Chapter Text
The last year had been an adventure in itself, but Hiccup could never have guessed how his last day on Dragon’s Edge was going to end.
It had been a slow couple of days after the battle at Berserker Island. The Dragon Riders were resting, recovering, and slowly packing up their belongings. Now that their mission with the Dragon Eye had ended, Stoick had ordered their return back to Berk—permanently, much to Hiccup’s chagrin.
Their home away from home had momentarily quelled his personal wanderlust. While he loved Berk and even missed it sometimes, his heart was still in the sky. Their friendship with dragons had sent ripples far beyond the Barbaric Archipelago. The world was changing, and he needed to be out there in it. His father, of course, did not feel the same.
On their final day, the dreary calm that had settled over their camp was burst by the twins, who had just spotted the unmistakable sails of dragon hunters out on the open seas again. The boat was alone, and much smaller than the typical warships expected of the fleet. Hiccup and his friends were in the air before Ruff and Tuff could even finish their report.
It was the first time since destroying the Dragon Eyes that the riders had seen any action. The last stragglers of Krogan’s band—or whoever was in charge of the hunters nowadays—had yet to show their faces around the archipelago. The impending migration was weighing heavily on everyone’s minds, so Hiccup dared to think it might even be nice, a chance for them all to blow off some steam. Gods knew with all the chiefly duties Stoick was about to offload on him when he got home, he needed it.
Unfortunately, the gods rarely allowed Hiccup Haddock the luxury of relaxing.
Everyone was in good spirits when they took off from the Edge. It was a beautiful day for flying. The sky was clear, the moon peaking into the afternoon blue amidst only the lightest smattering of clouds. Any distant storm systems were blowing away from them, Fishlegs had assured him. Great weather for a quick strike mission.
It started with the wind. As their target began to appear over the horizon, Toothless’ wings were jolted by a sudden, strong gust. They lurched midair, and Hiccup gripped his saddle with all his might to not be ripped from his dragon’s back.
“Whoa, bud!” Hiccup yelled, “You okay?”
Toothless warbled, shaking his head as he regained control and righted them. Behind them, the others had been similarly tossed and were in various states of disarray. Meatlug had spun out into Stormfly, knocking Fishlegs into Astrid, and Hookfang wore Snotlout as a necklace. Unsurprisingly, Barf and Belch continued to barrel-roll at the behest of their cheering riders.
“Hooky!” Snotlout cried, indignantly. “Help me back up!”
“Rough patch of turbulence!” Fishlegs provided helpfully, hauling himself back onto Meatlug’s saddle. “Brace yourselves!”
“Uh, guys?” Astrid called from Stormfly. “Look at that!”
Hiccup craned his neck to see over Toothless’ wings, but there was no need to even question what Astrid was pointing out. A thick layer of white mist was curling out from the east, stretching far ahead of them beyond where Hiccup could see. The horizon all to his right had been engulfed entirely.
“Whoa, where’d the sea go?” Tuffnut asked, voice wobbling from dizziness.
Astrid was scratching her head. “Am I crazy, or was that cloud not there before?”
“What in Thor’s name…?” Hiccup muttered. They should’ve noticed sea fog of that density forming long before now.
Just ahead of them, the hunter ship was veering starboard fast, already half consumed by the low cloud. Hiccup weighed his options. Toothless was clearly struggling against the wind to stay northbound; but that strange mist was already starting to overtake them, curling around Toothless’ legs like it was pulling him in. Hiccup shook his head, unsettled.
“Pull up!” he called to the other riders, adjusting the position of Toothless’ tailfin.
“But we’re going to lose them!” Snotlout protested, still dangling from Hookfang’s horn.
“Hiccup.” Astrid flew up beside him, and he knew what she was going to suggest before she even said it. Her brow was set, eyes wide and glinting. She was itching for a fight. “I hate to agree with Snotlout, but if we ride this wind stream, we could easily overtake them.” She tilted her head toward the fog. “They wouldn’t see us coming.”
“Right, but…” Hiccup grit his teeth. Maybe he was disoriented from the wind thrumming in his ears, but the thrill of the strike was slowly being consumed by a growing sense of dread. Something about that mist was abnormal.
He quickly assessed the rest of the group. Everyone was struggling to maintain control of their dragons, but their faces were all similarly resolute. They wanted some action.
Grasping at a clump of his hair, he groaned, “Alright! But stay in tight formation, I don’t want to lose anyone in that fog.”
They dove at an angle. The air current swept under Toothless’ wings, beckoning them into the wall of white. Hiccup held fast to his saddle to keep his prosthetic from slipping out of its pedal.
The moment they were enveloped in the cloud, the temperature plummeted—as did the pit in Hiccup’s stomach. The wind rattled his eardrums, and he had to fight to keep his stinging eyes open. Even though they were wingtip to wingtip, his friends slowly began to fade into the mist. Astrid and Stormfly became nothing but a vague outline beside them in the white void.
It took a long few minutes of near-blind flying before the cloud started to dissipate closer to the sea surface. The wind slowed as it did, and the riders leveled out over the waves.
“I see them!” Ruffnut had her hands up to her eye in a mock spyglass. “They crashed into that glacier over yonder.”
“Wait—glacier?” Hiccup squinted into the fog where Ruffnut was facing. Sure enough, there was a faint outline of a ship, and a large mass of ice approaching quickly. Was that…Glacier Island? But that was miles east of where they were heading, how had they been blown so far off course?
“Uh…what if this is a trap?” Fishlegs wondered out loud.
From behind him, Snotlout barked out an overconfident laugh. “Of course not! It’s not like those stupid hunters can control the weather!” Then his smile dropped, and he added a small, “Can they?”
“Only one way to find out,” Astrid declared, and Stormfly pulled ahead. Hiccup swallowed the lump in his throat as Toothless chased after them.
The ship was careened directly into the ice sheet, her mast diagonal and sail in tatters. The crew appeared to be scrambling above deck, and as they flew in closer, Hiccup saw his job had been done for him. Sticking into the side of the hull were large spikes of ice, jutting out of the sea as if the water itself had decided to stab the vessel. A Zippleback eagerly climbed out of the resulting hole, followed by a timid Nadder.
“Well, isn’t that convenient.” Hiccup frowned, before arching his back to address his friends. “Snotlout, Fishlegs: attack the main deck. Ruff, Tuff: keep in the air, provide cover fire. Astrid and I will go below deck and free any remaining dragons, just shout if you need back up.”
“Save some for me, boys,” Astrid said, raising an axe to Fishlegs who responded in kind.
As his friends took their positions, Hiccup patted Toothless’ neck. “Take us down gently, bud.”
There were no bolas or arrows shot at them when they approached, and the ice spikes had torn open the hull wide enough for both Toothless and Stormfly to enter easily. They sailed right into a dark and empty cabin, somehow even colder than the arctic air outside. Astrid dismounted first, steadying herself on the slanted deck, before offering a sturdy arm to support Hiccup.
She was already shaking her head as he settled on the floorboards beside her. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Three empty dragon-proof cages were arrayed around the hold. Their doors were blown open, nearly wrenched out of their hinges. Their padlocks were twisted on the floor in front of them. Most bizarrely of all, however, were the haphazard streaks of frost scattered around the room: white gashes in wood and metal that almost glowed in the shadows.
“Would you look at that,” Hiccup said, trying to smooth the tremor in his voice. “Looks like the dragons freed themselves this time.”
A spray of Monstrous Nightmare fire hit the deck above, rocking the ship slightly and rattling unused shackles. In the firelight, Hiccup could see smaller cages pressed up against the back wall, similarly frozen and hanging ajar. He always wondered why the hunters carried them—too small for Terrible Terrors, and Fireworms could easily slither through the bars. Were they for birds?
Astrid gingerly placed a hand on one of the frosted walls. “You think a Snow Wraith did all this?”
“They should have just come out of hibernation, so that seems like the most likely option.” Hiccup scratched his chin. “Unless there’s another ice-spewing dragon we haven’t discovered yet.”
A latch opened on the ceiling and Fishlegs’ face appeared above them. “Hiccup! We’re all clear up here. They surrendered.”
“Ugh,” Astrid muttered, tossing her axe over her shoulder. “Boring…”
“And all the dragons have already been freed,” Hiccup told him. “This was way too easy.”
“Weird.” Fishlegs anxiously peered over his shoulder. “It’s also starting to snow? We probably shouldn’t take too long here unless we want to be caught up in one of Glacier Island’s famous blizzards.”
“Great,” Hiccup sighed.
With one last peak around the disheveled cabin, they joined Fishlegs in the growing snowfall on the sloped upper deck.
Hookfang and Meatlug were guarding the hunters, a measly five men all huddled against the lower railing—shivering, and Hiccup was willing to guess it was from more than just the cold. Each was pale-faced, their eyes wide and haunted as they gaped around the eerie mist. One of the men was on his knees, praying to Odin. The twins had perched Barf and Belch on the leaning mast and were jeering down at the sad display.
“Y’know, I always thought you hunters were pathetic,” Astrid said, “but this has gotta be an all time low.”
“What in Thor’s name happened to you guys?” Hiccup questioned, too bewildered to show any real malice. The hunters were a lot of things, but they were never so outright cowardly.
“There’s somethin’ in these mists!” exclaimed one, wildly gesturing to the air.
“This damn ship is haunted!” declared another. “None of us ‘ave slept a wink since we last left port!”
“It was tugging at our sails for miles,” said the one who Hiccup assumed was the captain. “It brought this storm with it, I’m sure of it!”
The praying man whimpered something about “punishment” and “sins” into the deck, receiving another cackle from Ruff and Tuff.
“Alright, they’ve gone mad,” Astrid said simply, swiveling around to Stormfly. “Let’s just get back to the Edge, let the storm take care of them.”
Hiccup was just about to press for more elaboration on what “it” was, when-- “Booyah!” Snotlout startled all of them by slamming open the captain’s quarters. He triumphantly brandished a small chest to his teammates. “These bozos didn’t even bother to hide their gold!”
“Dibs!” said both the twins.
“Nuh uh!” Snotlout tucked his treasure protectively under an armpit. “It’s finders-keepers! You can’t dibs finder-keepers!”
A shiver ran down Hiccup’s spine, and he noted that the wind had picked up again. “Alright gang, let’s pack it up,” he said, mounting his dragon. “Looks like we’re done here.”
“I don’t know what devils you dragon riders are in dealings with—” The captain stepped forward on shaky legs, tossing an accusatory finger at Hiccup. “—but this archipelago was better off without you lot!”
“You can tell your boss the feeling is mutual,” Astrid said haughtily. She climbed onto Stormfly so she was towering over them. “Y’know, if you can get your ship out of this ice.”
Hiccup went to add a snarky, “Yeah, good luck with that—” but he was cut off by an agonized shout. Muffled by the wind, but clear enough to be nearby. Hiccup’s head whipped around as dread pooled in his gut again. ”Did you hear that?”
Astrid raised an eyebrow. “Hear what?”
“That sounded like a person.” Hiccup prompted Toothless to the upper ledge of the deck, scanning the horizon amidst the glaciers.
It was faint, but there was undoubtedly a lone figure standing out on the ice in front of the ship, almost entirely engulfed in the oncoming blizzard.
“One of yours?” he called back to the hunters.
Their confused faces were the only response he got.
“Take us down, Toothless.” As Toothless readied his wings, he waved off his friends. “Start heading home, I’ll catch up with you!”
“Wait!” Astrid called. “Where are you going?”
“Making sure someone isn’t caught in this blizzard.”
He barely heard her say, “But Hiccup, I don’t see anyone—” before they were off.
Squalls were not ideal for dragon flight, so Toothless glided down to the ice sheet a bit clumsily, settling into the snow to let Hiccup dismount again. As they approached, the dragon dutifully lifted a wing to cover him from the worst of the wind’s bite.
“Hey!” Hiccup shouted. “Are you okay? It’s not safe out here!” He could practically hear his own voice being swallowed up by the snow.
The figure remained still. Hiccup trudged close enough to see a hooded cloak whipping around their shoulders and a staff placed in the snow by their side. Covering his exposed face with his sleeve, Hiccup stepped out from underneath Toothless’ wing and motioned for the dragon to stay behind him.
“Hello?” he tried again. Only the storm howled back. “You really should get out of—!“
As he reached out to grasp their shoulder, three things happened in sequence. The stranger stiffened and whipped around, knocking Hiccup off balance. His prosthetic scraped against the ice and sent him sprawling onto his back with a grunt.
And then the wind stopped.
The thrumming in his ears quieted, the piercing cold eased, and the fluffy flakes slowed to a lazy tumble, as if they hadn’t been tearing away at Hiccup’s skin just a moment before. The Viking froze, staring up at the gentle snowfall, briefly wondering if he had hit his head on the ice. Toothless’ growl snapped him out of it, and he sat up in a daze.
Before him was what appeared to be a young man, pale as a corpse and dressed in thin, tattered clothes. His hood had blown off to unveil a head of pure white hair and two unnaturally blue eyes framed by dark shadows. Mouth split in a snarl, he looked about as shocked as Hiccup felt, recoiling and clutching a wooden shepherd crook to his chest. It took only a beat for Hiccup to realize the man was wearing no shoes, nor was he touching the ground.
He floated down as though he was light as a feather, his bare feet settling in the twirling snow beneath him. The ridges in his staff were lit up an otherworldly blue and were crackling with energy.
“I, uh—” Hiccup sputtered. He grasped behind him to find Toothless’ muzzle, eyes fixed on the figure. “A-are you the one doing this—?”
His shaking voice was cut off by the rush of the wind returning. The specter surged backwards as if something had yanked his torso from behind, vanishing into the mist in a swirl of fabric.
White flooded his vision again, and Hiccup latched onto Toothless. What he could only imagine was the force of the entire snowstorm barreled past them. For several grueling seconds, they struggled to remain rooted in the snow, pelted by freezing wind. It reminded him of the breath of the King of Dragons that froze Johann, and he briefly thought, I’m going to die here.
Then, as if nothing had happened, the air around him was clear. Gentle flurries still drifted from the sky, but Hiccup watched the dense storm clouds blow past the glaciers and start to spiral off into the distance. The piercing gale subsided, and just like that, he and Toothless were left out on the ice alone.
Hiccup blew out all the air he’d been holding in his lungs and crumpled into Toothless’ side, barely registering the heaps of snow that tumbled off the dragon’s unfurling wings. At the sight of his friend’s slit pupils and bared teeth, Hiccup could only manage a weak, “Y-you saw that too, right?”
He took the smoke that puffed out of Toothless’ snout as an affirmation.
“Hiccup, I’m telling you, there was no one there,” Astrid kept saying.
The whole way back to the Edge, Hiccup tried and failed to shake the feeling that he was being watched. He kept an attentive eye behind them for more hunter ships or stray storm clouds. His friends had blown off the strange weather phenomena far faster than he could manage—he was still trying to get feeling back in his limbs. No matter what anyone else said, there had been something in that storm, and he did not want it following them home.
“The ship was attacked before we got there,” he tried to tell them. “You all saw how shaken those hunters were.”
“You said it yourself, those cages were probably opened by a Snow Wraith,” Astrid argued. “Maybe they trapped one, but it was more than they could handle.”
“They are highly intelligent!” Fishlegs added, helpfully.
“But the guy was right in front of me!” Hiccup practically yelled. “I touched him! Toothless saw the whole thing!”
The Night Fury cooed at the sound of his name.
“And then he turned into a snowflake and blew away,” Tuffnut finished for him. “I’m following you, H.”
“It sounds like you had some kind of religious encounter,” Ruffnut said. “Any deities you been praying to recently? I know our patron Loki is said to be half frost giant!”
“I still can’t get over how hard you biffed it out on the ice,” Snotlout decided to give his input. “I mean, you completely flattened. The god probably left ‘cause he was so embarrassed for you.”
Hiccup flew ahead out of earshot the rest of the flight.
It was late into the evening when they arrived back at their camp. The twins went to pester Snotlout into sharing the loot he found on the ship, while Fishlegs headed to whip up a quick dinner. He caught Hiccup on the way and promised to look in Oswald’s notes before bed for any new information on Snow Wraiths. “I’m sure that’s all it was,” he assured Hiccup, as if that was supposed to make him feel better.
Hiccup was about to duck off to his hut for the night when Astrid and Stormfly markedly landed between him and his front entryway.
“Everyone else wants to head out right at dawn tomorrow,” she said nonchalantly, hopping off her Nadder.
“Sounds good,” he said, keeping his voice level. “See you in the morning.”
“Do you wanna talk about the guy in the blizzard?” she asked, and to her credit, she at least attempted to sound genuine. “I can tell it’s really bothering you.”
He half-considered flying off on Toothless again but figured that would be a little dramatic. “I don’t know what I saw and you don’t believe me, so what’s the point?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you.” She bit her thumb, clearly struggling to find the right words to say. “I just think…a lot has happened this past year, and you’ve been under a lot of stress, so…”
“You think I’m going crazy,” he finished for her.
“I saw you out on that ice. There was no one else there but Toothless. The snowstorm was weird, absolutely. But a ghost?” She sighed as he dragged a hand across his face. “Look, just—when we get back to Berk, maybe you could take some time off? You’ve been so wound up since Berserker Island. Even before that, you were stretching yourself pretty thin.”
He tried to ignore the obvious concern lacing her voice and let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, we’ll see what my dad has to say about that.”
Her brow shot up, unimpressed. “We both know you have a knack for not doing what you’re told. At least think about it?”
“Fine,” he relented, holding up his hands in surrender. “Now would you mind letting me into my hut? I need to finish packing.”
She punched his arm affectionately. “‘Night, dumbass.”
“Goodnight, Astrid.”
Needless to say, Hiccup had a hard time falling asleep that night.
After an hour or so of replaying the snowstorm from the afternoon in his mind—as well as questioning his own sanity—he rolled over to see Toothless glaring at him. Hiccup’s restlessness had undoubtedly been keeping the grumpy dragon awake. Neither of them were going to get any sleep at this rate.
Luckily, the Night Fury never minded a late night ride. They took a lap around the island, soaking in the crisp air and moonlight, before settling out by the treeline behind the base. “Maybe we can camp out under the stars tonight, bud,” Hiccup said. “Just like our first night on the Edge.”
Toothless had all but curled around him to nestle in the grass when something caught the dragon’s eye. Hiccup felt his scaly pillow tense underneath him before retracting, dropping his head onto the ground with a thud. “Ack, Toothless!” he groaned. “What are you doing?”
The Night Fury was staring out into the woods, a low growl rumbling in his throat. Hiccup squinted blearily into the night air, almost missing it on his first pass over their surroundings.
Perched in a tree by the edge of the clearing was a figure with spiked white hair, peering down at them with a birdlike tilt to his head. Snowflakes were trickling to the ground beneath him.
Hiccup shot to his foot.
“He really can see me,” the spirit said, eyes wide and glinting in the moonlight.
“It was you,” Hiccup breathed. His hand instinctively reached for Inferno, but he had left it in his hut. “I-in the blizzard. I didn’t imagine it.”
“Uh…hey again.” The specter’s voice was filled with mirth, a lopsided grin spreading across his face. He hooked the end of his staff on a branch and swung himself deftly to the ground. “Man, it sure is hard to sneak up on a dragon.”
Landing a few meters in front of them, the grass beneath his bare feet was instantly coated in a light dusting of frost. Toothless resumed his growling as a chill wafted through the air. Unbothered, the spirit crouched against his staff and pressed a pale cheek to the wood.
“Why are you following us?” Hiccup forced his voice to stay steady even though every fiber of his being screamed danger. He flashed a quick hand signal to his dragon, and the Night Fury flared out his wings, rumbling.
“How could I not?” The spirit gestured to them separately, ignoring their defensive stances. “I mean, a human riding a dragon? I never thought I’d see the day.”
Not fond of the way the spirit seemed to be sizing them up or how his eye caught on the Viking’s prosthetic, Hiccup took a careful step back. “What are you?” he asked.
The spirit leaned forward out of the forest shadows, and the moonlight darkened the ghoulish rings around his eyes. “Y’know, there’s been some strange things happening around these seas recently. Why do I get the feeling you might have something to do with it?”
A dozen more questions flooded Hiccup’s brain, but none of them reached his lips.
As the young apprentice of a superstitious old blacksmith, Hiccup was raised on all manner of folkstories. Trolls. Kraken. Nisse. Little Hiccup had listened with rapt attention. Gobber was often ridiculed by the other Berkians for believing in fairytales, and no one understood what that was like more than the fish-boned Viking. Gone were the days of asking his father to check for mares under his bed, but every now and then, he would still find something unexplainable and think of Gobber.
The being in front of him could have been right out of those stories—close to human, if not for the ghostly complexion and ice-blue eyes. His mind drifted to elves or other vaettir, but there was something about the ice and snow that specifically unsettled him. Winters were wild and dangerous on the archipelago, so what does that say about the wraiths that bring them?
He took another careful step back.
As the unnerving silence continued and his question remained unanswered, the specter’s smirk fell. “Hold still for a second,” he said, holding up a hand and rising to his feet.
The ridges in the wood of his branch had begun to glow that same bright blue, snowflakes spiraling rapidly around its curved end. Images flashed in Hiccup’s mind of the spikes of ice stabbing into the hull of the hunter ship and the storm that had blown past in seconds burying him and Toothless in snow.
Then that icy, magical staff was moving toward Toothless. Panic surged through his spine, and his instincts kicked in.
“Toothless, now!”
A spray of ice whizzed by Hiccup’s head, striking somewhere behind him, right as Toothless’ plasma blast connected with the staff.
The spirit was thrown back, gasping and somehow still clutching onto the branch. The blow did not seem to affect his weapon, but as the smoke cleared, Hiccup could see a pitch black scar now wrapped around the center of its shaft.
As he examined the singed, broken wood in front of him, the spirit’s hands started to tremble. With surprising fragility, the branch snapped in half. A few small shreds of charred bark crumbled to the snow by the spirit’s feet. His wide eyes met Hiccup’s before glossing over.
Toothless recoiled from his blast as the spirit collapsed to the ground, and for a moment, Hiccup and his dragon just stared at the heap.
Then the Night Fury cautiously padded over and sniffed at the spirit’s white tufts. There was no movement. He was out cold.
Gulping, Hiccup spun around to assess the damage from the ice spray, and—
“What the Hel?” he shrieked. Inches from his face was the hoof of a now frozen, black horse made entirely of shadows. It had no eyes, and its mane flared into unnatural spirals as if it were made of smoke. Covered in jagged shards of ice, its statue had been erected reared up on its hind legs in the middle of the clearing.
Hiccup’s breath caught in his throat. It had to have been mere seconds away from stomping him into the ground.
His eyes trailed back to the figure lying completely still in the grass. There were faint wisps of blue trickling out of the broken ends of the staff. The frost around the spirit was melting. He was a man about Hiccup’s own age, and yet laying there in the grass, he seemed ancient. The Viking’s hands went numb.
What had he just done?