Supreme Viking System-Chapter 98 - 96: Home

Sophia refused the food.

It sat untouched on the small wooden table—bread still warm, meat sliced clean, water clear. The guards had not mocked her hunger or forced her hands. They had simply placed it there and stepped back, as if confident time itself would do the work.

She sat with her back straight, wrists bound loosely, chin lifted in practiced defiance. A daughter of Theodoric did not beg. She did not eat at the pleasure of conquerors. She would starve before she thanked a monster.

The door opened without ceremony.

Anders entered alone.

No armor. No weapons. Just a heavy cloak thrown over one shoulder, boots still dusted with road grit and ash. He stopped when he saw the untouched food. Not surprised. Almost... confirming something.

"You’ll need your strength," he said calmly.

Sophia spat at the floor near his feet.

"Kill me and be done with it."

Anders studied her for a moment—really studied her. Not as an enemy. Not as a prize. As a variable.

"No," he said. "You tried to kill me because you don’t understand what stands against your father."

He turned for the door.

"You’re coming with me."

The Salted Bear cut through the gray water like a moving fortress, steam engines churning beneath its deck with a steady, mechanical heartbeat. Sophia stood between two guards at the rail, iron shackles at her ankles, staring at the shoreline ahead.

Smoke rose in the distance.

She smelled pitch. Wet earth. Fear.

They disembarked before dawn.

The land stretched wide and ugly—low hills broken by marsh, sparse trees clawing at a pale sky. On one ridge, shapes gathered. Hundreds of them.

Men. Women. Spears. Shields. Bows strung with shaking hands.

Seven hundred.

Sophia felt a flicker of hope before she could stop herself.

Across the plain, the Thorsgardian army waited.

Ten thousand.

They stood in perfect order. Lines within lines. Shields angled. Officers silent. No shouting. No boasting. Every hundred-man block anchored by a single Dragon Lance team—blackened metal tubes resting on reinforced frames, hoses coiled like serpents, ignition cages already glowing faintly.

Anders walked her forward until the battlefield filled her vision.

"This is where resistance ends," he said quietly.

She rounded on him. "You think this proves something? Slaughter always looks powerful when the numbers favor you."

He didn’t look at her.

"Watch."

The signal horn sounded once.

Not a roar.

A note.

Low. Controlled.

The Dragon Lances fired.

Fire did not explode outward like chaos. It rolled. Directed sheets of burning fuel arced forward, striking the first rank of Pomeranian shields and men alike. Wood ignited instantly. Flesh followed.

Sophia screamed before she realized the sound came from her own throat.

The second wave hit before the first could flee.

Men dropped weapons and ran—straight into disciplined infantry advances. Thorsgardian soldiers did not break formation. They moved like machinery, shields locking, spears thrusting with brutal economy.

The Dragon Lances advanced again.

Seven hundred became four hundred in minutes.

The field turned black and red.

Sophia’s legs buckled. One of the guards caught her, holding her upright—not gently, but not cruelly either. As if she had to see this.

"Stop it!" she cried. "They’re breaking! They’re done!"

Anders raised his hand.

The fire ceased instantly.

The battlefield fell quiet except for screams and the crackle of dying flames.

Twenty-five remained.

They dropped to their knees.

Weapons discarded.

Heads bowed.

Anders stepped forward alone.

"Take them," he ordered.

No cheers followed. No triumph. The survivors were bound, given water, and pulled from the field.

Sophia stared at Anders, her face streaked with ash and tears she hadn’t noticed falling.

"You could have killed them all," she whispered.

"Yes," he replied.

"Why didn’t you?"

"Because this wasn’t punishment."

He finally looked at her then.

"It was instruction."

The Salted Bear sailed again by nightfall.

Sophia sat wrapped in a blanket, staring at nothing. The fire still burned behind her eyes. Not the heat—the certainty.

Anders stood beside her at the rail.

"Resistance used to mean something," she said hollowly.

He nodded. "It still does."

She turned slowly. "Just not against you."

He did not correct her.

"We’re going home," he said.

"To your capital?"

"Yes."

Her voice trembled. "Why?"

"So you can see what comes after surrender."

The engines churned. The ship turned north. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Behind them, the battlefield smoldered.

Ahead of them waited a city that should not exist—and a truth Sophia was no longer sure she wanted to escape.

The capital did not announce itself with walls.

Sophia expected stone. Towers. Gates bristling with men and iron. What she saw instead, as the Salted Bear rounded the final bend of the coast, was light.

Not torchlight.

Lines of it.

Warm, steady illumination traced streets, piers, warehouses, and buildings that rose in clean geometry rather than defensive clutter. Steam vents breathed softly along the shoreline. Cranes moved even at night, their silhouettes precise against the glow. The city of Nordreach did not sleep. It functioned.

Sophia leaned forward despite herself.

"That’s impossible," she whispered.

Anders did not smile.

The ship docked without shouted orders. Mooring arms locked automatically. Gangways lowered with hydraulic ease. People moved—dockworkers, engineers, guards—but there was no panic, no scrambling. Everything flowed.

As if the city trusted itself.

Sophia was escorted down the gangplank, her chains gone now, replaced by nothing at all. That unsettled her more than iron ever had.

They walked.

Streets wide enough for wagons ran straight and true. Channels along the sides carried water—clean water—moving steadily. Buildings rose three and four stories high, timber and stone fused with metal bracing. Windows glowed. Somewhere inside, she heard laughter.

Children.

Real children.

Not huddled. Not begging. Running.

She stopped walking.

"This is a lie," she said hoarsely. "A stage built to break me."

Anders halted with her.

"You tried to kill me," he said evenly. "If I wanted to break you, you’d already be broken."

She stared at a nearby structure—a public bathhouse, steam rising through vented stone. Men and women entered freely, laughing, tired but unafraid.

"This place shouldn’t exist," she said.

"No," Anders replied. "It shouldn’t be rare."

They continued.

They passed a rail platform, iron tracks gleaming under lamplight. A steam engine hissed quietly, idle but ready. Crates were loaded with stamped markings—inventory codes. Organization.

At the center of Nordreach, the hall rose—not a throne hall bristling with skulls, but a civic heart. Council chambers. Administrative wings. Training halls. A structure built not for awe, but for continuity.

Sophia’s breath came shallow.

"You could have ruled by terror alone," she said. "After what I saw today... no one would have resisted."

Anders stopped at the edge of the square.

"Yes," he said. "For a generation."

He turned to her fully now.

"Terror burns fast. Order lasts."

She searched his face for madness. For zealotry. For hunger.

She found none.

Only intent.

"What am I to you?" she asked quietly.

Anders considered the question.

"A witness," he said at last. "And a choice."

She swallowed. "You think my father will kneel."

"I think," Anders said, "that he will understand something he’s never had to before."

"And if he doesn’t?"

Anders looked out over Nordreach—over the moving lights, the working city, the people who slept without fear.

"Then he will become history."

Sophia closed her eyes.

For the first time since she’d boarded the Salted Bear with murder in her heart, she felt something colder than fear.

She felt certainty—and the terrifying realization that the world had already shifted beneath her feet.

And she had crossed with it.