Under the moonlight, the corpses of fourteen slaves, turned into "blood eagles", were scattered around the altar. Those lifelike "blood eagles" that seemed about to spread their wings and soar, draped in a layer of silver, coupled with the bulging eyes and distorted faces of the slave corpses beneath them, appeared all the more fearsome and gory.
And before the altar, the female seer was still praying in a low voice, trying to capture even the slightest hint of a response.
However... in the end, there was still nothing.
The offering had failed again. Yet, there was not a hint of discouragement on the female seer's face. Instead, a trace of satisfaction emerged.
...
The nineteenth moon rose.
Over a dozen powerful monsters of all strange shapes and sizes - some avian, some bestial, some insectoid - were thrown beside the altar, their limbs - four, six, eight, all sorts - bound.
These monsters, without exception, were all notorious vicious beasts from the surrounding area. Originally, they had coexisted with the humans while keeping their distance. But at the female seer's request, the clan leaders took a group of Norsemen and forcibly captured these vicious beasts within a week to serve as offerings.
And these still-roaring monsters had yet to realize their predicament.
At the female seer's signal, several burly Norse warriors nodded, then directly raised the battle-axes in their hands and chopped off the monsters' heads one by one.
"Thunk!"
Foul blood flowed across the ground. The female seer prayed in a low voice. And still, there was no response...
The offering failed again.
...
The twenty-third moon rose.
"Ha!"
Holding his battle-axe in a defensive stance, the robust warrior lowered his body, vigilantly watching the large black bear before him, guarding against its sudden attack.
And opposite him, the starving black bear drooled, ready to pounce at any moment. It was just wary of the weapon in the warrior's hand, which was why they were in this standoff.
Surrounding the man and bear, a group of Norsemen formed a huge circle, excitedly anticipating the coming bloodshed.
Undoubtedly, this was a beast fight.
When the warrior and bear fought each other, the surrounding Norsemen would erupt in excited cheers every time. As for who would emerge victorious in the end, no one cared anymore.
And the female seer, in front of the altar, watched this life-and-death struggle to please those powerful existences, still trying to sense that mysterious call from the unknown.
...
The twenty-seventh moon rose.
The offerings had still not succeeded.
The anxious Norsemen finally decided to stop being overly cautious and go for something big...
The corpses of hundreds of slaves were piled up like a mountain, their severed heads offered upon the altar, forming a head tower that made one shudder at the sight. Those eyes filled with despair before death, those distorted faces, were as if cursing this world.
...
The thirty-eighth moon rose.
...
The forty-seventh moon rose.
...
Inside the house, the fire crackled quietly.
The female seer sat calmly beside the fire, while the clan leaders before her appeared quite anxious.
However, compared to the beginning, the state of these clan leaders was obviously not good. One had a broken arm, another was blind in one eye, another was missing a leg. To varying degrees, they all had disabilities. There was even one who had clearly just replaced the old leader.
Indeed, in these past few months, in order to find offerings, these clan leaders had led their clans to traverse all sorts of treacherous places nearby, all to find suitable offerings. They even unhesitatingly offered up their own eyes or arms for the sacrifice. However, what disappointed them was that the offerings had still not succeeded.
But they couldn't afford not to be anxious. After several months without the sun, the clans they each belonged to had begun to face a large-scale crisis.
Food, wild beasts, disease, insects, and... cold.
The snow had already begun to fall. And no one could say with certainty when this snowfall would stop.
Every day, more people fell ill, and every day, more people died. And in order to escape the crisis, the success of the offerings had become their last hope. Because of this, no matter how great the losses, they could only grit their teeth and endure.
However, they did not dare to openly question the female seer's authority. They could only indirectly express their urgency.
But unlike the clan leaders' anxiety, the female seer had a calm, almost confident, composure.
"I have seen it..."
The female seer said in a low voice to the clan leaders.
"What we need to sacrifice is not flesh and blood, nor war, and certainly not torture, but desire."
"The desire to live, the desire for pain, the desire for despair, the desire for anger, the desire to beg, the desire for madness, the desire for war, the desire for love, the desire for greed, the desire for rage, the desire for envy, the desire for pride... We have already made many sacrifices, and each sacrifice was actually successful. I have also felt that existence's acknowledgment of this. However, these were merely the prelude to a grand final offering. This time, we will sacrifice the last desire to complete the final ritual."
The clan leaders looked at each other, then one of them said to the female seer:
"What does the ritual require?"
The elderly female seer grinned, revealing a mouthful of incomplete yellowed teeth, and chuckled in a low voice.
"A pure, untouched maiden with bright eyes and white teeth."
...
The one hundred and third moon rose.
Although the sun had already been absent one hundred and three times, the moon had never slacked off. It always diligently hung in the sky, giving this world shrouded in darkness its final light.
It was still that altar. The only difference was that a pole had been erected in front of the blood-soaked altar that had drunk its fill. Tied to the pole with ropes was a beautiful young woman. Her hands and feet were tightly bound to the pole, unable to escape. And at the base of the pole, dry, withered firewood was piled up.
She wore a thin, lightweight white silk dress. A wreath of flowers adorned her head. The flimsy dress provided no warmth at all on this cold, dark night, making her body tremble nonstop. Her beautiful face was filled with dread of the unknown future.
The female seer saw all this but paid it no heed. At this moment, she only cared about one thing:
The offering.
The previous few times, although she had seemed to fail, in the process of trying to communicate with that existence, she had gradually sensed an incomparably powerful, incomparably vast will.
That mysterious, magnificent will, so powerful that it made the female seer tremble in fear - just a fleeting glimpse in a trance, unable to see its full scope, was enough to make the female seer realize just how grand the existence she was trying to communicate with was.
More magnificent than high mountains, more vast than the great sea, immeasurable and unfathomable.
It was precisely those elusive whispers that seemed to dance between dream and reality that made the female seer vaguely understand what kind of offering that existence desired.
"Humble mortals, hereby offering you the final sacrifice..."
The female seer closed her eyes, murmuring in an incomparably reverent and earnest tone, as if worshipping a divine being.
She spoke no more superfluous words, for after the many previous offerings, the female seer had already vaguely realized that this would be the final ritual.
Success or failure, it all came down to this.
"Devourer of all desires, tyrant of the endless abyss, ensnarer of worlds... Great Serpent - Jormungandr, we humble mortals offer you everything."
The female seer chanted the serpent's titles, her whispered words carried away by the wind, vanishing into the night.
...
The endless depths.
In the unfathomably deep abyss, all was pitch-black, nothing could be seen.
Amidst the deathly stillness of the darkness, the silence was spine-chilling, as if some unimaginably colossal behemoth lurked here, motionless, quietly slumbering.
Suddenly, a pair of serpentine eyes snapped open, their pupils emanating a bone-chilling coldness that made one shiver.