By the time Torin's feet finally touched the seabed, he'd left seven slaughterfish floating somewhere in the dark waters above him.
The first few had been cautious, testing. The rest had been... enthusiastic. Slaughterfish, he'd concluded, were not creatures that learned from the deaths of their companions. They simply saw a floating, glowing meal and decided it was their turn to try.
Each time, Torin's iron-hardened hands had met them with the same fatal grip. Snap. Release. Let the body float away as a warning to the next idiot with more teeth than brains.
It had become almost boring by the end.
Now, standing on the silty bottom some hundred and fifty feet below the surface, Torin took a moment to orient himself. The pressure was immense, a constant, squeezing weight that would have crushed an unprepared man.
His Ironflesh spell handled the worst of it, but he could still feel the deep, thrumming protest of his bones. The water around him was dark, cold, and utterly still.
Time to find these so-called ruins.
He raised both hands and began casting in earnest.
Magelight after Mageelight bloomed from his palms, each sphere drifting off in a different direction like luminous scouts exploring the abyss. He sent them in every compass point—north, south, east, west, up, down—until a small constellation of magelights bobbed and weaved through the murky depths, pushing back the darkness in a growing radius.
For long moments, nothing. Just silt, scattered rocks, and the occasional cautous fish giving his lights a wide berth.
Then, to his left, one of the spheres drifted over something that shone.
The reflection was unmistakable—a warm, metallic gleam that cut through the gloom like a beacon.
Torin's heart quickened. Bronze. Brass. Something with a sheen that resisted the corroding grasp of seawater. Dwemer metal was one of the few materials that could maintain its luster even after centuries underwater.
Whatever was reflecting his light, it was almost certainly what he'd come for.
He kicked off the bottom and swam toward it, his magelights trailing behind him like a patient entourage.
As he drew closer, however, his excitement curdled into confusion.
This wasn't a ruin. Not really.
The description Arniel had painted—a loading dock, an outpost, something relatively intact—bore no resemblance to what lay before him. Torin hovered at the edge of a debris field, his lights illuminating a scene of profound, ancient violence.
Piles of collapsed stone, their edges worn smooth by centuries of water, formed uneven mounds across the seabed. Twisted brass pipes, some as thick as his thigh, jutted from the rubble at impossible angles.
And there, half-buried in the silt, lay the head of a Dwarven Centurion—its single optic sensor dark, its bronze faceplate dented and torn, as if something had ripped it from its body with tremendous force.
This doesn't look like a colapse, Torin thought, his eyes sweeping the devastation. More like demolition...
Dwemer ruins didn't just... fall apart. Not like this. Dwarven engineering was too precise, too robust. Torin would have bet good coin that some of those underground cities could survive the death of Nirn itself, so long as no idiot with a pickaxe or a fireball came along to hasten the process. Whatever had happened here, was intentional violence and destruction.
Curiosity, sharp and insistent, replaced his disappointment. He swam down to the seabed, his feet stirring clouds of silt as he landed. He began to search in earnest, pushing aside rubble, peering into dark crevices, following the trail of destruction with the focus of a hunter reading sign.
What did this? And why?
The questions drove him deeper into the wreckage, his magelights bobbing anxiously behind him like worried companions.
...
After several minutes of careful searching, Torin finally found something.
It wasn't research notes. It wasn't schematics or journals or anything else Arniel had hoped for. Such fragile things would have dissolved to pulp centuries ago, eaten by water and time.
No, what he found was far more practical—and far more ominous.
Half-buried in the silt near the severed centurion head, its corners just visible beneath a scattering of smaller rubble, sat a locked box. Dwemer make, by the look of it—intricate geometric patterns etched into dark, untreated metal, a mechanism of obvious complexity guarding whatever lay within.
The fact that it had survived at all, in this underwater graveyard of broken stone and shattered metal, spoke volumes about its construction. And its contents.
Torin couldn't help the bitter grin that twisted his face.
He remembered a book he'd read years ago, back in Jorrvaskr. Breathing Water, it was called—a tragedy about a dockside thug who'd found a similar box while diving a wreck.
Torin would not repeat his mistake.
He grabbed the box, tucking it securely under one arm. Without hesitation, he twisted his body and faced the distant, shimmering ceiling of the surface. His legs kicked. His free arm pulled.
The ascent began.
Up. Up. Past the debris field. Past the lingering traces of ancient violence. The pressure began to ease, a subtle lessening of the sea's crushing grip.
One minute.
Two.
Three.
Torin paused.
At the very edge of his candlelight's glow, far below him now, a shadow moved.
It was too large to be a salughterfish. Much too large. The shape was serpentine, sinuous, a dark coil against the deeper dark. And it was rising. Slowly. Lazily. As if it had all the time in the world.
Torin's blood, already cold from the sea, turned to ice.
That's no fucking fish.
The shape grew larger as he watched, resolving into something immense. A head, if it could be called that, broader than his entire torso. A body that seemed to stretch back into the darkness without end. It moved with an ancient, unhurried grace, the apex predator of these depths, curious about the strange light that had briefly disturbed its domain.
Torin acted.
His hand snapped out, and the bobbing candlelight winked out of existence. Darkness crashed down around him like a physical weight—absolute, total, suffocating. He couldn't see his own hand in front of his face. Couldn't see the surface. Couldn't see it.
However, he could feel it still. The displacement of water. The faint, predatory hum of something vast and aware, searching.
He resumed his ascent, moving now with excruciating slowness. Each kick was measured, each pull of his arm silent. He became water himself, flowing upward inch by inch, willing his heartbeat to slow, his breathing to quiet, his very presence to fade from the senses of the thing below.
The box under his arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
Above him, the surface glimmered—still distant, still impossibly far. Below him, the darkness stirred. And Torin swam, silent as a ghost, praying to any god listening that whatever lurked in the deep had better things to do than chase a single, fleeing morsel.
...
Torin's head broke the surface with a gasping splash.
Cold air flooded his lungs, sharp and biting, the most beautiful thing he'd felt in the past ten minutes. He shook his head violently, spraying water from his hair, and wiped at his eyes with a freezing hand. His gaze immediately snapped downward, scanning the dark water behind him for any sign of that massive, serpentine shadow.
Nothing. Just the deep, indifferent grey of the Sea of Ghosts, hiding its secrets beneath a placid surface.
He heaved a sigh of relief so profound it seemed to deflate his entire body. But even as the immediate tension eased, a lingering chill remained coiled in his spine—and it had nothing to do with the temperature. That thing, whatever it was, had instilled in him a primal, absolute certainty: You cannot defeat me. Not in a thousand years. Not here.
He'd hunted werewolves, butchered bandits and Thalmor agents alike. But in that moment, suspended in the black water with that vast presence rising below him, he'd felt like prey. Pure and simple.
He shook off the thought with another sigh—this one aimed at calming his hammering heart—and oriented himself toward the shore. The distant glow of a fire guided him, a warm orange beacon against the grey-white landscape. He began to swim, his strokes strong and steady, the Dwemer box still clutched firmly under one arm.
By the time his feet touched the icy shallows, the fire was blazing cheerfully, just as Arniel had promised. But as Torin waded ashore, dripping and shivering, the scene before him made him pause mid-step.
Arniel Gane stood a good twenty feet away from the fire, huddled in his robes with his arms wrapped tightly around himself.
His breath plumed in rapid, anxious clouds, and his eyes were fixed on the flames with an expression of profound unease.
Curled up beside the fire, basking in its warmth like she owned it, was Echo.
And curled up beside her, pressed against her shaggy side in a tangle of white fur, was another bear.
This one was pale as snow, its coat the color of frost and bone, and it was a head taller than Echo even lying down. Its massive head rested on its paws, eyes half-closed in contentment, utterly at peace with the world.
Torin blinked. He looked at the bears. He looked at Arniel. He looked back at the bears.
Arniel, noticing his return, pointed a trembling finger at the pair. "You," he said, his voice pitched slightly higher than usual, "said a bear would appear. A bear. One bear. So when two came—" He gestured helplessly. "—I didn't know what to do!"
Torin stared at him for a long moment, water streaming down his face. Then a slow, incredulous grin spread across his features.
"So," he said, his voice dripping with mock admiration, "you let them warm themselves by the fire. While you stand out here, freezing in the cold." He shook his head slowly, clucking his tongue. "How generous of you, Arniel. Truly. A true friend to the wildlife."
Arniel's face reddened—whether from cold or embarrassment, it was impossible to tell. "They looked comfortable! And the smaller one—your one—she looked at me when I tried to approach. You didn't mention that she could look at people like that!"
Echo, as if sensing she was being discussed, lifted her head and fixed Arniel with a long, slow blink. Then she turned her gaze to Torin, and her massive tail gave a single, heavy thump against the snow.
The white bear beside her didn't move, but one eye cracked open, fixing Torin with a brief, assessing glance before closing again.
Torin chuckled, a low, warm sound. He walked past the shivering Breton and approached the fire, dropping the Dwemer box on a dry patch of sand. He crouched beside Echo, running a hand through her damp, matted fur.
"Missed you too, girl." He glanced at the white bear. "Made a friend, I see."
Echo huffed, a sound that might have meant anything.
Torin looked back at Arniel, who was still hovering at the edge of the firelight like a nervous rabbit. "Well? Are you going to stand there all day, or come warm up? They won't eat you. Probably."
Arniel hesitated. Then, with the clear reluctance of a man walking toward his own execution, he took a single, shuffling step closer to the fire.