective strategy,” Bj?rn said, serious again. “If your footwork is good enough.”
Eirik sat with that, because it was the most Bj?rn had ever admitted about himself as a fighter without being asked directly.
Bj?rn handed him the bow again.
Eirik opened his mouth.
Bj?rn said, “Again.”
Eirik sighed. “Again.”
- · · ? · · ·
Leif arrived during Eirik’s fourteenth arrow.
He watched the arrow thunk into a different fence post—still a fence post, but at least a new one—and said, “Can I try?”
“No,” Eirik said immediately.
Leif paused. “Why not?”
“Because you’ll be good at it,” Eirik said, “and that will make me want to push you into the river.”
Leif considered this with the calm acceptance he brought to most threats. “That does sound like a you problem.”
He picked up the spare bow, nocked, drew, held for maybe two seconds, and put the arrow dead center in the target.
Bj?rn made a sound like someone had struck him in the soul.
Leif lowered the bow slowly. “Huh.”
Bj?rn stared at him. “How long have you been shooting?”
“A while?” Leif said. “My uncle has a bow. I mess around with it sometimes.”
Bj?rn’s eyes narrowed in the way they did when he saw a tool and immediately wanted it. “Ask Knut today,” he said. “You’re coming to Steinvik. Bring the bow.”
Leif’s face lit up like a torch hit oil.
He was already leaving, fast-walking toward the gate with the urgent energy of someone who needed to ask permission before joy evaporated.
Eirik watched him go. “He’s good at that.”
“He is,” Bj?rn said. “You are not. Both are useful facts.” He pushed the arrows back toward Eirik.
Eirik groaned.
Bj?rn said, “Again.”
- · · ? · · ·
The money problem surfaced that evening when Eirik did the math and realized—rudely—that “a smithing quarter purchase of any significance” and “a seven-year-old’s personal savings” did not naturally overlap.
He took the problem to Leif.
Leif took it to Astrid.
So the next day the three of them sat on the garrison fence like very small, very serious criminals.
“I have some,” Astrid said.
“How much?” Leif asked immediately.
“Enough,” Astrid said.
Eirik squinted. “From what.”
Astrid gave him the look she used when a question was technically fair but socially incorrect. “Things.”
Leif nodded as if this explained everything. “Astrid has secrets. That’s normal.”
Astrid kicked his shin.
Eirik’s plan was the clean one: use Appraiser’s Touch to tell people what their old junk actually was.
He spent the afternoon going through households’ stored tools, half-forgotten herb bundles, degraded bindings, and “maybe this is valuable?” scraps.
Most of it was not valuable.
Some of it was.
He charged honestly—small coin for small truth, bigger coin for bigger truth.
It turned out a lot of adults were willing to pay a child to confirm whether their “definitely rare” thing was actually just rusty.
Leif’s plan was less clean and also somehow still technically fair.
He’d spent two months wandering the woods, and in doing so had casually mapped out the locations of multiple lost items various people had been angry about since spring.
He started “helping” people find them.
For a modest fee.
Only the ones that had been genuinely searched for. The ones people had simply forgotten, he returned for free, because Leif had a weird, unbreakable line between hustle and theft.
“This is—” Eirik began.
“Correct,” Leif said serenely. “This is correct. That’s why I’m doing it.”
Rí’s plan was the worst plan.
Rí had decided that her guard-hold drills were a performance.
So she charged garrison members a coin to watch her “advanced cultivation fundamentals.”
She ran two sessions before Sigrid noticed.
The argument that followed was quiet, slow, and terrifyingly precise.
Eirik only caught the end of it.
“But they paid voluntarily,” Rí said.
“That is not the relevant part,” Sigrid replied.
“I was providing a service.”
“Rí.”
“A demonstration of—”
“Rí.”
A pause.
Then, very carefully: “Can I keep what I already earned?”
Sigrid held still for a long moment.
“Yes,” she said.
Which meant: the business is dead, but the money is yours, and also you are lucky you are cute.
Rí emerged with her coins, her dignity, and the expression of someone who had won a partial victory and intended to treat it as a full one.
“How much did you make?” Eirik asked.
She told him.
Eirik stared.
“That’s… impressive,” he said.
Rí shrugged. “They wanted to watch.”
Leif, beside him, whispered, “She’s going to run the realm someday.”
Eirik whispered back, “Or accidentally buy it.”
- · · ? · · ·
The night before departure, Eirik sat outside in the cooling dark, not doing the training inventory, not counting numbers, not trying to turn his life into a tidy ledger.
Just sitting.
Being seven.
Letting the quiet settle.
Steinvik was five days away.
A proper city. A river. A shrine. A smithing quarter.
A heavy training blade waiting somewhere among people who would absolutely not think it was normal to sell one to a child.
He was going to try anyway.
Inside, he could hear Rí—still awake—muttering something about “long-neck animals” like it was an inevitable discovery and not a completely invented prophecy.
Leif slid down beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder like he’d been doing it forever.
“I’m bringing the bow,” Leif said.
“I know.”
“Your dad said I should practice on the road.”
“He’s right.”
Leif leaned back on his hands. “Are you going to practice too?”
Eirik thought about fence posts. Multiple fence posts. His father’s haunted expression.
“I’m going to watch you practice,” he said, “and practice not being far enough away for it to matter.”
Leif considered that. “That’s actually a solid plan.”
“It’s my father’s plan,” Eirik said. “I’m inheriting it.”
Leif nodded solemnly, as if this was the highest kind of tradition.
“What are you getting in the smith quarter?” Leif asked.
“Heavy practice sword,” Eirik said. “Blunt. More like a club than a blade.”
Leif frowned. “Why.”
Eirik explained it—progressive overload, Líkami plateau, resistance training—without sounding like a tiny old man, because Leif would have bullied him for it.
When he finished, Leif said, “That is either very smart or very stupid.”
“Yeah,” Eirik said. “Probably.”
Leif stood up. “Good. That’s where the fun stuff lives.”
He walked home.
Eirik stayed out a little longer, listening to the settlement settle, and thinking—quietly, simply:
Tomorrow, then.
He went inside.
Rí’s birch-branch “practice sword” was propped against the wall next to his actual practice sword like they were equals.
He did not comment on it.
He intended to never comment on it.
Five days to Steinvik.