An echo of the future is sealed away.
Yet the path remains the same.

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-What Will Never Be-

The Fatebreaker is no more.

The space that, for a month, had thrummed with an elusive presence regains its inertia. The breath of the Rift fades with a long hiss, as if the world were releasing a final sigh. Nothing remains of him, not even a shadow in Time’s memory. Only an absence lingers. Not a void, but the brutal correction of an anomaly that was never meant to exist.

The dragonblood stands. Motionless. Silent. Patient.

She has watched over a phenomenon she never quite understood. A month spent reading the Rift’s oscillations. A month watching her friend suspended between two worlds. Neither truly here, nor completely gone. At times, she believed. At others, she didn’t. Hope mingled with grief, doubt, and weariness, until she no longer knew whether she was waiting for a return… or a final disappearance.

But now, she takes form. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, then more clearly, as if the world itself had decided she must exist.

Yet she is no longer who she was.

Gone is the young girl with chestnut hair and amber eyes.

Her hair is snow now -not just white, but unnaturally luminous, too perfect, as if it reflected something beyond this world. Her eyes are a vibrant blue, impossibly deep. Not just a color, but a depth filled with reflections that shouldn't be.

The ground beneath her is steady now; reality no longer shatters around her. The Rift is sealed. And yet, the air around her warps and twists, subtly, uncertainly, as though space itself hesitates to perceive her. As though Nirn knows she’s here, but hasn’t yet decided where -or when- she belongs.

The Dragon, who never left his silent vigil, recoils. Not in fear, but with ancient, visceral alertness. His golden gaze fixes on her. His soul senses what she is, or rather, what she is not. What radiates from her lies beyond Akatosh’s Time.

She raises her eyes to him. And says, simply:

"Stay."

The air shudders under the weight of the Voice. The Dragon stops. He does not turn away. He does not resist. As if he had never moved at all. As if he had never doubted.

He yields.

Markab feels the ancient instinct stir in her blood. A warning. Not a threat, not danger, but something ungraspable. Something... wrong. Her gaze locks onto her friend, wanting, needing to be sure it's truly her.

"Ruby?"

She speaks to the girl she once knew. The little brunette who survived Time, the World-Eater, and wars. The one who carved out a life far from an erased past.

Ruby finally looks at her. But her eyes carry no recognition. Only consciousness. Vast. Detached. Eternal.

"I was never meant to be Ruby."

Her voice is calm. Absolute.

"But Ruby had to exist, so I could return."

Markab says nothing. Not because she doesn't understand, but because understanding slips through her. The truth she glimpses defies reason.

"Then who are you?"

Ruby -or what she has become- no longer looks at her. Her gaze doesn’t settle on anything. It spans everything. As if she sees beyond the visible. Beyond Time. Beyond Nirn.

"I was born Eldviora."

A shiver runs through the air. The name is ancient. Too ancient. From a time long buried, forgotten by all but the oldest myths.

"And Time tore me from my story."

Further back, lit by the recognition of truth long foretold, two Shamans stand motionless. Silent witnesses to the end of the Fatebreaker, and the closing of the Rift.

For a month, they watched. Felt the tremors of a world straining to accommodate something it could not yet understand. They said nothing. They did nothing. They waited. They read the signs.

And now, She is here.

What stands before them is no longer Ruby. Her shadow-dark hair turned snow-white. Her eyes, an impossible blue, glowing with the light of a sky untouched by Time. She emerged from the Rift, but bears no trace of it. The Tear behind her is sealed, anomalies erased, time and space corrected.

Yet something remains. A tension in the air. A shiver beneath perception. Even the unknowing can feel it.

The Shamans do not doubt. They recognize her. The entity. The purpose their ancestors sought in the Rift. The one who caused the Tear. The one who was always meant to return.

The White Fire.

Without hesitation, one Shaman removes his cloak, a heavy mantle embroidered with ancient symbols, woven with the marks of the first clans who returned to Atmora. A relic passed from generation to generation. He steps forward without fear, and lays the cloak across Eldviora’s shoulders, as one might veil a sacred relic returned from another age.

The other bows. Not like a warrior, or a king, or a scholar. But like something older. A silent surrender. A complete acceptance of what she is, and what she represents.

But she does not look at them. She does not flinch, nor reject the gesture. Yet her gaze remains... elsewhere. She sees none of these kneeling men. She does not see their hopes, their reverence, their fear.

She sees beyond. Everywhere and nowhere at once.

"White Fire... guide us," one of them whispers.

She says nothing.

A few steps away, Markab watches in silence, unable to name what she feels. Her instincts scream that she knows this woman -that she must know. But everything she sees slips through her fingers. For the first time in her long life, Markab is lost.

No answers come.

The Dragon does not move. He knows. What he sees no longer belongs to the logic of Akatosh’s Time. A Dovah submits only to his own blood. And she made him yield with a Word.

The Shamans wait. For a word. A sign. A truth.

But Ruby -or Eldviora- says nothing. She gives them nothing. Only silence.

A silence suspended in the instant. As though Time itself hesitated on the next page of the tale.

History hesitates.

~*~

What will never be.

Yn watches. We does not intervene -not yet. We observes, letting the story breathe a moment longer, as if Time itself might hesitate, as if Nirn could afford one last heartbeat before being frozen in conclusion. Eldviora is there. She says nothing. She doesn't need to. Her gaze falls everywhere and nowhere, drifting through the ages without anchoring to any of them. She is a current that never ceases. And that is precisely what disturbs Yn.

She no longer has a trajectory. She is no longer a line. No longer a path we can follow, nudge, or reshape.

She has become a crossing. A confluence of all possibilities. The sum of what she might have been, converged into too many forms at once.

She is no longer Ruby. No longer a person. She is an anomaly that refuses to choose a single destiny.

What will never be.

This outcome is not a mistake. It is the natural continuation of a story left to its own devices.

But it does not fit.

Not for Yn. Not for the narrative Nirn must tell.

A being like Eldviora cannot be guided. She does not alter events by doing… she alters them merely by being.

So Yn rewrites. We does not destroy.

To erase a being like her would be too reckless. Too brutal. Too unpredictable. Erasure leaves a void. And voids beg to be filled. A hole in History never disappears completely. It lingers. It echoes. A scar. A whisper passed through generations.

No. Yn does not erase. Yn seals.

A lock in the mind. A cage within memory. Eldviora will not vanish. But she will forget. She will forget all she might have been. She will be Ruby. And nothing more.

We closes the story around her -slowly, deliberately- like stitching shut a torn thread. She will not remember.

The one she will not be.

The weight of this decision lingers, but Yn does not waver. Yn has never doubted.

The Story resumes. The thread returns to something viable. And the world moves on, unaware that a version of itself has just been sealed away in oblivion.

And Yn rewrites.

~*~

-What she will be-

Beneath her leather soles, Ruby felt the lingering warmth still smoldering in the charred wood. The snow and cold had not entirely extinguished the blaze that had devoured Helgen. Acrid, irritating ash clung to the drifting flakes. The scent in the air was sickening. It wasn’t just burnt wood.

Panic and survival had blurred parts of her memory. But as her feet retraced the path of their frantic escape, the images returned, brutal and raw.

The crash of stone. The screams. The roar of the dragon, vast and abyssal. The torn ground beneath her hands and knees. The searing heat. The fire.

The gaping breach in the keep’s wall stood as witness to the chaos. The collapsed roof of the inn. The gutted tower. And in the square -the chopping block where she had nearly died.

Ruby’s heart skipped a beat. The Stormcloak soldier who’d been beheaded just before her… gone. Taken by fire, or recovered by comrades. She’d never know. Everything seemed oddly clean. As if Helgen, in its dying breath, had tried to erase the memory of what happened here. But she remembered.

A sharp crack snapped her out of the haze. Footsteps. Crunching through snow and debris. She froze. Breath held.

Her bow was in her hand before thought could catch up. Arrow nocked. Five left. If it came to that, each shot would have to matter.

A silhouette appeared in the breach ahead, backlit by the pale sky. Tall. Imposing. Leather-clad. The figure stepped forward, hands raised in peace. When the fur-lined hood fell, Ruby saw a Nordic face framed by dark red hair and pale, piercing eyes. A woman.

“I’m not a threat to you,” she said, calm as snow.

Ruby frowned. That voice… She’d heard it before. Where? A whisper? A scream? It rushed back all at once: orders shouted in chaos, desperate calls, curses, warnings. A voice carrying both hope and fear.

“You… you were there. With the dragon!” she blurted, stunned.

The Nord didn’t answer right away. She simply looked at her, measuring, not threatening.
 Ruby lowered her bow. Cautious still, but less afraid.

“You were with Ralof,” the woman said.

It wasn’t a question. Ruby nodded. “Yes. He helped me escape.”

A flicker crossed the Nord’s eyes. Concern. “Where is he?”

She stepped closer, tension in her body like a coiled spring. Ruby felt a pang. Who cared like that? For her? If she had died here, no one would have looked back. No one would have searched the ruins.

“Riverwood. At his sister’s.” A pause. Then, quieter, “He’s alive.”

The Nord exhaled, relief softening her face. “He’s alive,” she echoed. Like a prayer.

“I came back looking for survivors,” she said. “Many are still missing.”

Ruby nodded. She understood. But that wasn’t why she had returned.

“Why are you here?” the Nord asked.

Ruby hesitated. Even she wasn’t sure. Was it guilt? Need for answers? A way to face death on her own terms?

“I wanted to answer Ralof’s call. To join the Stormcloaks.”

The Nord’s expression darkened slightly.

“Helgen’s not safe anymore. Between the dragon and the bandits that’ll come... it’s not the best road to Windhelm.”

Ruby didn’t argue. She lowered her gaze.

“I needed to understand. Why I’m still alive.”

A silence. Then, a nod. The kind you only get from someone who’s lived through more than they’ll ever say.

The woman placed a fist over her heart.

“Markab Steel-Blood.”

Ruby let the name settle. It fit.

“Ruby,” she answered softly.

Markab kept studying her. As if trying to see not who she was but who she might become. “I can help you,” she said.

Ruby raised an eyebrow.

“Not with the Stormcloaks. Not yet. You need shelter before you take up arms. Riften. A friend of mine can help.”

Ruby blinked. Help? A job? A roof? Markab didn’t sound indulgent. Not like someone tossing coins to a beggar to quiet their guilt. But practical. Straightforward. A deal made with respect.

She reached into the collar of her cloak and drew out a heavy gold necklace, adorned with stones. “Take this. Show it to him.”

Ruby hesitated. It looked valuable. Far too much. “Why give this to me?”

Markab smiled, half amusement, half certainty.

“Because you helped us. Ralof and me. And because I have a feeling we’ll meet again.”

Ruby reached for it. Markab didn’t let go right away.

Their eyes met.

And in that instant, Ruby saw something vast behind those pale eyes. Not darkness. Not threat. Just depth. Time. As if this woman had lived too long, and was still watching her first sunrise. A chill crept through her.

At last, Markab let go.

“And show him this, too,” she added, slipping a dagger from her bracer.

Ruby took it. No questions this time. Only quiet understanding.

“His name is Brynjolf.”

The wind rose. Snow and ash danced in the ruins of Helgen. Ruby pulled up her hood.

And then, without a word, she turned and walked away, leaving Markab alone, among the ghosts.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Notes
I will tell you one thing: I did NOT make a grammar error with Yn. It will take many chapters to make you understand :)