---Jason---

  # Harald's Awakening

  Pain nces through my skull as consciousness returns, a pulsing agony that pushes against my temples like a vise grip tightening with every heartbeat. The metallic tang of blood fills my nostrils, accompanied by the acrid bite of electrical fires and the antiseptic sterility of a medical bay. My eyelids feel heavy, reluctant to open as if weighted down by invisible anchors.

  When they finally do, disorientation hits me with the force of a battering ram.

  *I can see.*

  Not the perpetual darkness that had been my world, but actual, tangible *vision*. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the medical bay burns my retinas, sending fresh waves of pain through my head. Silver-blue metal panels with strange runes etched into their surfaces arch overhead. Equipment I don't recognize blinks and hums around me, dispys showing vital signs in a nguage that shouldn't make sense but somehow does.

  *This isn't a hospital. This isn't Earth.*

  I try to sit up and my body responds with arming ease, muscles coiling and uncoiling with powerful efficiency I've never experienced before. My hands—massive, calloused, scarred from countless battles—grip the edge of the medical berth, crushing the metal slightly beneath fingers that aren't mine but respond to my commands.

  These aren't my hands. This isn't my body.

  Knowledge floods into my consciousness like water breaching a dam—information I shouldn't possess but suddenly do. This is a medical bay aboard the *Longcw of Cn Voide Wolf*, an Ororin longship currently patrolling the outer reaches of the Helheim Sector. I am Harald Skulltaker, Thane of the Void Wolves Cn, renowned for my brutality in battle and the collection of enemy skulls that decorate my quarters.

  *No. I'm Jason. I was on a bus. I was blind. I was...*

  The thought fragments as an explosion rocks the ship, the deck ptes beneath me vibrating with the impact. Emergency kxons wail, piercing my enhanced hearing with painful intensity. Red warning lights strobe across the medical bay, casting everything in a crimson glow that makes the scattered droplets of blood on the floor gleam like rubies.

  "Boarding action!" The words echo through the ship's communication system, followed by the unmistakable sounds of combat—psma discharges, the csh of metal on metal, screams of pain and rage.

  My body moves before my mind can process the implications, swinging legs over the side of the berth and standing to my full height—a towering presence that makes me momentarily dizzy with the change in perspective. The rage that has always been my constant companion stirs within me, but it feels different now—not the blind, destructive force I've struggled to contain my entire life, but something focused, almost eager.

  *Use it.*

  The thought isn't entirely mine, but I embrace it nonetheless. The rage surges through unfamiliar nervous pathways, flooding my muscles with strength and my mind with crity. The disorientation fades, repced by a predatory awareness that categorizes potential weapons, escape routes, tactical advantages.

  My armor rests on a nearby stand—void-leather the color of midnight, covered in protective runes that glow faintly with stored energy. The material feels supple yet impossibly resilient under my fingers as I slide into it with practiced movements that belong to Harald, not Jason. Each piece locks into pce with satisfying clicks, the armor conforming to my body like a second skin.

  "Protect from void," I mutter, the words falling from my lips in a deep, resonant voice accented with sounds that remind me of Old Norse documentaries I once heard. The economical speech pattern feels natural to Harald's tongue, though my thoughts remain as verbose as ever.

  *The void-leather will shield me from the killing cold of the Sea of Stars, from vacuum exposure should the hull breach. The runes will maintain my body heat and provide sixty seconds of emergency oxygen.*

  Another explosion, closer this time. The lights flicker and die, plunging the medical bay into darkness before emergency power bathes everything in a dull amber glow. Through the metal bulkhead, I can hear the sounds of combat drawing nearer—the distinctive whoosh of boarding axes cutting through hull pting, the staccato bursts of psma rifles, the guttural war cries of Ororin warriors engaged in the glorious chaos of ship-to-ship combat.

  I need a weapon.

  My eyes scan the medical bay, the enhanced vision of my Ororin body picking out details in the low light that my human eyes could never have perceived. There—secured to the wall—a ceremonial axe meant for emergency defense of the medical staff. I cross the room in three long strides, the weight and bance of my new body still strange but increasingly natural with each movement.

  The axe feels pitifully small in my grip, more a hatchet than a proper weapon for someone of Harald's stature. But it will have to do.

  *No time to reach the armory. No time to find my personal weapons. Fight with what I have.*

  The bulkhead door slides open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a corridor strewn with the bodies of Ororin crew members. Their void-leather armor shows the distinctive melting pattern of high-powered psma weapons—a precision attack, then. Not the work of common pirates or raiders.

  The rage simmers just beneath the surface of my consciousness, ready to explode at my command. I move through the corridor with a predator's silent grace, following the sounds of battle. Each step feels more natural than the st, as if Harald's muscle memory is gradually asserting itself, teaching my consciousness how to properly inhabit this powerful form.

  Three intersections ter, I encounter the enemy.

  They're humanoid but distinctly non-Ororin—shorter, slighter of build, wearing sleek armor of burnished gold that seems to absorb the emergency lighting rather than reflect it. Their movements have an unsettling fluidity, almost insectile in their precision. Five of them stand in a defensive formation around a sixth who appears to be extracting data from a ship's terminal.

  *Imperial Sunsworn. Elite commando unit. Here for ship's navigational data. Will kill everyone aboard.*

  The knowledge materializes in my mind, accompanied by a surge of hatred that isn't entirely mine. Harald's memories provide context—these are ancestral enemies of the Ororin, responsible for atrocities that span centuries.

  The rage howls for release.

  I give it what it wants.

  My body explodes into motion, covering the distance between us in a blur of void-leather and focused violence. The axe cleaves through the nearest enemy's helmet before they can fully turn, the bde finding the seam where helmet meets gorget with unerring precision. Hot blood sprays across my face, its metallic scent feeding the rage that now pounds through my veins like liquid fire.

  "Skulltaker comes!" I roar, the three words emerging as a bestial challenge that echoes through the corridor.

  The remaining enemies react with impressive speed, psma weapons rising in unison. But Harald's body—*my* body now—moves with the practiced efficiency of countless battles. I duck beneath a psma bolt that would have taken my head, feeling the heat of its passage sizzle the air inches from my scalp. The axe finds another target, sinking deep into an enemy's chest pte, but lodges there, stuck fast in the alien material.

  I release the weapon and use the momentum to drive my fist into another attacker's facepte. The reinforced void-leather of my gauntlet, combined with the unnatural strength of my Ororin physique, shatters the protective covering. The satisfying crunch of facial bones giving way beneath my knuckles sends a surge of savage pleasure through me.

  *This is what the rage wanted all along. Not to destroy indiscriminately, but to be channeled, focused, used as the weapon it truly is.*

  Two enemies remain upright, their weapons tracking my movement. Time seems to slow as the rage heightens my senses to superhuman levels. I can see the minute adjustments of their aim, can almost anticipate the trajectory of their shots before they pull the triggers.

  I roll forward, the psma bolts passing through the space I occupied a fraction of a second earlier. My hand closes around the leg of a fallen Ororin crewmate, the body still warm. With strength that would have been impossible in my human form, I swing the corpse like a makeshift fil, knocking the weapons from the enemies' hands before they can fire again.

  "Die well," I growl, before methodically eliminating the disarmed opponents with brutally efficient strikes to vulnerable points in their armor—knowledge that comes to me through Harald's combat experience.

  The st enemy—the one who had been extracting data—tries to flee, fingers dancing across controls to seal bulkhead doors between us. But Harald's body knows this ship intimately. I take a shortcut through a maintenance crawlspace, emerging ahead of my prey as they round a corner.

  The look of shock on their face as I materialize before them is deeply satisfying.

  One punch caves in their chest cavity, ending the fight before it truly begins.

  The rage recedes slightly, satisfied with the violence but still hungry for more. I can feel it watching through my eyes, evaluating, judging. This body knows how to use anger as a tool rather than being consumed by it. The realization is both liberating and terrifying.

  Arms continue to sound throughout the ship, indicating that the boarding action is still underway. I strip a psma pistol from one of the fallen enemies and continue toward the main conflict, guided by Harald's intimate knowledge of the *Longcw*'s yout and the sounds of intense fighting emanating from the direction of the command deck.

  Three more encounters with enemy boarding parties leave me spttered with multicolored blood and ichor, the rage singing through my veins, elevating my combat awareness to near-precognitive levels. Each engagement feels more natural than the st, as if Jason and Harald are gradually synchronizing, my consciousness learning to fully inhabit and utilize this powerful form.

  As I approach the ship's central command nexus, I encounter a sight that stops me in my tracks.

  The massive armored door to the bridge lies sheared from its moorings, the reinforced metal peeled back like paper. Bodies of Ororin warriors litter the approach—at least a dozen of them, their void-leather armor cut with surgical precision, wounds cauterized by a bde hot enough to instantly sear flesh.

  Standing amidst the carnage is a woman unlike any I've ever seen.

  She towers nearly as tall as my Ororin form, her physique powerful yet lithe, moving with predatory grace as she systematically eliminates the st defenders of the bridge. Her armor appears to be made from the same void-leather as mine, but tinted blood-red and adorned with skulls that have been meticulously cleaned and polished to a gleaming white. Her wild blonde hair, arranged in intricate warrior braids, frames a face of terrible beauty—high cheekbones, strong jaw, eyes the color of a winter sea that seem to glow with inner light.

  In her hands she wields a massive bde that defies conventional design—a greatsword with a blue-hued metal that seems to drink in the emergency lighting, its edges crackling with an ethereal energy that resembles frost. The weapon moves as if it weighs nothing, cleaving through Ororin armor and flesh with contemptuous ease.

  *Soulrender,* Harald's memories provide the name unbidden. *The bde and its wielder. Merciless. Unstoppable. Collector of worthy souls.*

  I watch as she dispatches the st defender, the blue bde sliding between armor ptes to find the heart with unerring accuracy. She withdraws the weapon with a flourish that spatters blood across the bulkhead in an almost artistic pattern. Then, slowly, she turns to face me.

  Our eyes lock, and I feel something pass between us—recognition, challenge, anticipation. Her lips curl into a smile that contains no warmth, only the promise of violence.

  The rage inside me becomes a towering inferno as I realize what I'm seeing - an Ororin. A traitor. Leading an attack against her own kind. The betrayal stokes my fury to new heights, the inferno becoming a supernova of hatred. My vision narrows, tinting everything with a crimson haze as the blood pounds in my ears.

  "Fresh meat," she purrs, her voice musical despite the bloodthirsty intent behind the words. "I've heard of you, Harald Skulltaker. Your reputation precedes you."

  The rage inside me rises to the challenge, flooding my system with renewed strength. This is a worthy opponent—perhaps the worthiest I've encountered since awakening in this body. Harald's combat instincts catalog her stance, the way she holds the bde, the subtle shifting of her weight that telegraphs her intentions.

  "End you," I respond, the economical phrase carrying all the menace I can infuse into it. My voice emerges as a guttural snarl, hardly recognizable as speech. The thought of an Ororin traitor wielding such power against her own kind fills me with disgust.

  Her ughter is like breaking gss. "Many have tried."

  She moves with blinding speed, the blue bde whistling through the air toward my neck. Only Harald's reflexes save me, my body twisting aside with milliseconds to spare. I feel the cold energy of the sword's passage against my skin, raising goosebumps despite the insution of my void-leather.

  I counter with a sweeping low kick that she leaps over effortlessly, bringing her bde down in a vertical strike that would have split me from crown to groin had I not rolled sideways. The sword impacts the deck pting, slicing through the metal as if it were butter. Emergency forcefields flicker into existence, preventing atmospheric venting but bathing us in an eerie blue glow that mirrors the sword's aura.

  "Fight better," I grunt, feinting with the psma pistol before unching myself bodily at her midsection.

  The unexpected tackle succeeds—perhaps the only tactic she wasn't prepared for. We crash to the deck in a tangle of limbs and armor, her sword skittering across the metal floor out of reach. Up close, I can smell her—ozone, blood, and something else, something ancient and wrong that makes the hairs on my neck stand up.

  We grapple with inhuman strength, each trying to gain the advantage. Her fighting style is fluid and technical, clearly trained in multiple martial disciplines. But Harald's body possesses raw power that exceeds even her enhanced capabilities, and I have the rage—the pure, focused anger that I'm learning to direct with surgical precision.

  I manage to pin one of her arms beneath my knee, using my superior weight to immobilize her. Her free hand cws at my face, finding purchase on my cheek and tearing a bloody furrow down to my jaw. The pain only feeds the rage, transforming it into renewed strength.

  "Ororin. Traitor," I snarl, my words emerging as staccato bursts of hatred. Each sylble drips with contempt.

  Her eyes widen slightly at being recognized, and I see a flicker of something—not fear, but perhaps surprise—cross her features.

  "You understand nothing," she hisses back, bucking beneath me with desperate strength.

  I don't care what she thinks I understand. The rage is in full control now, a white-hot fury directed at this betrayer of her people. My fist crashes into her face, the reinforced knuckles of my gauntlet shattering her cheekbone with a wet crunch. Blood sprays from her mouth, speckling my armor with crimson droplets.

  She twists suddenly, freeing her arm and driving stiffened fingers into my throat—a killing blow that would have crushed a human windpipe. But Harald's physiology is sturdier, the pain merely fueling my rage further.

  I seize her by the throat, fingers digging into the vulnerable flesh beneath her jaw. Her eyes bulge as I squeeze, cutting off her air supply. Still she fights, legs thrashing beneath me, free hand cwing at my armor, searching for a weakness.

  "Betray. Your. People," I growl, punctuating each word by smming her head against the deck pting. The metal dents beneath the impact, her skull making a hollow sound with each collision.

  Blood begins to leak from her ears, her nose, the corners of her eyes. Her struggles weaken but don't cease entirely. There's a fanatical light in her gaze, a devotion to something beyond mere survival.

  The rage demands total destruction. I release her throat only to seize her head between both hands. With a primal roar that echoes through the command deck, I begin to squeeze.

  She screams—a sound of pure defiance rather than fear—as the pressure mounts. Her hands grip my wrists, trying to pull my fingers away, but the rage has given me strength beyond reason. I feel her skull beginning to give beneath my grip, the bone creaking with sickening esticity.

  "For. The. Cns," I snarl, increasing the pressure relentlessly.

  Her final act is to spit blood in my face, her lips forming words I don't catch before her skull finally gives way beneath my hands. The sound is like a watermelon being crushed—wet, organic, nauseating. Brain matter and blood gush between my fingers, spilling onto the deck in a spreading pool.

  I rise to my feet, chest heaving, hands dripping with gore. The rage recedes slowly, leaving crity in its wake. I look down at the ruined remains of what had been a formidable warrior, feeling a complex mixture of satisfaction and regret. The traitor is dead, her betrayal punished, yet some part of me—the part that is still Jason—recoils at the brutality I've just inflicted.

  My eyes are drawn to the sword lying several meters away. The blue-hued bde seems to call to me, its ethereal energy pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. I approach cautiously, Harald's memories warning of the weapon's reputation, its supposed ability to consume the souls of those it sys.

  *Just take it. You've earned it.*

  The thought feels natural, a logical conclusion to the combat. I bend down and grasp the hilt, expecting... something. A shock, a voice, a mystical connection. But there's nothing beyond the perfect bance of the weapon, the way it fits my hand as if forged specifically for my grip.

  "Fine bde," I mutter, testing its weight with a few experimental swings. The sword moves through the air with impossible grace, the bde leaving faint blue contrails in its wake.

  Distant explosions and renewed arms indicate that the battle for the ship continues. I turn toward the corridor leading deeper into the vessel, Soulrender held confidently in my grip. The rage simmers contentedly within me, satisfied with the violence but ready to be called upon again.

  As I stride away from the carnage I've created, a strange sense of purpose fills me. This body, this ship, this war—none of it is what I would have chosen. But the rage that has haunted me my entire life has finally found its proper home, its proper use.

  For the first time in memory, it feels right.

  I am Harald Skulltaker, Thane of the Void Wolves, now wielder of Soulrender. And somewhere deep within, I am still Jason, learning to navigate this new reality one blood-soaked step at a time.

  The Sea of Stars awaits, and I have much killing yet to do.