As for Snorri, he’s gloomier than ever now that Baraqel lectures him each dawn. You’d think with his family lost and his vengeance exacted, he would move on. Tuttugu has. He goes out ice fishing with the locals now that the harbour has frozen over. Even has himself a girl in town, so he says. Snorri, though, he broods on the past. He’ll sit there on the porch when it’s cold enough to freeze waves in place, wrapped up, axe across his lap, staring at that key.

Now I like keys by and large, but that thing, that piece of obsidian—that I don’t like. You look at it and it makes you think. Too much thinking isn’t good for anyone. Especially for a man like Snorri ver Snagason who’s apt to act upon his thoughts. He sits there staring at it and I can tell the ideas that are spinning in his head—I didn’t need Aslaug to tell me that. He has a key that will open any door. He has a dead family. And somewhere out there is a door that leads into death, a door that swings both ways, a door that shouldn’t ever be opened, a door that couldn’t ever be opened.

Until now.