The cold did not feel like weather. It felt like a physical entity, a beast with teeth gnawing at his lungs.
Bilal stood ankle-deep in a mixture of frozen mud and pig manure. He pulled his modern winter jacket tighter around his broad chest, his breath pluming in thick white clouds before his face. He was twenty years old. He weighed one hundred and five kilograms, his body forged by years of modern nutrition, heavy lifting, and kickboxing. Beneath his jacket, he wore a bright red cotton t-shirt and green denim jeans—fabrics so flawlessly woven they looked like alien artifacts in this grey, desolate world.
He looked down at his hands. They were trembling.
Where am I? his mind screamed. The last thing he remembered was the world of 2026—warmth, concrete, university textbooks, biology exams. Now, he was surrounded by jagged, snow-capped mountains and a collection of rotting, low-slung wooden longhouses. The smell of woodsmoke, wet animal fur, and unwashed bodies made his stomach churn.
A shout broke the freezing silence.
From the largest wooden hall, four men emerged. They wore thick, dirty furs, chainmail that looked heavy and rusted, and carried broad-bladed axes. Their faces were weathered, pale, and heavily bearded, their eyes wide with a mixture of terror and aggression.
Bilal stood at his full height of 181 centimeters. With his warm, dark brown skin, his thick curly hair, and his intense, dark eyes, he knew exactly what he looked like to them. He didn't look like a lost traveler. To men of the North, a massive, dark-skinned stranger appearing out of thin air in impossibly bright colors was a creature of myth.
"They think I'm a monster," Bilal thought, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "If I run, they'll hunt me down. If I fight, they'll shoot me with arrows. I have to de-escalate. I have to survive."
The leading Viking, a man with a scarred cheek, raised his axe and shouted something harsh and guttural. Old Norse. Bilal couldn't understand a word.
Bilal slowly raised his massive, calloused hands, showing his empty palms. He placed his right hand over his heart, bowed his head slightly in a universal gesture of respect, and offered a soft, calm smile, revealing perfectly straight, white teeth.
"As-salamu alaykum," Bilal said, his deep voice carrying over the wind. "Shukran."
The Vikings stopped. The scarred man lowered his axe by a fraction. They didn't understand the words, but the cadence—the rolling, rhythmic sound of Arabic—was something they had heard of.
"Serkland," one of the younger Vikings whispered to the leader, his eyes wide as he looked at Bilal's brown skin and flawless clothes. The Land of Silk. The East.
Bilal didn't know what they were saying, but he saw the shift in their eyes. Fear had turned to greedy curiosity. He needed to buy his life. Moving slowly, Bilal reached to the collar of his jacket. He grabbed the metal zipper. With a swift, smooth motion, he pulled it down. Zzzzziiiip.
The Vikings flinched, gripping their weapons. They had never seen a metal track that opened and closed fabric like magic. Bilal took off the jacket, shivering as the freezing wind hit his red t-shirt, and offered the coat to the leader.
The scarred Viking took it. He felt the synthetic waterproof material. He played with the zipper, pulling it up and down, his mouth hanging open. He looked at Bilal, nodded, and pointed toward the great hall.
Bilal let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He had bought his first day of life.
By his third week in the village, Bilal realized that brute strength would not keep him alive. He needed to be useful.
Winter was closing in fast. The village Jarl was furious because the roof of his newly built storehouse was sagging dangerously under the weight of the early snow. The local builders were arguing, hacking at support beams with axes, trying to guess the correct angle to hold the heavy thatched roof.
Bilal watched them fail. He walked over, picking up a long piece of hemp rope and a piece of charcoal from the fire.
The Vikings stepped back, watching the "Giant of the South" warily.
Bilal tied knots in the rope at perfectly even intervals. He was miles away from his university, but the laws of the universe hadn't changed. He laid the rope out on the dirt floor. Three knots on one side, four knots on the base. He pulled the diagonal tight. Five knots.
The Pythagorean theorem.
𝑎
2
+
𝑏
2
=
𝑐
2
a
2
+b
2
=c
2
. A perfect 90-degree right angle.
He picked up the charcoal and drew the architectural brace on the wooden pillar, motioning for the carpenters to cut exactly on his line. Reluctantly, they did. When they wedged the newly cut timber into the roof, it locked into place with a resounding, solid THUD. The sagging stopped instantly. The roof was flawless.
The Jarl, a heavy-set man with a grey beard, stared at the roof, then looked at Bilal. He tossed a small leather pouch at the Giant's feet. It clinked. Silver.
Bilal picked it up. "Mind over muscle," he told himself. "That is how I win."
It happened a week later. The moment that changed his destiny from mere survival to empire-building.
Bilal was walking through the outskirts of the village. The wind was howling, biting through the rough woolen tunic he had bought to replace his freezing red t-shirt. The mud in the pathways was beginning to freeze solid.
That was when he saw the pile of rags moving in the dirt.
He stopped. Next to a pig trough, half-buried in the freezing, feces-stained mud, was a child.
Bilal knelt down. It was a little girl, no older than seven. She was skeletal, her cheeks hollow, her pale skin bruised and smeared with filth. Her blonde hair was a matted nest of lice and dirt. She was shivering so violently that her teeth were chattering, but her eyes—wide, terrified, and piercingly blue—stared up at his massive, dark face.
To her, Bilal must have looked like a monster from the old tales.
"Hey," Bilal whispered in English, his voice thick with emotion. "Hey, it's okay."
A local woman walked past carrying a bucket. She glanced at the girl with total indifference. Bilal caught the woman's arm, pointing at the dying child with a fierce glare.
The woman pulled her arm away, making a dismissive gesture. Through the basic Norse words Bilal had learned, he understood her meaning perfectly: She has no family. She is a mouth to feed. Let the winter take her.
A cold, heavy rage settled into Bilal's stomach. In his modern world, this was a crime against humanity. Here, it was just Tuesday.
He looked down at the girl. She had stopped shivering. That was the worst sign. Her core temperature was dropping to fatal levels.
"If I take her," his logical brain whispered, "I have to feed her. I barely have enough food for myself. She will slow me down."
But as he looked into her dying eyes, the student from 2026 died, and the Patriarch of Axiomra was born.
"Not today," Bilal growled.
He reached down with his massive, calloused hands and lifted her out of the mud. She weighed almost nothing, light as a sparrow. He took off his heavy wool cloak and wrapped it around her frail body.
"The mud is too cold for you, little one," he murmured.
He swung her around, placing her securely onto his broad, 105kg back. Her tiny, freezing hands instinctively grabbed handfuls of his thick curly hair, holding on for dear life. Her bare, frostbitten feet rested against the burning heat of his back.
He carried her to his small rented hearth. He boiled a pot of fresh goat's milk, stirring in a precious spoonful of honey he had bought with his architectural silver.
He sat her by the fire. She looked terrified, her eyes darting to the door.
Bilal sat cross-legged on the floor so he wouldn't tower over her. He blew on the hot milk, cooling it, and held the wooden bowl to her cracked lips.
"Drink," he urged gently.
She took a sip. The sweetness of the honey and the rich, hot fat of the milk hit her starving stomach. Her eyes widened. She grabbed the bowl with both hands and drank greedily, the warmth flushing back into her pale cheeks.
When she finished, she didn't run away. She crawled across the dirt floor, climbed into Bilal's massive lap, curled into a tight ball against his chest, and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
Bilal sat in the dim light of the fire, resting his chin gently on the top of her dirty blonde head. He felt the terrifying, crushing weight of responsibility settle onto his shoulders.
"I am in hell," he thought, stroking her back. "But I will build a heaven for you right here in the mud. I swear it to Allah."
He didn't know it yet, but the little girl snoring softly against his chest was Runa. And together, they were going to tear the Viking Age apart.