Augustus Fenris Haraldsen looked down through the trees into the valley below. With his self-assured stance, only one thought remained in his mind: This is mine. The estate had been the Haraldsen property for centuries, its roots tangled in a fortune so old that no one remembered where it had first begun. Through those centuries, the family endured, reshaping and expanding their empire, moving swiftly when profit beckoned, selling out before the crash arrived.

Now, at nearly sixty, he wondered whether his sons would be able to carry his and his father’s legacy forward, still expanding. They were good with technology, poor at business, and hopeless with women. Harald, at thirty-five, was already once divorced, and with the way his arguments with Lillian kept escalating, he seemed well on his way to a second. His divorce from Susann had been loud and costly, and Lillian’s promised to be no better.

Yet even he fared better than his brother. Olav, nearing thirty, had never married, but he had fathered four children with four different women. The settlements had been signed quietly outside of court, but how much can a man really trust a woman?

And that led him to think of Marit, his daughter. She was smart, educated, stubborn—everything he himself had been when his father had handed him the kingdom. At twenty-five, she was not yet ready to take over. And, in his mind, being a woman meant she was not suited at all.

The fog drifted in from the lake, spreading low across the valley until soon both land and estate would be wrapped in a gauze of cloud. From up here, it would look deserted, forgotten. It was time to head down. The drizzle had already begun.

There were many paths up the hill, but Augustus always chose his favorite, the one that wound past the small pond in the clearing between pine and birch, willow and aspen. There stood a mighty oak, carrying a memory older than the Haraldsens themselves, long before they had ever settled in the valley below.

And from beneath the oak, he could once again lay his eyes on the estate, now only blinking lights in the fog. No, Marit could not take over. Such a long, beautiful line of Haraldsen men could not be broken simply because she was better suited than her brothers. Besides, she was not married. And he had never caught her sneaking out into the night, or into the stables, as so many Haraldsen women had done under the heavy air of the estate. If anything, Marit liked her books. She liked to help Mona in the kitchen, and only God knew what the two young women were always giggling about.

Giggles, as if they were some new branch of the Haraldsen legacy. He snorted, half-mean, half-resigned. Laughter had not filled the house since Marit’s mother passed, too soon to guide her daughter through puberty. He still resented her a little for that. All three children had studied in Bergen, a few hours west of their home, tucked inside the Hardangerfjord where the mountains split and the water pushed its arms deep into the land.

The village below was little more than a scatter of white houses and a quay, but from the estate hill the view stretched wide, across orchards and water, to peaks that still carried snow even in late summer. The lake at the bottom of the valley lay quiet, fed by streams rushing down from the ridges, and in the morning fog, it seemed to merge with the fjord itself. Bergen was near enough for business, for banks and lawyers and the theater, yet far enough that the estate kept its stillness, its heavy silence, as though untouched by time.

There was a stir in the pond behind him—a frog leaping, perhaps. He laughed at the thought, for what if one of Olav’s stray children laid claim to Haraldssæter and the corporation?

“Why such dark thoughts, Augustus?” the soft voice behind him asked.

Augustus stopped mid-thought. No one was ever up here but himself. Even the tourists respected the No Trespassing signs and barbed wire fences, despite the state’s objections to them. This was his land, after all.

He turned slowly, but at first he saw no one. It might have been the dark under the oak, the heavy clouds, the drift of fog. Or simply that she sat on the big rock in the middle of the pond, wet and slick like the stone itself, her skin carrying a grayish hue, her hair long and black. Perhaps twenty. Perhaps two hundred.

“No,” she said, answering a question that had never left his lips. “I’m ageless, like time itself.”

She tilted her head, studying the strange man before her.

“And yet, today, I feel old.”

The nerve, he thought. Yet as he spoke, a calm seemed to settle over his cold heart.

“Who are you? What are you doing on my land?”

Even her laughter carried sadness. Sadness and softness.

“Your land, Augustus?” she asked, easing her arms away from her body, letting her small, round breasts spill free.

“I’ll forgive you, Augustus, for you know not what you do.”

He could not feel angry, though he tried.

“I don’t know what I do?” he asked.

She smiled and slipped into the water, resurfacing at the shore. She was taller than she had seemed upon the rock, paler, more beautiful. She did not smell of bog or slime—she carried no scent at all. And when she spoke, even the frogs fell silent.

“Why do you refuse to learn from history, Augustus?” she asked. “Why won’t you let me live?”

“Let you live?” he asked. “Woman, I don’t even know you!”

She kissed him then, and though he had not wanted her to, he felt her heat take hold inside him, as if—

“No, you don’t, Augustus. And that’s the concern.”

She slipped back into the water, and he stood watching, waiting for her to surface.

But she never did.

"Who…” The word faltered. He stood in the drizzle, looking down at the pool, black as oil and just as depthless. Perhaps stress, he thought, though the hair on his arms refused to lie flat.

And he stayed caught within that thought on his stroll back down the hill, across the courtyard, and into the heat of the house. Heat, not warmth. The house had not carried warmth since his wife passed.

Still, Marit and Mona tried to fill it with something different, their giggles spilling from the kitchen as they prepared dinner, as if his own daughter no longer understood the lines between servants and masters. He would have to speak with her about that.

The fireplace, a brandy, the newspapers—he could have slumbered.

“Why won’t you let me live?” the beautiful woman had asked, before kissing him, leaving him with a warmth he had not felt in years.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered, and in his mind, she slid onto his lap like a blanket of warmth.

And still she bore no scent, only beauty and that solemn smile. Her eyes were dark but not threatening—bottomless, reflecting only himself. Then came burning earth, despair, tragedy, and abyssal sorrow.

And sorrow was beautiful on her, as she rocked her hips against his suit, her black hair flickering in the glow of the fireplace, her pale lips grazing his.

“Who are you?” he asked, but she vanished as quickly as she had come, just as Mona opened the door and excused herself.

“Dinner,” she said.

Augustus sat at the table, watching his hopeless hopefuls in their usual places. Marit smiled at Mona as though they shared a secret no one else was part of. Olav reclined in his timeless elegance, all grace and no substance. Harald and Linnea faced one another, the cold between them like a wall of ice.

He cared little for any of them. The woman from the pond lingered in his mind—not heavy, but swelling in the space that so often held only contempt.

“Dad!” He heard Marit yell across the room.

“Yes, dear?” he answered.

His daughter hesitated, struck more by the softness in his voice than by the fact she had already called his name three times. Dear? He had not used that word for her since middle school. Then he had grown distant and cold. Now the distance in his voice felt warmer, yet somehow further away.

“You remember Abrehamsen is coming over tomorrow?”

Viktor Stolt Abrehamsen. His attorney. Some contract to be signed, something to take over, another piece added to the Haraldsen empire. Why would he not remember?

“Of course,” he said, and drifted back into the haze of the gray lady.

He carried that haze into the night, and not once, as he walked the hallways of the third floor, did he register Lillian whimpering Olav’s name from the wrong bedroom, intent on being impregnated by her husband’s brother.

He did pause at Marit’s door. Behind it came the sounds of moans—Mona’s name whispered, then moaned, then cried out. He did not linger to savor some perverse thrill, but because it reached him like a song. Not obscene, not even strange, but something gentle, something that wrapped him in ease, as though he were sinking deeper into cotton.

He did not recognize the man in the bathroom mirror as himself—not even a younger version of the man his father had forged. What stared back was someone unfamiliar, detached from the house, yet carrying a trace of wisdom he had never claimed.

He did not reach for his neatly folded pajamas. He stepped into the bedroom and slid under the covers as though returning to the state he had entered the world. Sleep took him quickly, or so he thought.

“No longer wrapped in worry,” she whispered, pale and beautiful at his side.

He was not startled by her naked presence; he only smiled as she slid on top of him. Her hair—long, black, beautiful—spilled down her back, and when she arched and tilted her head, the question rose again inside him: Who are you?

She smiled down at him, her skin pale and soft in the dim light—not from the moon, not from the lamp at his bedside, but a glow that seemed to come from within. It traced the shape of her, the soft lines, the perfect curves. Her breasts were full and balanced, neither heavy nor small, and when his hands closed around them, it was as though they had been sculpted for his palms alone.

“Mother, they call me,” she whispered. “But like you, they have abandoned me.”

He cried then, because her voice carried only truth. None of it mattered—not his failing children, not the swelling empire, not the ego he had filled with other people’s crushed dreams and the slow burn of alcohol. Not even the papers that passed between hands, as though anything of hers could ever be owned by anyone but her.

She slid higher, riding his chest now. She felt like ancient need, like forgotten lust, like the temptation men had once abandoned in exchange for land, for money, for power.

She lifted herself slightly, pale thighs rising above him, and for the first time, she was no longer scentless. She smelled of—

“Worship me,” she whispered, and lowered herself onto his face.

Her sex was the soil and the storm, the womb of all that had ever drawn breath. It was the rain of spring, the blossom of summer, the rot of autumn. Sweetness and salt, even the cold of winter confessions. Pressed against him, she was every joy, every regret, every pain ever suffered, every ecstasy ever known.

She was Mother, and in her scent he caught fire and ash, heather in bloom, the tang of iron, the musk of animals. The salt of the sea. The chill of mountains. The wind of every breath ever taken.

The world was between her thighs, and he no longer knew if he worshipped her as one man or as all men before him.

He swelled, throbbed, bucked against empty air, and released as if for the first time. All he could do was drink her.

“Good, my child,” she whimpered, thighs clamping tighter around his head.

And when she lifted, he felt abandoned, as though the whole world had stopped and he was left in the void she had carved by leaving him.

She slid down again, marking him with her wetness before kissing him, and in that kiss, he forgot that anything had ever existed but her beauty.

Her cunt found his cock—not shriveled and broken, but still alive, still throbbing, still waiting. Whether she claimed him or he claimed her, he could not tell. It felt as if all of him slipped inside her, and he welcomed it.

“I have not cum in centuries,” she whispered. “Or perhaps it was only yesterday. But you, Augustus Fenris Haraldsen, may set the world straight.”

She moved with him as though every rise and fall of her hips were the movement of oceans, carrying meanings beyond his reach. Her warmth closed around him, pulling his breath deep, then shallow, then out of memory. Each slow, deliberate descent bound him to her rhythm, pressed him further into surrender, and stripped him of titles, of pride, of all the armor his name had tried to forge.

“Mmmh,” she moaned. “Your earthly need is returning. I can feel it in your cock.”

She gasped—slightly, almost amused. “Have you ever felt your cock like this, Augustus?”

Her breath steadied, her gaze unblinking. She did not coax pleasure from him so much as command truth into him. In her body, he felt the swell of oceans, the pulse of roots beneath the soil, the silence of mountains waiting for a storm. She was cradle and grave, and in her embrace, he was neither master nor heir, only a sheep among sheep, drinking the mercy she chose to give.

The heat inside her was not his to claim. It was a gift, borrowed, a reminder that the world endured him only for a moment. And as he yielded, spilling into her as if begging forgiveness in the same breath, he felt his empire crumble like sand in rain.

She lowered her mouth to his ear, her voice both tender and inexorable.

“Good, my child. You see now. Nothing is yours but me.”

But she did not let him falter or soften. She rode him as though she owned him.

“No longer shall you be burdened with your daughter’s queerness,” she whispered. “For she is also mine, and I love her.”

She tightened around him, as if to wring him empty, though he mistook it for her intent to finish him. He was a fool, blind to how a woman gathered toward climax. The sudden shift in her rhythm, the focus in her gaze, was not for him but for herself.

“Your sons? Weep not for them,” she breathed. “One clings to power he cannot wield. One scatters seed without purpose. They are mine, too, but they will pass like leaves in the river. You were never meant to save them.”

She whimpered softly, as though she had forgotten what it meant to claim ecstasy, and the sound trembled like the first crack of thunder over still waters.

“Your daughter,” she breathed. “She will survive. She will know what to do with it all.”

Her body stilled. Her eyes widened, as if the weight of centuries pressed through her in a single instant, her spine straining, her muscles locked in time. Then she drew a breath so vast it seemed to empty the house of air.

“Receive my mercy, Augustus.”

It was not a shudder but a convulsion of earth and sky. Her thighs clamped tight, and he felt oceans swell, mountains fracture, forests burn and bloom again within her body. It was violent and tender at once—the rapture of creation, the grief of decay. Her cry rose like wind tearing through valleys, like glaciers grinding stone, yet at its heart was the softness of rain falling on new soil.

Her sex pulled his seed from him, first in urgent pulses, then draining him utterly, until his emptied cock was nothing but an instrument for her ascent.

She shook above him, her glow blinding, her scent all seasons at once. For a moment, he thought the world itself had stopped, waiting with her, until her release poured through him—merciful and inexorable—leaving him trembling in worship.

***

“Are you sure?” Abrehamsen asked again, sliding the papers across the table.

“Entirely,” said the man in front of him, smiling a smile so foreign on Haraldsen’s face.

“Signing over the land to the wildlife refuge? Marit as the custodian? And control of the company—”

“Yes,” Haraldsen answered, and signed the documents.

Later, he waved Abrehamsen goodbye and went into the kitchen. His daughter looked uncertain, as if the conversation she had long awaited was finally upon them. But her father only smiled, kissed her cheek, and drew Mona into an embrace as though she were his own.

“You don’t need it,” he said, “but you have my blessing. Live blessed.”

Marit watched her father dress, watched him pull on his boots, then slip out the door. There was a lightness to his steps as he crossed the courtyard, an ease she had never seen in him. When the trees swallowed him on the path into the hill, she kissed her girlfriend.

Augustus had never noticed the hares watching from the distance, the curiosity of deer, or the menace of foxes. But now he felt them with each step and each breath—the birds above, the whisper of wind in the grass, the rustle of leaves.

And he was full of that when he reached the edge of the dark pond. She surfaced there, taller, more beautiful, yet her smile too wide, her eyes too deep, as though the water still clung to her. And still, she was more radiant than his memory.

The pond drew at him, as if it owned not only gravity but purpose. His knees sank into the mud, his body answering with a sudden swell, release tearing through him as it had the night before. When he lifted his gaze, she was smiling, her hand outstretched.

He took it and met her kiss, and when she drew him into the water, the cold seized him, the pool clutching like hands intent on keeping him. Yet her grip was stronger, and he did not drown, did not die—though the world above slipped from him forever.

***

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