It seems they aren't as clear of the earthquakes as Björn⁢ had initially thought. It's true. The endtimes, they're coming. And they're coming fast. He wants to be the first to see, the first to witness the coming of Ragnarök. Greet the gods at the sea, and watch as things go up in flames. He'd be one of them, someday. Godborn boy, harbinger of destruction, herald of the end days. The tremors draw him, like a moth to flame, to their origin point.

The Shimmering Shore... he'd been here only days before, racing on the beach with the strange not-wolf. They'd been on the beach, but this is different. Nose to the ground, watching as the earth below him shifts and quakes. Björn⁢ can see the cracks in the crust, in the surface, and knows to stay well back from them. What would the tremors reveal here? The usually serene landscape about to be rent asunder-- he's here to feed on the chaos, and the chaos alone.

"Björn"

Now that she had reunited with Dominus, it was hard to leave his side. There was comfort in being near him. He was the calm in the storm of her life. But as they traveled south into Auster to do some digging around about all these tremors and quakes, she had not expected to see her brother of all wolves here too. Unsure how Bjorn would behave around her since the last she had heard, he had been fighting with their father, she told Dom to stay back, to wait in case she needed help. But she shouldn't, right? This was her brother after all... Where Bjorn is the harbinger, she is the martyr. Light exudes from Lumine even during these dark times as she approaches him. Her eyes don't hover on him too long, she's too busy examining the landscape around her. How the ground has changed from rolling hills and sandy dunes to channels of churned dirt and rocky soil. Even in the distance, the illuminated waters didn't appear as brightly as they normally did. Was it due to the starless night sky? Worry creases her face as she approaches Bjorn's bubble. "Brother, what do you make of this?" Lumine's tone are even, solid, as it always has been even if there is hesitancy to get any closer to him. Stopping, her legs holding firm, she reaches a paw out to inspect the grass and dirt. It didn't appear different, but clearly there was something amiss here. The gods, perhaps? Was it truly the end times? Lumine Trygg

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The rot prince is entirely unaware that there's a set of eyes behind his sister, though a hulking beast lurks just out of sight. Instead, his gaze is pulled from the strange cracks beginning to form in the soft earth to a familiar face. Björn's grin spreads comfortably, lacking much of the sinister edge it's been tangled up with lately. Reaching out to nose at her cheek, half a greeting, half making sure she's real. No telling what tricks this place could hold, with everything going on.

Satisfied that Lumi is here, in the flesh, he turns to examine the ground where it splits. "All the signs of Ragnarök, how could it be anything else?" A brilliance in his gaze, glimmering and unsettling. Everything around him is electric, the energy feeding him in turn. "The rumbling in the earth will churn up the sea, and well... you know what comes next." The end times. They'd heard the stories.

There was a storm coming, but what kind? Björn couldn't say. The stories would only get them so far, legends told to children. "Unless you've come to another conclusion... it's the only sense I can find." Maybe he'd jumped too quickly to the end of days, but everything felt deeply apocalyptic to Björn. Scanning the horizon, tracing the cracks in the earth until he can no longer see them. The Shore looked strange, in ways he didn't know how to place. In ways he could only guess at, only attempt to understand. Lumine had always been the reasonable one, after all.

"Björn"

When his nose presses to her cheek, Lumine lets out a sigh of relief. Her muscles visibly loosen as she returns the gesture with a nose of her own to his neck. No matter what storm they would experience, they would always be siblings. Blood would always be thicker than water.

She had not always been concrete in her belief of the gods and ragnarok like her brother was, but she couldn’t deny its plausibility with what she saw before her. Overnight, the moon had disappeared and spires had reached for the sky. Now, here on a different continent, the earth was creating these winding rivulets as if water was pressing up from the underside.

How were they to make sense of this? Her brothers words send a shiver down her spine as she looks at him with narrowed gaze. “So dramatic you are,” she teases, but she knows he’ll see the truth. Had ragnarok come for them? “I always thought father told us those stories to keep us in line, but now I’m not so sure,” Lumi admits this after a brief pause of silence as she waited out the next tremor beneath her paws. It indeed was quite unsettling…

Some bonds mean more than blood, as Björn had been so rudely reminded by his father. Still, his siblings are family, chosen by the gods themselves. The rot prince has his sister by his side, the more reasonable parts of his brain waking back up in her presence. The storms are as external as they are internal, here. A living visualization of the things going on in his head and in his chest, making him feel more alive.

"I don't think we should go closer to the shore, even this far inland probably won't be safe for long." Björn is tense, another tremor shaking the earth beneath his feet. His beliefs won't be shaken, though his trust in his father's gods was a bit less sure than it had been before. "Stories or not, it doesn't look good." Pawing at the cracks in the silty earth, feeling the shifting threaten him in ways Björn certainly doesn't like. Harbinger this and harbinger that, he follows those cracks with his steely gaze.

Drawn by something he can't explain, he begins to trace the cracks with slow, deliberate steps. Nose to the ground, he's searching for the same things he'd smelled within the strange new, spire spiked land. "Lemme know if you smell something burning, okay?" Searching. Scouting. He needs to know.

"Björn"

Lumine can tell that Bjorn is far more tense than she is. He has always been far more of a believer than herself. Clearly, by his words and actions, he truly did think that Ragnarok was on the horizon. She couldn't help the shivers that kept trailing down her spine. The logical part of her told her it was impossible. Gods couldn't truly be real and apocalypses didn't actually happen. But after what she saw in Boreas, those spires, how could she not believe it all? Nodding in agreement with Bjorn to stay away from the shore, she turned her focus back on the raised channels of earth. Watching his trail his nose along one of the channels, her ears flick back when he mentions something burning. Burning? Her brow furrows, nose crinkling with nervousness. "I do hope I don't smell something burning," she murmurs quietly, trailing after her brother who is intent on finding out something, anything. "What if a new mountain is beginning to shape here," Lumine posits softly, her eyes looking at the channels and noticing how they ripple and shift. Lumine Trygg

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The end times felt closer by the day, though a lot of it was in Björn's head. Only his own life, or perceived life, coming to an end. Futures clouded and uncertain... so the world has to be ending, right? His father's words about trusting the gods, the fates... but when had dad ever bothered to follow the same advice? What use was there believing his father's teachings now? If Víðarr could pick and choose when to believe in his convictions, Björn could too.

With a voice of reason here, he's able to settle... at least incrementally. "That's what the weird forest of trees with no branches smells like up north. Burning." An offhanded remark, though the nerves are showing on Lumi's face too. Björn channels the tension into the search, into the quest for meaning.

"If there's a new mountain, then it should be ours too." A triumphant glimmer in his eye, though the words... perhaps betray something a bit stranger. A bit weightier than he means them to. With another great creak below his paws, and the sound of falling dirt not far off, Björn's head snaps up from the ground. Scanning for the source of the sound, only able to pinpoint that it's a bit out of sight. "Did you hear that?" Already taking off in the direction, perhaps his self preservation skills are a bit lacking.

"Björn"