When Olaf arrived at the borders of the valley with a thousand men, Bilal felt the familiar, icy grip of panic closing around his throat.
"I am an engineering student," Bilal thought frantically, looking at the army of killers from the top of his newly built stone wall. "I am not a General. If they breach the gate, my daughters die. My orphans die."
Olaf demanded surrender. Bilal looked down at the King and called him a "Donkey Soul" to his face.
Then, Bilal unleashed hell. He didn't use swords; he used biology. He left wagons of sweet cream laced with deadly, concentrated Alder Buckthorn outside the walls.
When Olaf's men ate it, their camp dissolved into a nightmare of sickness and dysentery.
In the dead of night, Bilal and Runa led the raid. They threw pots of Greek Fire. They released forty starving war dogs.
The screams of Olaf's men haunted the woods. Bilal physically lifted the King by his throat, threw him into the frozen mud, and broke his spirit without ever taking his life.
When the sun rose, the enemy was gone. The valley was safe.
Bilal walked back into his private chambers. The adrenaline was leaving his body, replaced by a profound, shaking exhaustion. He was covered in soot, mud, and the blood of other men.
Astrid was standing by the hearth. She saw his hands shaking. She didn't see a terrifying Warlord; she saw a man carrying the weight of the sky.
Bilal dropped to his knees in front of the fire. His mind drifted back to 2026. He remembered the clean hospitals, the safe streets, the quiet libraries.
"It was a fantasy church," he whispered to himself. "My old timeline was paradise. And I am stuck in the dark, forced to be a butcher just to keep my family breathing."
Astrid knelt beside him. She took a warm, wet cloth and began to gently wipe the blood from his dark skin. She didn't speak. She just cleaned him.
Bilal looked up into her striking blue eyes. The guilt of the violence he had just orchestrated was crushing his chest.
He needed her to understand that he wasn't doing this for glory or greed. He reached up, his massive, bruised hand gently touching her cheek.
"Astrid," he whispered, his voice cracking with exhaustion and sorrow. "No matter what we breed... we still are made of greed. This is my kingdom come."
She stopped wiping his armor, her eyes locked onto his, mesmerized by the strange, poetic rhythm of his English translated into Norse.
"When you feel my heat," Bilal continued, leaning his forehead against hers, his voice dropping to a desperate, protective whisper. "Look into my eyes. It's where my demons hide. It's where my demons hide."
Astrid's breath hitched. She understood the metaphor perfectly.
He was telling her that he had to harbor a monster inside his own soul just to keep the monsters of the world outside their walls.
She dropped the bloody cloth. She wrapped her arms around his thick neck, pulling his head against her chest, holding him as tightly as she could.
"Let them hide here, my Giant," she whispered fiercely into the dark curls of his hair. "I will love the demons, too, so long as they keep you alive."
Outside the stone walls, the Viking Age raged on. But inside the room, the Giant finally closed his eyes and slept.