Chapter Text
I.
You’re seven years old the first time you feel it.
It doesn’t happen during training or while chasing gulls across the rocky beach like a lunatic, or even from stealing honey bread and running headlong into a fence post—though those incidents are much more frequent.
This one happens while you’re still, too still, swinging your legs at the edge of the dock. The air is clear and bright, the wind sharp with sea salt. The boats bob gently, and you hum to yourself as you thread bone beads onto a frayed cord, half-lost in thought.
It’s then that a sharp, thudding pain blossoms on your upper arm, like a punch from nowhere, deep and bruising and hot.
You let out a shriek. The beads scatter into the sea as you flinch, tumbling backward and slamming your heel against the edge of the post. That part hurts too, but it’s normal pain. Familiar.
This new ache in your arm? It's foreign. It settles under your skin like something unwelcome.
You rush home crying, clutching your limb, tears and snot running freely, shouting incoherently about curses and invisible fists and how you didn’t do anything wrong.
Your mother goes very still, and her expression shifts, softening as she pulls you into her lap. She brushes your hair back from your face, listens to your ramblings, and then lets out a long sigh. Not because she doesn’t believe you, but because she does.
“You felt it,” she says softly. “Your first one.”
You blink, hiccupping through the snot. “What do you mean? It hurts, Mama.”
Her hand finds yours. “It wasn’t yours, sweetheart. That pain? It came from your soulmate.”
You freeze. The word sounds made-up, like a story. “My… what?”
She explains all of it then. About the ancient bond between souls, the kind that links pain across space and time, forged before your first breath. How some people are born tethered to another—someone far away, someone they may never meet, but whose wounds you will always feel. Whose pain echoes in your bones. Whose injuries whisper along your skin like ghosts. Some call it fate. Others call it a curse. But it’s real.
"The gods don’t pick for peace, my love," She said. "They pick for balance.”
And balance, you learn, is not always kind.
You’re sixteen when the bruises stop being rare.
They happen almost every other day now—blows to your ribs, lashes across your shoulders, twisted ankles, bloody lips, large gashes. Some are dull. Others leave you doubled over. Once, you woke up vomiting from a head injury you never received.
Another, more agonizing time, you woke up feeling like your left leg had been completely torn off. That kept you out of commission for over a week — it was the most brutal and soul aching pain you’ve ever felt, both physically and mentally.
Everytime it happened after that, you cursed the stranger whose pain you carried.
What kind of life do they live, your soulmate? Who could possibly get hurt this often and still survive? A warrior? A criminal? A fool? You guess. You imagine.
You hope that one day it stops.
But it never does.
You’re twenty now, and you wake just before dawn to the sound of shouting, the sound rising and falling through the village like thunder.
Your eyes snap open, your body already tense before your mind catches up. You barely register the half-formed dream fading behind your eyes before the searing pain cuts through your ribs like a knife, jagged and brutal.
You gasp sharply, curling onto your side, breath hitching. For a moment, you can’t breathe at all. It’s like being crushed under a boulder. You dig your nails into the furs and fight through the burn.
Not again. Please not again.
Your bones scream beneath your skin, as though something struck them from the inside. Eventually, the pain ebbs, fades to a dull throb like it always does, and you lie there, sweating, the screams outside continuing.
Your soulmates hurt.
Again.
Just like yesterday.
And the day before that.
And the week before that.
And you’re tired.
Not just of the bruises or the stabbing aches or the disorientation when your knees give out for no reason. You’re tired of not knowing. Of never seeing their face. Of living someone else’s violence like a shadow.
You shove the blanket aside and throw on your light-grey tunic, lacing your boots with shaky fingers. Whatever’s happening outside has the entire village on edge. You push through your front door into cold morning air and the weight of a dozen running footsteps. Words fly past you, and you can just barely catch them:
“Captured—”
“Alive—”
“It’s him—”
“The dragon rider—”
The words land in your gut like stones. You follow the sound, drawn by a sick pull in your chest, like fate tugging you forward by the throat. The shouting thickens near the central square where a crowd has formed, and you slip through it quietly, unnoticed.
By the time you reach the courtyard, half the village has gathered near the gate. People murmur with a strange mix of awe and fury, parting just enough for you to see the commotion past the walls. There’s a group of riders—your own, warriors who fight the fiercest of battles—dismounting from their horses, and ...him. A man.
He’s a figure of ragged movement, bent slightly, face shadowed by matted hair, blood smeared down one cheek like war paint. His wrists are bound, and he’s being dragged behind a horse like some mangy dog, but when he lifts his head, you freeze.
He’s young.
You don’t know what you expected—some towering brute, battle-scarred and monstrous—but not this. Not someone your age, with pale skin and defiant green eyes that still manage to burn through the blood and dirt. There’s no pride in his expression, no smugness, but there is strength—defiance carved into every feature on his face. A quiet, stubborn refusal to yield.
The guards jostle him forward like livestock, and someone behind you shouts, “It’s a dragon rider! They got one alive!”
Alive. You don’t remember the last time that happened. The riders who work with dragons usually fight to the end. They don’t surrender. They burn, drown, vanish into the skies. They die with their beasts. But this one—he’s still breathing. Still fighting, stubbornly, like a true Viking would.
The voice of Ragnar, both the chief of the village and your uncle, cuts through the rising chatter like a blade. “Bring him through the gates!”
The crowd presses tighter. You step forward instinctively—just a little, just enough to see. Then the rider falls, legs stumbling and giving out. One of the guards kicks him, hard, in the back of his right leg, and he crumples into the dirt with a grunt.
You flinch. Then—
You feel it.
Much like the pain you woke up to, another wave slices through your calf muscle—deep, sharp, searing like a burn that spreads too quickly. Your knee buckles under the phantom force and you let out a sharp cry, staggering to the side. Someone brushes past without noticing, but the pain—your soulmates pain—roots itself in your muscles. You clutch your leg, panting.
What the—
When you lift your eyes, the rider is being hauled upright again. Blood trickles down from the corner of his mouth, staining his chin, and you taste it before you see it—copper and salt, burning your throat.
No. Your stomach turns, a sick realization dawning over you. No, no, no—this can’t be what it looks like.
But it is, and deep down, you already know it is. The constant bruises, the broken rib last spring, the dislocated shoulder you woke up with midwinter that left you bedridden for three days—none of it was yours. All of it was his.
Ragnar steps forward, towering and stone-faced, arms crossed. “What is your name, boy?”
The rider doesn’t respond — he doesn’t seem to be much for words, at least at this moment. He lifts his head slowly, grimacing through his split lip. You can see the effort it takes him to stand, but he does it anyway, chin raised, back straight. There’s something in him—not arrogance, but stubbornness. His eyes scan the crowd for a moment and—
They stop on you, gaze landing on you like a slap, and something changes in his expression. It’s slow at first, but it’s there. Recognition—as if the mere sight of you clicks something in his brain. He sees the way your hand is still clutched to your leg. The way you haven’t blinked since his eyes found yours.
He knows.
You don't have to wonder how, or if he’s questioning it. You suppose it hits him the way it hit you a few seconds ago — not necessarily in a way that makes sense, but a guttural feeling of connection.
You watch his eyes shift – the recognition turns into surprise. Then confusion. Then something else. His lips part slightly, like he's trying to speak but his voice is refusing to come out.
You want to look away, but you don’t; you can’t, really. His eyes stay on yours, even as one of the warriors speaks up. “He said his name was Hiccup, sir.”
And your world spins, even more than it already was before.
Because you know that name.
Everyone knows it. The rumors have traveled across every village on every wind—the dragon rider, the Night Fury, the boy who rides shadows and fire and turns hunters into fools.
A beat passes, and Ragnar scoffs. “A runt. The most dangerous dragon rider on the sea is a boy with no armor and bad posture?”
Someone laughs. Someone else spits. But he—Hiccup—doesn’t answer. He doesn’t look away from you, even when another guard steps forward and drives a fist into his ribs.
That’s the one that breaks you.
You fall hard this time, doubled over with a cry of pain that tears from your throat before you can stop it.You slam a hand against the stone floor, fingers trembling, and through the haze, you hear Hiccup grunt in pain as well. You're both on your knees now, different parts of the courtyard, breathing in sync through gritted teeth. Hundreds of people stand between you and him, but they are all too enthralled with Hiccups presence to acknowledge exactly what is happening, and you don’t know if you’re grateful or not for that yet.
Hiccup lifts his head again, jaw tight. The moment your eyes meet once more, something silent passes between you. Not pity, or fear, or disgust—all of which would be normal in this situation, normal to a Viking who tames dragons surrounded by a village who hates them. Rather, it’s something gentle; a kind of apology, an acknowledgment that he’s the reason you’re in pain.
Then the guards drag him away, and you force your gaze downward because for some reason it doesn’t feel right watching him fight and scream and struggle against their grasps.
You can’t hear what’s said between them. The blood in your ears is too loud, and your thoughts are a mess of disbelief and rising horror as you struggle to find your breath.
Your soulmate is a dragon rider.
And he’s everything your people were taught to destroy.