Edward's journey after leaving Greece was far from peaceful. His path next led him to the brutal, frostbitten expanses of the Slavic lands—harsh, untamed, and violent. The region he arrived in, Polesia, near the sprawling Pripet Marshes, was cloaked in mists and biting winds. Snow covered the earth like a burial shroud.

The cold was a living, breathing thing, and the humans who survived here had to claw their way through every day with grit and blood. Their lives were short, brutal, and driven by an unrelenting struggle for survival. Resources were scarce. Tribes warred constantly, not out of ambition, but out of desperation.

Edward observed them from the ridges and forests, unseen and unheard, cloaked in the quiet of ancient pine woods. What he saw reminded him of the worst periods of human despair: ragged villages built from broken wood, the smoke of dying fires rising into skies ruled by gods who neither protected nor cared.

Slavic gods, unlike the Olympians , were bound more directly to the land and elements. They weren't divine in the sense of elegance or order. They were forces of nature, both wondrous and terrifying.

Perun ruled them—a god of sky and thunder, his wrath descending as lightning to smite those who defied him. His counterpart, Veles, ruled water, underworld, and trickery. The two were locked in eternal war. Death had two faces here: Morena, the cold and silent goddess of winter's end, and Chernobog, the black god of misfortune, chaos, and despair.

Chernobog in particular seemed to revel in destruction. Svarog, the fire and forge god, was their craftsman deity, embodying strength and heat. Dazhbog brought the sun and was often worshipped as a light-bringer, while Stribog controlled the winds and stormfronts that howled through the mountains.

To Edward, they weren't divine at all. They were unchecked elemental powers, like wild storms wearing crowns.

From the marshes and forests, he watched as Perun's priests led blood sacrifices. Children, livestock, warriors, even innocents—all offered to appease Perun's temper.

Villages were punished with plague and flood when Veles grew resentful. Crops withered under Dazhbog's silence. Chernobog's faithful demanded coin and obedience, lest disaster befall an entire clan. There was no love between gods and mortals here, only fear.

He couldn't allow it to continue.

At first, he offered help quietly. Disguised in furs, he walked among villages during storms, guiding people to shelter. He healed the sick and taught farmers to preserve food through the winters.

He spoke to hunters about building traps, crafting tools, and storing clean water. And when monsters emerged—horrid, twisted creatures of folklore like Kikimora who strangled children in sleep or Leshy who led men into frozen woods, he hunted them.

Always at night. Always in silence.

But the gods noticed.

From there on , the stories varied.

In future Rus Legends there are different versions of their end. Some say they fought amongst each other and perished when their mortal followers became too low.

In other versions,A man stood up against them due to their cruelty and indifference. When the man started rousing the other mortals who started to detach from their faith, and they brought down their divine fury which caused a great catastrophe.

But the most popular version claimed, A man came down from the skies on a golden ship, and ended their reign when their cruelty reached its peak. He fought them in the heart of the winterlands which will become future Russia. He fought them all, raining down meteors of weapons, defeating them one by one.

Some myths are even more unbelievable than what actually transpired. The versions although incomplete, described a great battle between gods and a mortal.

***

The storm had no end. Winds howled through the pines, thick snow twisting through the air like ghosts of the dead.

Among this harsh considition, A being stood still, his bare shoulders slick with frost, eyes burning red in the white veil of the blizzard. The ground beneath him was already layered in frozen blood, beasts he had slain before, twisted forms born of nightmare and shadow.

Then came Chernobog.

He didn't arrive with thunder or war cries. The trees bent inward, black rot spreading through bark and earth as a figure emerged—a towering being draped in tattered shadow, his eyes voids of hate. The Slavic god of darkness and decay.

"You are not of this land," Chernobog hissed, his voice a low whisper, yet it echoed through the trees. "And yet you bring ruin to it."

The man merely scoffed, " You gods are plague that curses this land."

A screech broke the silence as Chernobog summoned his kin. Wolves with hollow eyes. Stags made of bone. Shadows shaped like men, crawling on all fours. They lunged—but Edward was faster. He moved like a storm himself, blades drawn, forged not in smithies but from raw molten iron cooled in his own fury.

Steel bit into flesh. Shadows vanished in bursts of dark mist. Chernobog advanced, his form twisting, splitting into smoke and claw. Edward met him mid-charge, cleaving through illusions until the god's true body emerged from the gloom.

They clashed, their battle tearing bark from trees and splitting ice underfoot. When Chernobog clawed at him, Edward caught the god's arm, twisted, and drove a jagged axe into his chest.

Chernobog howled—ink-black blood splashing across the snow. He staggered, gurgling curses, then crumbled. His essence seeped into the frost like tar.

Word spread like fire across the marshlands. The god of decay had fallen.

Then came Veles.

He rose from the rivers days later, near the Pripet. A colossus of bone and swirling water, with eyes like floodlights and jaws like a serpent. He didn't speak. He surged forth, a tide of elemental wrath.

The man did not wait. He leapt from the bank and drove both fists into the river god's face, forcing him upward and out of his element. Veles roared, coiling his massive body to crush his opponent, but he climbed him like a mountain, pulling the divine serpent down with brute force. With one foot pressed on his spine, the man snapped his back with a sound that echoed for miles.

Bone cracked. Veles collapsed into the mud.

Rod, god of creation, came after. He wielded no weapons but summoned storms of energy with every gesture. Mountains rumbled when he raised his hands, forests sprang from nowhere. Stribog came with him, the god of winds, fast as a whisper, striking from every direction at once.

The battle lasted hours. The man was forced to adapt, using the terrain, using his enemies' own divine power against them. He crushed Stribog by hurling a boulder with such force it shattered the wind god's corporeal form.

Then, turning to Rod, he caught him mid-incantation and drove a spear through his sternum, burying it deep into the earth below.

Rod's light dimmed. Creation wept in silence.

Yet not all gods faced him.

Morena, goddess of death and winter, watched from afar, standing atop a frozen cliff with snowflakes falling around her like soft petals. She said nothing, made no move.

Devana, the forest goddess, did not appear at all. Some said she vanished into the wild, leaving behind only silence. Whether it was fear or foresight, none could say. Perhaps they sensed the inevitable.

But the others did not yield.

As the mortals across the region began questioning their loyalty to temples—when they refused sacrifices, when they no longer bent the knee without reason—the gods began to panic. Temples were abandoned. Prayers ceased. Their divine strength began to wane.

In desperation, the three strongest—Perun, Svarog, and Dazhbog, did the unthinkable.

They fused together.

In a final act of godhood, they combined their domains of sky, fire, and sun into one being: Triglav. A three-headed titan of golden flame and celestial might. His arrival split the heavens.

From the clouds, he descended—his body glowing like a burning sun, each head roaring with ancient power. One spoke in thunder. One in fire. One in light.

"Destroyer of pantheons, " the central head bellowed. "You face the last of the gods. Face your judgement."

The man only responded, " Then this shall be your end.

Their battle began in silence but ended in chaos. For three days, the skies above the north glowed red. Villagers, hundreds of miles away, saw the heavens split open. Meteors rained down—weapons from Edward's arsenal summoned through the Gate. Axes, spears, chains, hammers. Tools of war. Divine and deadly.

Each strike shook the earth.

Blizzards were incinerated instantly. Entire glaciers shattered and melted, rivers boiled away. Triglav fought like no god had before, unleashing power in all directions. But the man endured. He matched fire with fury, light with silence, thunder with rage.

The clash at its peak was blinding.

Then at the end of the third day, a great flame erupted from the heart of the battlefield. As if a sun has risen from the depths of Earth. It consumed snow, ice, stone, and even the sky. For more than a hundred kilometers, nothing remained but scorched earth.

No gods.

No monsters.

Only silence.

When the villagers arrived, they walked slowly. Fear clung to their bones. But the land was warm. Fertile. Black soil steamed under their feet. They had never seen anything like it.

They settled cautiously. At first, with makeshift huts and hesitant campfires. Then came homes. Then roads. Then walls and forges. A city formed. A civilization rose.

They called it Moskva Ogon—the Land of Fire Rising from Ice.

Their gods were gone. But they still prayed.

Not to heavens.

But to a man.

A man who descended from the sky. Who fought alone. Who bled for them and destroyed what oppressed them.

They called him Edik.

Some claimed he never died. That he wandered among them, guiding chiefs and farmers, teaching warriors and builders from the shadows. Others swore he vanished, his duty fulfilled, and that his spirit watched over the land instead.

But all agreed on one thing. He had freed them. Given them a new future full of hope.

And so a new belief emerged, not of pantheons, but of peace. It was said the monsters who survived the divine collapse, creatures like Baba Yaga, Simargl, Kikimora, Leshy, and Vila—were driven off by a hidden force. A force that warned: live in harmony, or the monsters shall return.

That warning united tribes, clans, and feuding families. They stood together, building, surviving, thriving. Moskva Ogon became a beacon—of strength born from devastation.

And in time, a saying passed from mouth to mouth. Spoken by elders and written on the stones of their temples:

"Fire can burn winter, and from the ashes, hope emerged in the form of a red sun."

It was the legacy of Edik, the red sun, the fallen god-slayer.

The god who had chosen to be human.

They built longhouses and trading posts. Villages turned into towns. An unified nation slowly began to rise—founded not on divine obedience, but survival, and unity.

They stopped worshipping the old gods. Their temples were abandoned, their idols buried. Instead, they spoke of a man, Edik.

No one agreed on who he really was. Some said Edik was a demi god. Others claimed he was a warrior from beyond the stars. A few whispered that he still walked among them, in the face of every passing traveler or silent protector.

There were even tales of an old man who appeared when famine struck, teaching villagers how to grow food again, only to disappear the next day.

But all agreed on one thing: he saved them. And his guidance lived on in their laws, their unity, and their refusal to bow to gods who cared nothing for them.

The famous saying passed down through generations across the Slavic lands came to symbolize their new era:

"Fire can burn winter, and from the ashes, hope emerged in the form of a red sun."

That red sun, they said, was Edik's final gift, symbolizing not destruction, but rebirth.

And so Edik , silent, unseen, uncelebrated—became the myth that built the new Slavic world. Though he guided them from the shadows, the legacy he left endured for generations. A world where people no longer trembled under divine cruelty but looked toward each other, bound not by fear, but shared resolve.

And with his work complete, he vanished once more into the frostbitten horizon—leaving behind only warmth where there was once only ice.

His journey wasn't over, it was only begining.

****

There was a similar story whispered among the fierce seafarers of the North—among the tribes that would one day be called the Norse. But unlike the tales of the East or South, this legend bore the flavor of cold winds and harsh winters, of a people forged by hardship and battle. It spoke not of peace or quiet guidance, but of cataclysm, of defiance and fire.

They called him Játvarðr—the name etched into stone and song, the pronunciation varying across settlements and ages. It did not mean anything in their native tongue, but to them, it meant the end of gods.

According to the sagas, the story of Játvarðr was deeply entwined with the events of Ragnarök—the foretold end of the world, where gods would fall and the world would be remade. Yet in this version, there were no beasts swallowing the sun, no Fenrir or Jörmungandr rising to devour creation. The doom of Asgard came not by chaos, but by a man. A mortal. Alone.

And that broke the hearts of gods.

The sagas claimed the gods had broken the cosmic balance—interfering with the mortal world beyond what the natural laws allowed. They cursed themselves in arrogance, believing their dominion eternal. It was then that Játvarðr appeared, not as a conqueror, but as a reckoning.

One tale claimed that he first crossed paths with the Aesir when he slew Baldur—beloved, golden-haired Baldur—who had fallen into madness. Some said Baldur, once kind, had become corrupted by visions of mortality and pain, and in one act of divine cruelty, tried to force himself upon a young mortal woman. It was then that Játvarðr struck him down—using an arrow tipped in mistletoe, the only substance capable of harming the god.

There was outrage in Asgard. Odin, the Allfather, did not forgive the act. Though some whispered he knew his son had changed, that part of him accepted the judgment, he could not let a mortal rise above the divine.

So Odin summoned the Aesir.

From the golden halls of Valaskjálf, he rallied his sons and warriors—Thor, Tyr, Heimdall, even the Valkyries. The skies turned dark with thunder. And the hunt began.

But Játvarðr did not run.

According to the skalds, the battle raged for months. Storms shattered coasts, volcanoes burst across distant lands, and the seas consumed whole villages. Thunder cracked the sky as Mjölnir clashed with blades no Norseman had ever seen—red-hot and howling with a fury that didn't belong to this world. With every strike, Edward—Játvarðr—cut down gods and titans with grim resolve, not hatred.

Then came Loki.

The trickster, ever the opportunist, approached the mortal hero amidst the chaos. "You have done what I only dreamed of," he is said to have whispered, half in awe, half in deceit. "Let me stand beside you. Let me be free."

But Játvarðr only stared at him.

"I'd be a fool to trust the creature who betrayed his own," he said coldly, before striking him down with a blade to the heart. Not even Loki's shifting forms or illusions could save him. The trickster fell.

With Loki's death, the last threads holding Asgard together began to unravel.

Oceans rose. Earth cracked. Winds carried ash and ice together. Yet Játvarðr did not stop.

The climax of the myth came at the gates of Asgard itself, where Játvarðr stood before the rainbow bridge, drenched in blood and smoke, his body battered, yet unyielding.

Then, the sagas say, he summoned a weapon that none had seen before.

A sword—massive, glowing red and black like it was forged from fire and void itself. Its hilt was made of pure gold, cold and heavy in his hand. Runes glowed along its edge, and the moment it appeared, the gods knew what it meant.

This was not a weapon forged by mortal or divine hands. This was a final judgment.

With one swing, Játvarðr shattered the foundations of Asgard. The realms shook. Light vanished. Fire engulfed the sky. A single strike—one, and the realm of the gods was unmade.

It was said that the explosion of light consumed him as well, that his body turned to dust along with the divine. No mortal could ever verify it, but in the aftermath, the gods were gone.

The world was broken, yet alive.

In the years that followed, the North changed.

Some still clung to the old beliefs. They built statues of Odin and Thor from memory, whispering prayers to the sea and sky. But others—those who had seen the destruction, or heard the truth passed down—began to turn away.

They spoke instead of the man who defied the gods. Who sacrificed everything to free mankind from the tyranny of the divine. They no longer feared the end. They believed it had already come—and they had survived.

A new people rose in the ashes. They called their land Vonarland—the Land of Hope. It was not a kingdom, not at first. Just a scattered gathering of tribes and survivors who believed in one principle: that man should be free to shape his own fate.

In Vonarland, magic flourished—but not divine magic. The people spoke of runes—strange symbols Játvarðr was said to have carved into stone, weapons, and even skin. These runes, when drawn correctly, could channel power—not from gods, but from nature, from belief, from the soul.

They taught this rune-lore in hidden groves and longhouses, passing knowledge from teacher to student with quiet reverence. The practice was not widespread, not understood by all, but it gave rise to a new kind of wisdom—one rooted in discipline and sacrifice, not faith.

They built a grand temple in the center of their new capital—one not to a god, but to a man. The Temple of Játvarðr stood atop a cold hill, its stone walls etched with the story of Ragnarök as they remembered it. At the altar, there were no idols, only a sword carved from red obsidian, meant to represent the blade that ended the age of gods.

Each year, they gathered to tell his story—not with fear, but with pride. The quoted the great hero, " Gods have toyed with humans long enough. Watching over mankind is my burden to bare. I shall guide them to surpass the Divine."

Children grew up learning not only of his battles but of his beliefs. His teachings—passed down in fragments and riddles—emphasized strength with compassion, will without cruelty, sacrifice for the greater good. He had not sought power, only freedom. And in his name, they vowed never to worship again, only to remember.

Some believed he had died. Others whispered that he had not perished, but merely walked into the storm and vanished, as he always did. That perhaps, one day, when the world forgot again, he would return.

Whatever the truth, one thing was certain: Vonarland had become a land unlike any other. A land born not from divine right, but from defiance.

A land of mortals.

And Játvarðr, whether man or myth, had given them that chance.

Meanwhile, the man responsible for the great upheaval watched it from above with a hand on his face," What is wrong with them! They made an entire saga and made me a heroic sacrifice. Atleast they didn't start worshipping me as a god." He sighed and flew away with a streak of Golden light, vanishing into the horizon. Not knowing this new kingdom will become one of the strongest lands in future, Vinland.

****

I am going with the mythological route, what remained frrom the accounts of humans. Some is right, some is wrong, some has been altered to make a good story. After all, stories never remain the same with time.

What actually happened would be described later during separate events as a flashback. I didn't wish to drag on the long history. I plan to focus more on the the era after 1 AD. It's a very long timeline, and I don't want you guys to feel bored lol.

I was pretty tired and couldn't write in more detail , so I just skipped it mostly and left for future me to explain 💀