[ WP ] Your son did as your will said and gave you a viking funeral because you thought it sounds cool . Beyond , a viking ghost yells at you for doing so and tosses you a weapon . Good Luck , Steve . It 's going to be a long afterlife .

Two thousand, three hundred, and twenty-six. 
 
 I keep the time in deaths now. It ’ s easier than marking the days; after all, there are no says anymore. Everything in Valhalla is grey; the sky, the snow, the rocks. Back when I was delusional enough to hope I might ever get out of this place, I marked the days on a rock, but after a year or two I ’ d covered the whole thing in scratches. 
 
 Honestly, I don ’ t know why Stygg didn ’ t just lop my head off the second he saw me. He found me crawled up into a ball in the middle of the snow, naked and cold. Around us, the snowy fields stretched away forever. “ Take this, ” he said, throwing me an axe and some clothes that itched like hell. 
 
 Then came number one. Well, Stygg did most of the work, but I ’ m still counting it. What ’ s he going to do about it? Even without Stygg, I reckon I could have taken him; he had a few scraps of cloth on him and a rock clasped between his hands, but other than that, he seemed half mad. He lunged at me, but Stygg swung his axe right into his neck. When he pulled it out, he dragged a chunk of meat out with it. 
 
 He explained how things were. We were all dead down here ( I don ’ t know how “ down ” came into it, but if my old life was ever even real, then I ’ m sure we ’ re below it ), and here we fought. 
 
 “ Why? ” 
 
 Stygg shrugged. “ Good way to get your hands on more supplies. Something to do. It ’ s in the nature of mankind. I wish I knew. I wish I asked myself the same thing back when I still breathed. ” 
 
 I kicked the dead body of the man who had attacked us. “ We ’ re already dead, right? So how can he die again? ” 
 
 Kneeling, he closed the body ’ s eyes. “ A better place than this, I hope. ” 
 
 “ So why don ’ t you just kill yourself? I mean, it can ’ t be any worse than here, right? ” 
 
 He eyed the axe. “ If one death was not enough for you, then you are welcome to attempt a second. ” 
 
 “ Point taken. ” 
 
 And so he lead me away, over the endless ice fields, through a twisted and broken midnight forest, inside the jaw of a terrible beast ’ s skeleton, dead a thousand years. We sailed across an endless grey sea, where great nameless things shifted just beneath the surface, and walked through a castle so tall it punched through the clouds. Row after row of uneven shacks clung to the inside, all the way to the sheer wall of the castle; there, they followed it upwards past the clouds. 
 “ Why don ’ t we just stay here? ” I asked. 
 
 “ Too many bad memories. ” Stygg did not elaborate. 
 
 Finally, we reached the place that Stygg called home: a small cave filled with animal skins and a few weapons. He lit the fire, and we sat around it as he said why he spared me. 
 
 “ I want to end this. All this fighting, all this war- I have suffered enough of it in life. For the first few thousand kills, I enjoyed it, as much as we all did. But… I have grown tired and lonely. I want this all to stop. It nearly did… once. I marched to find you. Do not ask how I knew where you would be, for I do not know myself. I simply… knew. ” He offered up his cup to clink. “ May you be the first of many. ” 
 I kept count of days, although Stygg quickly advised against it. “ There is no time here. Only death. It will do no good to remember that there was anything else before this. You were born here, and will exist here until you die. ” 
 
 I ignored him, clinging onto that final scrap of hope that I might ever leave this place. Stupid of me. 
 
 “ Do not despair. For this place is only desolate if we fail to make it otherwise. ” 
 
 I still think about him sometimes. I wish he had been right. 

