Under Auri's watchful gaze, Torin continued to explore the cliff's face, his axe left leaning on a nearby boulder. He moved his hands slowly at first, fingers tracing the contours of the rock, feeling for anything out of the ordinary.
Sidestepping along the base of the cliff, he kept his palm flat against the stone, his eyes half-closed in concentration.
The fog swirled around his ankles. The wind tugged at his hair.
Somewhere above, a loose stone clattered down the mountainside, bouncing off ledges before disappearing into the darkness below.
Auri followed him at a distance, her bow still in her hand, her ears swiveling constantly, tracking sounds he couldn't hear.
She didn't rush him. Didn't ask questions. Just watched, and waited, and let him work.
Finally, Torin stopped.
He'd reached a section of the cliff that looked no different from any other—same grey stone, same mossy patches, same cracks and crevices. But something about it felt... off.
The rock seemed to shimmer slightly when he looked at it from the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head to face it directly, it was solid and still.
His hands began to move more rapidly now, almost erratically. He pressed here, prodded there, traced the outline of a crack that seemed to go nowhere. His fingers found a rocky protrusion—a knob of stone that looked like it belonged, that seemed as natural as any other bump on the cliff's face—and he grabbed it.
It came away in his hand.
Not broken. Not chipped. It simply... detached. Like it had never been part of the rock at all.
Auri raised an eyebrow.
"What's the matter?" Her voice was low, careful. "Do you feel any magic here?"
Torin didn't turn to face her. He was too busy studying the fragment in his hand, turning it over and over, feeling its weight, its texture, the strange way it seemed to shift in his grip.
"Magic?" He shook his head slowly. "No. Not magic."
His fingers tightened around the fragment, squeezing, testing. The stone didn't crumble. Didn't crack. But it felt... wrong. Like it wanted to be something else, which it wasn't.
"But I do feel something," he continued, his voice distant, focused. "Something conceptually wrong with the rock here."
Auri moved to stand beside him. She gave the rock fragment a look—just a glance, really—then turned to Torin with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and confusion.
"Conceptually?" She tasted the word like it was something foreign. "How does something feel conceptually wrong?"
Torin sighed, running his thumb across the fragment's surface. The stone seemed to ripple under his touch, like heat haze over a fire, but when he blinked, it was solid again.
"It's not unyielding," he said slowly, trying to put words to something that didn't want to be described. "It's not stubborn. It's not unmoving, the way rock should be. Though it's trying to appear that way." He let out a low hum. "Instead, it's... fleeting. Slippery. Shapeless. Hard to grasp. Like trying to hold water in your hands."
Auri gave him a blank look. Her ears flattened slightly, the way they did when she was trying to understand something that made no sense.
"Do you even hear yourself talk?" she asked.
Torin froze.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Then he let out a curse—low, heartfelt, and entirely justified.
"Damn it." He pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. "Now I'm starting to talk like Tolfdir too."
Auri's blank look shifted into something that might have been amusement, though she was too professional to let it show.
"The old Nord?" she asked. "The one who wanders around the courtyard talking to himself?"
"That's the one." Torin sighed heavily and turned his gaze back to the rock fragment. "He's always going on about the 'nature of reality' and the 'conceptual underpinnings of matter.' I used to think he was just... you know... old.."
He shook his head. "Now I'm starting to see what he sees. And that's... well, it's just weird."
Auri just looked at him with the same confused expression.
Torin shook his head and raised the fragment into the light.
"Let's just say," he continued, choosing his words carefully, "that this section of the cliff has a kind of wrongness to it. The kind only someone with enough Alteration experience can feel. An Illusionist could probably sense it too—they spend a lot of time thinking about what's real and what isn't."
Auri studied him for a moment, her amber eyes unreadable.
"Can you get through it?" she asked. "The wrongness? The conceptual... whatever?"
Torin studied the cliff face for a long moment, his hand still resting on the stone, feeling the wrongness thrumming beneath his palm like a heartbeat that didn't quite match the rhythm of the world.
"If I had a day or two," he said finally, "then yes. Certainly. I could disenchant the entire thing. Sit here, study the enchantments, trace them back to their source, unravel them one by one." He shook his head, a wry smile tugging at his lips. "But we don't have a day or two."
He turned to Auri, his eyes glinting. "Luckily, we don't need to get through the wrongness. Or the conceptual trickery. We just need to get through this section of the cliff. Whatever it is. Whatever it's pretending to be."
Auri's brow furrowed. "And how do you plan to do that?"
Torin raised his hand.
His axe flew from where he'd leaned it against a nearby boulder, the haft slapping into his open palm with a crack of displaced air. The runes along the blade flickered once, twice, then settled into a low, steady glow.
Auri's eyes widened. She sensed what he was about to do—saw it in the set of his shoulders, the way his weight shifted, the sudden stillness that came over him—and she jumped back, putting a good twenty feet between them.
The axe rose high.
Magicka surged from his core, down his arm, into the weapon's enchantments. The runes blazed—white, then gold, then white again—and lightning began to dance around the axe's head, arcing between the blade's edges, crawling up the haft, filling the air with the sharp smell of ozone.
He flipped the weapon in his grip, bringing the blunt end—the hammer side, the one he rarely used—to bear.
And struck.
The impact was deafening. A loud crack echoed off the mountainside, rolling across the fog, bouncing between the trees. Lightning exploded outward, forking in all directions, illuminating the cliff in stark, blinding flashes.
Dust and rock fragments—some real, some illusory, some that flickered between the two—flew everywhere, peppering Torin's armor, bouncing off his raised forearm.
The cliff face shuddered. The wrongness, that slippery, shapeless feeling, convulsed—and then it shattered.
Torin didn't wait for the dust to settle. His free hand shot out, palm forward, and a powerful telekinetic blast ripped through the air, clearing the debris, revealing what lay beneath.
A dark passage. Rough-hewn, ancient, the walls stained with something that might have been moisture or might have been something else entirely. And leading down, into the depths of the mountain, a stony staircase.
The steps were slick with frost in some places, bare in others. And on the bare stone, still wet, still glistening—purple blood. Fresh. The same thick, wrong-colored blood that had been pooling in the clearing where Torin had fought the harvester.
Auri returned to stand beside him, her bow lowered for once, her amber eyes fixed on the exposed passage. She looked at the staircase, at the blood, at the darkness beyond. Then she looked at Torin.
"I really don't understand you sometimes," she said, and there was no heat in it—just honest confusion. "You spend months at the College. You study magic every day. You learn obscure spells that would flabbergast most court wizards in Skyrim."
She gestured at the shattered cliff face with her bow. "And then you solve your problems with brute strength."
Torin couldn't help but chuckle. The sound echoed off the stone, bouncing back at him from the darkness below.
"The thing about brute strength," he said, stepping toward the passage, a Candlelight orb materializing above his head to push back the shadows, "is that it solves most problems." He paused at the top of the stairs, looking down into the purple-stained darkness. "But not all of them."
He glanced back at Auri, his face half-lit by the floating light, half-hidden in shadow.
"Some problems require more subtle solutions. Magic. Patience. Knowing when not to swing an axe." He shrugged. "That's why I study. So when brute strength isn't enough, I have something else to fall back on."
Auri watched him walk deeper into the dark passage, her eyes adjusting to the dim light of the Candlelight orb floating above Torin's head. The shadows danced and shifted, making the walls seem to breathe as she followed along.
"You do realize," she said quietly, her voice echoing slightly off the stone, "that you're not supposed to solve 'all problems' on your own?"
She fell into step beside him, her shoulder almost brushing his arm. The passage was barely wide enough for two, but they made it work.
"Some problems," she continued, "you're not supposed to handle on your own. That's what other people are for." She glanced at him, her amber eyes catching the light. "That's what friends are for."
Torin shrugged, the motion causing the Candlelight orb to bob slightly above his head.
"I can't expect 'other people' to stick by me all the time," he said. His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, like he was explaining something obvious. "And I can't expect trouble to only visit when I'm in good company."
He raised a fist, then knocked on his skull with his knuckles—a sharp rap that echoed in the confined space. "This, however—" He tapped his temple. "—and this—" He patted the axe at his side. "—they're always with me. Wherever I go. Whenever."
Auri shook her head firmly, her ears flattening slightly.
"You sure have a way of romanticizing loneliness," she said. There was no cruelty in it—just the blunt honesty of someone who'd known him long enough to see through his defenses.
Torin's eyes twitched. Just slightly.
"Hey." His voice rose a fraction, almost offended. "I'll have you know, I'm not lonely." He glanced at her, a grin tugging at his lips. "Not with you sticking to me like a shadow."
Auri said nothing, but her ears swiveled forward, and something that might have been a smile flickered at the corner of her mouth.
He chuckled, the sound warm and genuine in the cold darkness.
"Besides," he added, "some of the women at the College have been eyeing me like wolves eye a wounded elk. There's this one Dunmer in particular—Brelyna, I think her name is. Pretty sure I saw her drooling once."
Auri rolled her eyes so hard it was almost audible.
"Alright, alright. We get it, Jarl Charming. You're very popular with women." Her voice dripped with exaggerated exasperation. "Now, can you get over yourself and focus on the possibly fatal danger we're walking into?"
Torin's grin widened, but he let it drop.
Auri's gaze turned upward, following the stairs as they disappeared into the darkness above.
"What do you think is waiting for us up there?" she asked. Her voice was quiet, almost thoughtful.
Torin let out a low hum, considering.
"It's hard to tell." He adjusted his grip on his axe, his thumb tracing the edge of the blade. "If this passage leads where I think it leads, then we'll find undead. Draugr, mostly. Maybe some skeletons." He paused, his brow furrowing. "Maybe vampires."
Auri's ears flattened.
"Vampires," she repeated, like she was tasting the word and finding it unpleasant.
"Vampires," Torin said, his voice echoing off the stone walls as they climbed. "Well, a clan of vampires. Or a small offshoot of one, at least." He glanced back at Auri, his face half-lit by the Candlelight orb. "This is the one place where they can hear their matron's screams at their loudest and clearest, after all."
Auri's brow furrowed, but she didn't ask for clarification. Not yet. She just kept climbing, her boots finding purchase on the worn stone steps.
Finally, they reached the end of the stairs.
The passage opened into a wide hallway, its ceiling arching high overhead, lost in shadows that the Candlelight orb couldn't penetrate.
The walls were lined with ornate columns, carved in patterns that Torin recognized from his studies—curving lines, angular runes, the distinctive script of the old Atmoran tongue.
The language of the first Nords, the ones who'd crossed the sea from a continent that no longer existed.
Torin paused at the threshold, his eyes sweeping the hallway, cataloging every shadow, every corner, every possible place something could hide. Auri did the same, her bow coming up, an arrow nocked but not drawn.
Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
The only sound was the distant, mournful moan of wind through cracks in the stone—a sound that might have been natural, or might have been something else entirely.
They resumed their strides, moving deeper into the hallway, their footsteps muffled by the dust that coated the floor.
Auri was the first to break the silence.
"Clan?" She kept her voice low, barely above a whisper. "Matron?" She glanced at him, her amber eyes sharp. "Which clan? Which matron?" Her tone demanded the rest of the story, and she wouldn't be put off.
Torin didn't look at her. His eyes were fixed on the darkness ahead, on the archway at the far end of the hall that led to somewhere even darker.
"Lamae Bal," he said quietly. "And the vampires she sired."
Auri's steps faltered. Just for a moment. Just long enough for Torin to notice.
"Unlike other pure-blooded vampires," Torin continued, "they shunned Molag Bal. Lamae's hatred for the Prince who created her was... absolute. Unending. She passed that hatred to her children, and they passed it to theirs, and so on down the centuries."
Auri resumed walking, but her pace had slowed. Her ears were flattened against her head.
"I know of her," she said quietly. "The stories... I heard them, in Valenwood...." She paused, her voice dropping even lower. "Each story was more dreadful than the last. The things she did. The things that were done to her."
She shook her head. "I stopped listening after a while. Some truths are too heavy to carry."
They walked in silence for a few more paces.
"But what's this about her screams?" Auri asked, her voice steadier now. "You said this is where they can hear her screams. What did you mean?"
Torin gestured at the air around them—at the wind that moaned through the cracks, at the mournful sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Haven't you heard it before?" He looked at her. "That strange gust of wind? The one that sounds like a wail of pain?"
Auri blinked, her eyes widening slightly.
"The shrieking wind," she said slowly. "Yes. I've heard it. Ever since I came to Skyrim." She frowned. "I thought it was just... weather. Just wind, blowing through the mountains at the right angle to make that sound."
Torin shook his head.
"Some say it's more than that. Some say those are the lingering screams of Lamae Bal. Echoes of her torment, trapped in the stones, carried on the wind."
He nodded toward the darkness ahead, toward the mountain that loomed above them. "Here, in Shriekwind Mountain, they blow the loudest. The clearest." He paused. "Or so I've heard."
Auri was quiet for a long moment, her eyes distant, her ears tracking the mournful moan that surrounded them.
"That's... terrible," she said finally. "To suffer so much that the world itself remembers."
Torin said nothing. Just walked on, his axe in his hand, his eyes on the darkness.
Behind them, the wind shrieked. Ahead, darkness unraveled, giving way to arcane light.
...
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