Page 3 of Soul of Shadow #1

By the following morning, the whole town had seen the tree.

Those at the bonfire took photos of what they found, sending them to friends or showing them to their parents once they got home.

At first light, around five a.m., the local news van arrived.

Video footage of the tree was pumped into every home in Silver Shores, close-ups and wide-angles that caught every leaf, every inch of bark.

The tree was no longer just a tree.

Its trunk was entirely carved up, riddled with symbols: slashes; arrows; waving lines; a circle with an X inside, almost like a compass; a crude impression of a bird.

The police were brought onto news broadcasts, queried as to what they thought the symbols might mean. No one could make any sense of them.

But the biggest symbol, the one that stuck out from all the others, carved huge and deep at the very center of the trunk, was this:

The broadcasters spent most of the morning debating what they thought the tree might mean. Was it a ransom note? A map leading to Robbie’s location? Pure gibberish?

It was only when a local resident, a young man particularly fond of Viking-themed video games, phoned in to the news station that they figured out that the symbols—some of them, at least—were Old Norse.

Some light googling at the news station revealed the meanings of a few of the symbols, but many remained a complete mystery, as if the carver had just made them up.

The meaning of the biggest symbol, however—that of the three interlocking triangles—was clear as day. It was known as Odin’s Knot, a common inscription found throughout the history of the Vikings. It had several meanings, but there was one that was most common.

Death.