Chapter 01 – Anomalies in Skyrim

Ruby begins her journey. Markab digs into ancient tombs.
The Legion buries the failure of Helgen, while the Dominion, drawn by the return of a dragon, seeks to twist it to its own ends.
Skyrim stirs~ for something ancient is awakening.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

~*~

The path was nothing but a pale, broken thread, vanishing into the snow. In places, it had been pressed down, marked by hooves, but for hours now, Ruby had seen neither beast nor man. Only the sky, glass-clear. The ridges, sharp as blades, tearing through it. And that silence… not peaceful, but deafening. Despite the wind lashing the mountains with merciless force.

She adjusted her hood, tightening it against her face. The cold didn’t bother her. Not anymore. Cold had become a companion; numb, patient, and ever-present. It clawed at the throat, froze the bones, but it no longer bit. Not after years on the road.

What weighed on her was something else. A silence too pure. Too undisturbed. As if the flames of Helgen had paralyzed Skyrim itself. As if the world were holding its breath. Not in peace, but in fear. In waiting. In dread.

The path deepened into a narrow mountain pass. The wind’s howl became sharper, more insistent. And then, beneath the cry of the mountain, a different sound.

A low, grinding rumble. Stone scraping stone. A tremor in the air.

Ruby stopped, heart hammering. Strained her ears. It didn’t belong to this world. It hadn’t been here before.

The dragon, she thought. The one from Helgen. A shiver passed through her. Not fear. Something older. Something unnamed.

The sound drifted for minutes across the peaks. Ruby closed her eyes, listening. A call Skyrim hadn’t heard in centuries. Not just sound. Memory. A cry that belonged to legend. Something lost. Something that had been waiting.

Eventually, the dragon's voice faded northward.

But beneath the still surface of Skyrim, something shifted. Slow. Deep. Heavy.

A stirring.

~*~

Of the barrow, only the outer ring of stone remained. The earth had been torn open, leaving behind a deep, misshapen crater. But it wasn’t just the ground. The air itself had been shredded, clawed by something invisible. Space, void, and matter bled from a wound too violent, too alien for this world.

Markab stood still, her blood burning. Ancient warmth stirred in her veins. Not fear. Not even surprise. Something older. Anticipation. Like the breath before a hunt. Before a battle. And beneath it all: a cold, slow-burning fury.

This wasn’t natural.

The barrows had held for centuries. For millennia. Dragons entombed beneath stone and Shout, their bones sealed, their souls held elsewhere. A double prison.

Body stripped of mind.
Mind severed from flesh.

And that had been enough. Until now.

The Rorikstead barrow lay open like a raw wound. Not shattered. Collapsed. As if what had been buried hadn’t escaped, but had been dragged out. The dragon had reclaimed its body. Its Voice.

Whole again.
Free.

No mere spell could unbind a dragon from a tomb like this. It took something else. Something cataclysmic. A force whose name had been erased from all records. A memory from a time when Words could shatter mountains.

Something… older than even her.

Markab felt it rise in her; not memory, but imprint. A shadow pressed into the soul. A Shout, long ago. On a peak too high for the living. Flames devouring the sky. The screams of men in tongues lost to history.

The Dragon War.

She cut the thread. Sharply. She wouldn’t follow that thought. Not here. Not alone.

Behind her, Perle pawed the damp ground, nervous, unsettled. The mare sensed it too: the way the air frayed at the edges. Markab rose. Brushed the soil from her gloves. She cast one last glance into the crater.

Silence had returned. But the place still echoed. Not like a call.

Like a warning.

~*~

Far to the north, in Haafingar, the towers of Solitude were soaked in rain. The pointed rooftops sagged beneath a mist-colored sky, grey and low. The sea below frothed with restless gusts, churning against the docks like a bad omen whispered in the wind.

At the gates, the guards said nothing. They watched the last detachment from Falkreath Hold return.

Only a handful remained. Exhausted. Faces hollowed by sleepless nights. Armor dented, cloaks soaked with soot and ash. Men touched by lightning, left behind in the cinders of a world that had already moved on.

Hadvar walked at the front. His boots struck the paving stones with mechanical rhythm. In his hand, still clenched, was a rolled parchment, soaked through, the ink bleeding at the edges. He had kept it the entire way. Whether out of duty or something else, he hadn’t let go.

The list of prisoners. A list made worthless by fire. But not by memory. One name had been added at the last minute. Hastily, almost scribbled. He hadn’t dared read it again.

The column passed through the streets in silence. A few civilians looked on, murmuring, sometimes recognizing a face. More often, recognizing none.

No fanfare. No welcome. Only rain.

Legate Rikke waited in the courtyard of the garrison, cloak pulled tight, arms crossed. Hadvar barely raised his chin at the sight of her.

“Follow me.”

She led him into the headquarters. A low room. Dim. Thick with the scent of damp stone and burnt oil.

Other officers were already gathered. No one spoke. Only a few candles flickered. Even the hearth-fire burned small, as if keeping itself in check. A wide map lay on the central table, scattered with pins and colored thread.

By the rear curtain, a Mer stood, clad in black and gold. His face tight. His presence quieter than silence. He smelled of alchemical oils and old ink. And contempt.

Rikke didn’t wait.

“These are the last. There will be no more survivors.”

The murmur in the room halted. Her tone made it final.

“The skirmish never happened. No reports will be written. It was a prisoner transport gone wrong, derailed by an unforeseen threat. That is all. No regrets. No recollections. Just official silence.”

One officer drew breath to protest. Rikke silenced him with a raised hand.

“Orders from General Tullius. Received this morning.”

The words dropped like stones. Final.

“Ulfric is alive. Back in Windhelm. Our spies confirmed it. The Stormcloaks suffered losses as well, their survivors are scattered, and retreating.”

She turned to Hadvar.

“Visual report?”

He paused.

The screams. The fire. The collapse. And yet, none of it felt real anymore.

“A dragon, he said at last.
-You’re certain?
- I’ve never studied them. But it couldn’t have been anything else. The village is gone. Everything... gone. The General tried to rally us, but in the end... it was every man for himself.”

He hated the words. They clung to his mouth like rot. They tasted of failure and dishonor.

“And our agents?” someone asked.

Rikke didn’t blink.

“Silenced. It’s over.”

The Thalmor agent didn’t move. But his gaze sharpened, like a blade quietly being drawn. There was no emotion. Just calculation.

Rikke ignored him.

“As of today, all Imperial forces in loyal holds are to focus on protecting civilians. That dragon made too much noise. We must be seen as the shield, not the authors of a failed skirmish.”

One officer raised an eyebrow. Said nothing.

Hadvar stayed silent too. Rain still clung to his armor. The parchment still weighed in his hand. Useless. But full of names. One of them -he didn’t know it yet- would haunt him.

Rikke’s voice closed the door on the matter.

“Stand down until further orders. Alert status remains. Skyrim no longer sleeps.”

The Thalmor agent didn’t answer. He simply faded, like ink in water. Already gone.

~*~

Once the orders were given, the officers left the room one by one, each bearing the silence like a weight. One among them, a captain in a dull, undecorated cloak, climbed the southern steps to the battlements. He moved unnoticed, weaving through blind spots and timing his steps between patrols. He knew the rhythm of the guard shifts. The angles they didn’t see. He had made a habit of it.

A secluded corner of the wall awaited him, sheltered from wind and view. He slipped into it without a sound. Someone was already there. Still as stone. A long coat fell around them, untouched by the mud and rain. A hood drawn low. A blackened leather mask hiding all features. No age. No race. When they spoke, it was like a whisper across frozen glass, a sound that never failed to chill the captain's spine.

“You’re late.”

The voice was toneless. Not impatient. Just... there. The captain didn’t answer immediately. He cast a glance over his shoulder, then handed over a folded scrap of parchment.

“Helgen is gone. The skirmish never happened. The informants… removed.
- What destroyed Helgen?”

A pause.

“A dragon. Or so they say. Maybe a spell. Maybe some illusion. But Hadvar spoke, and he’s not one for stories.”

The masked figure remained still. Ulfric Stormcloak, meddling with ancient magic? Unlikely. Even a desperate Nord wouldn’t gamble political purity for ritual sorcery. And yet… A dragon was strangely plausible.

“If the Stormcloaks took losses,” he murmured, dryly, “they’ll need to invent new gods.”

The captain didn’t respond.

“Tullius wasn’t back when I left. Rikke’s holding the line, but she’s unsure. The elf was there.”

A silence stretched, long and heavy.

“He listens to everyone,” the captain whispered. “He says nothing. But he watches like... like a taxidermist watches something still breathing.”

The figure didn’t react. Then, slowly, fingers closed around the parchment.

“Keep going. Quietly. You’re useful as long as they don’t suspect. Once they do, cut everything.
- And if they already know?
- Then I forget you.”

The captain gave a dry chuckle. No humor in it. Then he turned and disappeared into the keep’s stone veins.

Taliesin remained.

He didn’t move for a long time. Then, carefully, he unfolded the parchment. He recognized Tullius’s handwriting immediately. The order was clear:

Wipe it clean.
Erase names.
Destroy the lists.
Resume operations.
Move forward like nothing happened.

He folded the note and slipped it into the lining of his sleeve.

Below, Solitude murmured. The brief stir caused by the soldiers' return had already faded. The city, too, was holding its breath.

He followed the battlements to a clear lookout. From here, he could see the Thalmor Tower. Agents and scribes moved in and out with practiced precision, like machines built from old guilt and obedience. He watched them with no hatred. Only that quiet detachment of someone who no longer belonged.

He had not been one of them for a long time. But he still knew the rhythm. And he knew that someday, one of the younger ones would begin to ask questions. To seek. To see.

But not yet.

His gaze dropped to the plaza below. A scaffold was being raised, slow, heavy, brutal. An execution. Likely the guard held responsible for Ulfric’s escape. A symbol. The Legion needed to reclaim the narrative.

Taliesin exhaled. Low. Long. And somewhere, he knew, a certain woman was beginning to see the same threads he had once ignored. She would come. She would look for answers.

He had none to give.

For the first time since the Red Ring, the Legion had moved faster than the Thalmor. A desperate twitch. A dying reflex. All he could do was bow his head.

The wind was rising. Mist crept over the rooftops.

It was time to disappear again.

~*~

The Council Hall rose vast as an overturned nave. Silence lay thick upon it, layered into the marble. Columns of raw light burst through the vault, refracted through golden veins, cold, harsh, unmerciful. Designed to strip illusion from skin and shadow from soul.

Fifteen thrones of black onyx encircled the space, placed in strict order, unchanged by time, untouched by trends. They formed the thinking spine of the Dominion. Closer to the divine than to the world.

At the center stood a seat carved from darkened glass. Its angles, subtle, almost painful to behold. The seat of the High Deliberant. And on it sat a figure. Motionless. Hooded. They called him Naerion the Ancient.

His eyes, sickly gold, older than thought, pierced from beneath the hood. Ageless. Unreal. Even in stillness, his presence chilled the chamber.

No word had yet been spoken.

The others sat unmoving, serenity etched into every line of their faces. Yet tension laced the air, fine as spider silk.

Then… a voice, crisp, precise:

“Skyrim was meant to collapse inward. Chronic instability. Observed. Contained. Not… detonation.”

With a flick of the nail, the Mer conjured an illusion: a hovering map of Skyrim, pale and wavering. Helgen pulsed faintly, like a wound badly stitched.

Another voice, sharper, female:

“The Empire acted alone. They canceled the meeting. Ambushed Windhelm's Jarl. That wasn’t our thread. And we saw nothing. Not a whisper. Not a breath of preparation.
- Our agents in Solitude were bypassed, said a third, older voice. Or removed.
- Transparency has weakened,” the first concluded.

No one dared say failure. That word did not exist in Alinor. Only polished disapproval. Glacial. Silent. Absolute.

“Either the Empire sealed its own channels- or some of ours have… faltered.”

A ripple passed through the thrones. Subtle. Uneasy. Some glanced at the center. At Naerion. But to accuse him of silence? Unthinkable. He had said nothing. For ten days.

A new voice, smooth, grave:

“Ulfric lives. Windhelm did not fall. But it will awaken.”

He raised his hand. The illusion shifted. A draconic silhouette, arcing above a burning Helgen. Several Councilors stiffened.

“Confirmed by Legion. Stormcloaks. Civilians. An ancient being. A legend has risen. The bards are back in business. This is no longer war. It is a myth.”

Another, younger voice added:

“They already whisper of Dovahkiin. Of the Voice. Of forgotten bloodlines.”

A murmur rippled through the circle. Barely audible. Delicately concerned.

“The Empire's failure is useful. Let them mourn. But Skyrim- as the cradle of living myth? That is unacceptable.”

Silence.

Naerion turned his head. Just slightly. And the chamber froze.

No breath. No thought. Then, a voice. Fragmented. Distant. Like a reflection in ice.

“The threads...
are many.
But not all~
weave.”

No one asked. Naerion’s silences counted double.

A Mer lowered her gaze.

“We must choose the thread to follow… and the one to sever.”

Naerion said nothing. His gaze was elsewhere. In shadow. In time.

A newer Councilor, tentative:

“This could be useful. Hope unites, but fear paralyzes. The people need dread. Dread justifies authority.
- Then feed the fear,” said another. “Do not dispel it. It is a rein.”

Still, no one moved.

“An ancient creature awakens... It stirs echoes. Forgotten names. Bloodlines. A Dovahkiin may give shape to old stories. Hope.”

A pause.

“The last time a dragon rose, it was not alone.”

No reply. But glances passed. A shared unease. Tight. Measured.

“Contact Emissary Elenwen. Send the Hunters. Quietly. Before hope takes form.”

From the shadows, a messenger disappeared.

And then, a whisper. Gliding through the columns. Weightless. Wordless. Like a thought that forgot its shape. Then, nothing. The first gear of a slow, lurking, inevitable cataclysm.

~*~

The pallid light from above barely reached the low, stone-hewn room. The air clung with the scent of stagnant water and wet leather, like a second skin. The Cistern.

Brynjolf leaned against the side table, the one he used when Mercer was away. Before him, a stack of reports. Some crumpled. Some unread. A few hastily scribbled notes hovered in the corner of a parchment, abandoned mid-thought. Nothing urgent. Just names. Places. Movements too subtle to be innocent.

He turned the cap of an empty inkwell between his fingers.

A knock. A slender figure slipped into the doorway. Not a veteran. Not one of theirs, not really. Just a pair of nervous eyes, and a debt still too heavy to carry.

“I have news about Rilvar.”

Brynjolf looked up, already weary. Another of Mercer’s agents. They always acted like his shadow still ruled the Cistern, even when he was off chasing ghosts. They took orders only from Mercer, and when he was away, they took none at all.

“The ship. Northwind. The Nord’s ship…?”

The name brushed something. A memory half-drowned beneath too many lists.

“The one who won’t pay his cut to dock,” Brynjolf murmured. The Captain had to be foolish. Or proud. Didn’t matter.

“There will be retaliation.”

The silence that followed was no surprise. It was a tide. Black and quiet, rising in the room.

“Orders? Brynjolf asked.
- Rilvar gave the green light,” the voice answered. “Said Mercer had approved the right to override you, when he’s away.”

Brynjolf didn’t reply. No anger. No protest. Just a slow nod.

“Return to your post.”

The silhouette vanished. He remained still. The light above flickered, faint and unreliable. Reflected in the trickle of water that ran like veins across the stone ceiling.

He reached for the wall. Fingers brushed smooth stone, found the seam. An old notebook. Leather worn soft by time. Yellowed by too many nights.

He opened it. Pages passed. Some skipped. Some clung. At the end of an untitled column, he wrote a name.

Rilvar.

No comment. No reason. Just a name, and a date.

He closed the notebook with a quiet snap, and slid it back into its place between two loose stones. As if it had never moved.

He stood. Exhaled. He wasn’t thinking. Wasn’t deciding. But he had written it down.

And that, already, was a kind of betrayal.

~*~

Ruby had left behind the foothills of the Jerall Mountains. Now, the Rift unfolded into lowlands hemmed by ridges, forests burning with eternal autumn, their colors like a dying sun. Beneath her boots, the snow had softened into waterlogged earth. Each step sank deeper, pulling at her heels.

On the horizon, chimney smoke rose from the plains like warm breath. Riften was close now. Still out of sight, but she could trace it in her mind: the hulls sliding along the Treva, the wind thick with salt and fish and rotting timber.

The city that smelled like damp secrets.

She stopped.

Fingers brushed her collar, beneath the cloth and leather. The medallion was warm against her skin. A silent witness, of a pact sealed in ash and snow. A promise. Small, but weighty. Enough to carry her this far.

She exhaled, the breath shaky, but not from cold. She adjusted the strap of her pack.

Far behind, the peaks had turned a cold, steely blue. Ahead, the marshes stretched like a memory forgotten. Somewhere behind the mist and smoke, the city watched her.

She walked on.

~*~

Notes:

You know, if you have a question or need a bit of explanation (with or without spoilers), I will be happy to answer 😊