[18 years before the events of Book 1]
The winds screamed through the mountains of Hjaalmarch.
Though one of Skyrim's smaller holds, Hjaalmarch was guarded by a crescent of mountains that cut it off from the eastern reaches of the province, and on days like this, those peaks felt less like stone and more like the jaws of some ancient beast. Snow and wind ruled the heights without mercy.
A lone man climbed through them anyway.
He wore foreign garb wrapped tight against the cold and carried a dead goat over one shoulder. Each step forward seemed fought for, the wind battering him from all sides as though the mountain itself wished to turn him back. Still, he pressed on.
At last, he reached a cave mouth with a river spilling from it, fed by the sound of falling water somewhere inside. Beneath the rush of the stream was something else.
Breathing.
Slow. Heavy. Enormous.
The man wasted no time slipping inside to escape the storm. Snow clung to his clothes, and his body trembled from the cold. His face was almost completely covered, with only his eyes visible beneath the wrappings. Inside, the cave was dark and damp, lit only by a pale shaft of daylight filtering down through a hole high above.
He moved deeper into the cave as the breathing grew louder.
Then a deep, weary voice rolled out from the darkness.
"Are you planning on making these trips every year? Will I never be allowed to die in peace?"
The man let the goat slip from his shoulder and dragged it farther in toward the source of the voice.
"Oh, don't be like that, Zindreyth, buddy," he said. "You may not miss me much, but I know you miss the free food."
He left the goat where it lay and crossed to a torch mounted between two rocks. Settling himself nearby, he pulled down the coverings from his face and raised one hand toward the torch. A small fire spell leapt from his fingers, and the torch flared to life.
The cave brightened.
In the far corner lay a dragon.
An old one.
Ancient, even.
Its great body was folded low against the stone, its scales dull with age, its strength long since diminished. It slowly lifted its head and angled it toward the goat. After a few deep sniffs, it opened its jaws, snapped the animal up whole, and raised its neck to swallow it.
The man watched with quiet fascination as the dragon fed.
Now that the coverings were off, his features could be clearly seen. He was a Redguard in his late twenties, with medium-length dreadlocks and a full, flowing beard. There was warmth in his eyes, and familiarity too, as though this meeting—strange as it was—had become a ritual long ago.
When the dragon finished swallowing, it lowered its head back to the ground and let out a long sigh.
"What is it now, Falwon?" the dragon rumbled. "Have you come to regale me with tales of your adventures again?"
Falwon smiled faintly. "Hey, no need to be so sarcastic. Besides, you love it when I visit."
"As you said," Zindreyth replied, licking his teeth, "I love only the goats. Oh, how I do love the goats."
Falwon chuckled. "Ah, you don't mean that. You're just growing bitter in your old age."
"I am not simply growing old," Zindreyth said. "I am dying. A thing I wish to do in peace. These visits of yours only increase the risk of other humans finding me."
Falwon reached into his satchel and pulled out a decorative pipe and a flask. He held the pipe to the torch until the contents caught, then set it in his mouth and took a slow puff while uncorking the flask.
"I get it," he said after a moment. "You've lived a long, peaceful life. And now that you can't hunt anymore, you want to die quietly and alone." He took a sip from the flask. "Trust me, I understand that part. I just hate the last bit. No one should have to die in solitude from starvation."
"It is the fate I have chosen," Zindreyth said. "I did not wish to wage war upon humans as my brethren did. And because I chose peace as my way of living... it shall also be my way of dying."
Falwon leaned back against the rock, pipe smoke curling around him in the torchlight. "I wanted to ask you about that. What was it that kept you from fighting beside the other dragons?"
Zindreyth was quiet for a moment before answering.
"I saw what rage and hatred had done to the minds of my brothers and sisters. Dragons are destructive creatures by nature. We are drawn to battle. Drawn to domination. But to live only by one's basest instincts is not life at all." His great eyes narrowed slightly. "It is a kind of death in itself."
The torch crackled softly between them.
"Alduin was a fool for seeking to destroy humanity," Zindreyth went on. "Not because he failed. Not because he lacked the power. But because it served no true purpose. Humans, dragons, and every other living thing were meant to exist in this world—or else they would not. Such is the order of things."
Falwon took another puff from his pipe, studying the old dragon through the smoke. "Do you ever regret it?" he asked. "Not fighting beside your own kind?"
"My kin would still be alive if they had not all perished in that war," Zindreyth said at last. "I am proof enough of that." His great head rested low against the stone, his voice heavy but calm. "My time here draws near its end, yes—but I have lived a long and peaceful life. I regret nothing. I feel only sadness that the others were not given the chance to live long and happy lives as I have."
Falwon said nothing for a while after that.
He sat on the rock beside the torch, drinking from his flask and smoking his pipe, the dragon's words settling deeper the longer he turned them over in his mind. He still had questions—many, in truth—but Zindreyth had grown more irritable with age, and Falwon had no wish to push him too far tonight.
They had known each other for several years now.
Since the day Falwon had first stumbled upon the dying dragon in this cave, the two had formed a bond as strange as it was genuine. Falwon had hated the sight of the old beast wasting away in hunger and silence, so he had begun returning with goats whenever he could, hoping to ease at least that much of Zindreyth's suffering. The dragon, for his part, seemed perfectly content to meet death on his own terms. He valued Falwon's company, that much was clear, but he had never wanted the man to grow attached to a passing thing.
It made no difference.
Every year, without fail, Falwon returned with another goat slung over his shoulder.
Some things, it seemed, could not be helped.
Zindreyth turned one old eye toward him. "What is on your mind, Falwon? You have stopped badgering me with questions."
Falwon let a thin stream of smoke slip from his nose before answering. "I was just thinking about what you said." He swirled the contents of his flask absently. "Sometimes I wonder whether I ought to be back home, helping fight off the invading Nords instead of doing all this..." He gestured vaguely with the flask. "Traveling. Trading. Wandering about the world."
"You do not like the work you do?" Zindreyth asked.
Falwon gave a quiet huff of amusement. "No. I love it, actually." He leaned back a little, pipe between his fingers. "Seeing different lands. Meeting different people. Learning things I never would have known otherwise." He took another sip. "But sometimes I wonder if maybe there's something more important I should be doing. Something that matters to others, not just to me."
Zindreyth's voice rumbled softly through the cave. "The human lifespan is far too short to spend living for others. More foolish still to spend dying for them." He shifted slightly, scales rasping against stone. "In this, you and I are alike. For all the violence in both dova and men, there are a few who understand the futility of war. It is endless. An insatiable beast that consumes itself and everything around it."
Falwon glanced over at him. "Do you think the other dova would have called you a coward? For refusing to fight?"
Zindreyth let out a low, humorless breath. "There would have been no debate to be had. Had I spoken openly against them, they would have killed me." His gaze hardened faintly. "They did not follow Alduin because they had weighed every choice and found his path just. They followed because they feared him. Feared his power. That is what made them cowards."
He looked at Falwon then, more directly.
"You are not."
Falwon lifted a brow. "What makes you so sure?"
"You could have slain me when you first found me in my weakened state," Zindreyth said. "But you did not. You were afraid, and so was I. Yet neither of us let that fear decide our actions." He lowered his head slightly. "Because of that, we have this unlikely companionship of ours. Imagine, Falwon... if every dova and every human had chosen to speak before striking. Imagine what might have been accomplished."
Falwon was quiet for a moment, then smiled faintly around the stem of his pipe. "There's truth in that, I suppose. I may be a warrior... but killing is never the first thing that comes to mind."
A cool breeze slipped down through the opening high above, making the torch flame flicker. It tugged at the smoke from Falwon's pipe and carried it upward into the dark, spiriting it out into the night. For a while, the two of them sat in companionable silence, lost in their own thoughts.
Zindreyth lifted his head slightly and breathed in through his nostrils as the air moved past his snout. Even now, even in his failing state, small pleasures still remained to him, and the smell of clean mountain wind was one of them.
Then his expression changed.
His nostrils flared again.
This time, what he scented was not welcome.
"Falwon," he said, his voice suddenly low and urgent, "I think you should leave."
Falwon lowered the pipe from his mouth and turned toward him, frowning. "What?"
Before Zindreyth could say more, the winds outside rose violently.
A savage gust tore down through the opening in the cave ceiling and snuffed the torch out in an instant.
Darkness swallowed the chamber.
For a moment, the only light left was the dull ember at the tip of Falwon's pipe.
He went still.
An awful feeling had settled over him—sharp, immediate, and impossible to ignore. He did not know why he was suddenly afraid to move, only that some crushing force now pressed against the air itself, thick and oppressive, as if the cave had been filled with a presence too large and terrible to fit inside it.
"They've come," Zindreyth said.
Falwon reacted instantly.
He raised a fist and began charging an alteration spell, magicka gathering in his palm in a low shimmer. Then he opened his hand and released a small orb of light into the darkness above him.
The cave flashed into view.
And so did the intruders.
Three figures stood around him in a loose circle, silent and unmoving as if they had simply appeared out of the dark itself. They wore masks that hid their faces completely, along with deep orange robes and gilded shoulder armor that ran down one arm in a strange, ceremonial fashion. Falwon had never seen their like before.
Cultists.
But of what kind, he could not guess.
One of them tilted his head slightly, studying Falwon through the expressionless mask.
"You are in our way, mortal," the man said. "Move."
Before Falwon could even answer, the cultist drove a boot into his chest with monstrous force.
Falwon was launched backward out of the cave and into the storm.
He tumbled violently down the slope, snow and stone battering him until his fall finally ended against the trunk of a great pine. The impact jarred his whole body. For a moment he could do nothing but gasp.
Above him, one of the cultists stepped out of the cave with blades already in hand.
The first cultist emerged behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"None see and live."
The second cultist gave a slow crack of his neck, first one side, then the other. "Do not worry," he said. "This will not take long at all."
He crouched low.
Then launched himself down the mountainside.
Falwon was still trying to force his body upright, using the tree as support while the world spun around him.
"Damn it..." he muttered through clenched teeth. "Why the hell was that bastard so strong?"
He barely had time to look up.
A blade came screaming toward his neck so fast it almost defied thought.
There was no time to draw his scimitar.
All he could manage was a desperate roll to the side as the strike came down.
The sword passed through the pine tree behind him with terrifying ease.
So cleanly, in fact, that for one impossible second the tree still appeared untouched. The cultist dug his feet into the snow to halt his momentum and turned to face him.
Falwon came up low, one hand in the snow, searching for his footing. The tree blocked his line of sight to the cultist only briefly.
Then came the sound.
A deep, splintering crack.
Then another.
Then many more.
What had begun as a few sharp noises became a chorus of groaning timber as the trunk slowly gave way. The massive pine tilted, shuddered, and then toppled in full, crashing down the mountainside with a thunderous boom. Snow shook loose from every tree nearby, spilling in heavy curtains from the branches all around them.
Falwon had his scimitar in hand by the time the tree hit the ground.
Now, with the obstruction gone, he could see his attacker clearly.
"I suppose asking why you're doing this is pointless now," Falwon said.
"Not the concern of a mortal like you," the cultist replied.
Then he rushed uphill at Falwon, both blades angled outward like fangs.
Falwon tightened his grip.
I don't have time for this, he thought. Zindreyth is in trouble.
But the man racing toward him had no intention of letting him turn his back so easily.
Falwon was no fool. His mind had always been sharper than his blade, and under better circumstances he might already have worked out some way to outmaneuver this. But there was no time. No room to think. The danger inside the cave was too immediate.
From within came the sounds of struggle—the groaning roar of an old dragon and the clash of steel.
Inside, Zindreyth was fighting for his life.
The other two cultists had engaged him within the cave, trying to bring him down, but even old and weakened as he was, the dragon still resisted. One cultist had been driven back already, forced away by the thrashing of a dying beast that refused to submit quietly.
Then one of them found an opening.
The blade plunged deep into Zindreyth's side.
The dragon convulsed with a pained roar and lashed out, kicking the attacker away with enough force to send him skidding across the stone. But the effort cost him dearly. Blood poured from the wound, dark and heavy, and his strength was leaving him with it.
Zindreyth's limbs trembled.
Slowly, unwillingly, he collapsed to the ground.
Even then, he tried to drag himself backward, claws scraping weakly against the cave floor as he fought to put distance between himself and the two figures closing in on him.
"There it is," said the first cultist. "It will not be long now."
He reached to his waistband and pulled free a soul gem unlike any ordinary crystal.
Even in the dim light, it looked wrong.
Scales seemed embedded within the crystal itself, as though something living had been trapped inside its structure long ago. The gem had an unsettling, unnatural gleam to it.
The other cultist rose from the floor, sword slick with dragon's blood.
"The relic the master gave you," he said, eyeing the gem. "And this... this will truly trap the soul of a dragon?"
The first cultist held it up before him.
"Do you not understand what this is?" he asked. "The Dragonborn is, in essence, a living soul gem—perfectly made to contain the soul of a dragon. Once our master merges with this relic, he will command the next line of Dragonborn."
The second cultist went still.
The first stepped closer to the wounded dragon.
"Think of it," he said. "An entire lineage of the most powerful mortals bound to his name." His masked face turned toward Zindreyth. "It need only contain one soul... the soul of an elder dragon."
He looked down at the dying beast.
"And this one," he said, almost amused, "is quite elderly. Wouldn't you agree?"
The other cultist gave a slow nod. "I see."
Then he tightened his grip on his sword.
"Let's be done with it."
One of the cultists stepped forward and raised his blade to finish the dragon.
Then something struck the cave floor beside him with a heavy thud.
He looked down.
It was a head.
His comrade's head.
The mask had cracked apart on impact, exposing the face beneath—eyes still wide with horror, mouth frozen in the shape of a final, unfinished breath.
The cultist turned sharply.
Falwon stood in the cave entrance, breathing hard, weapon in hand.
Ordinarily, this would have been the moment for a sharp quip, some bit of swagger to mask the danger. But the instant his eyes fell on the wound in Zindreyth's side, all wit died in his throat.
The first cultist straightened. "Persistent, this one." He turned fully toward Falwon and raised a hand, gathering a blazing fire spell into his palm. "No matter. We shall do what our comrade could not."
Zindreyth saw it too.
He knew Falwon would not survive against both of them.
As the two cultists shifted their focus toward the cave entrance, the old dragon began, with terrible effort, to lift his head.
Falwon saw the movement at once. "No, buddy—save your strength!"
But the warning came too late.
Zindreyth drew his head back one final time and unleashed hell.
Flame erupted from his jaws in a blinding torrent that filled the cave wall to wall. The cultists had no time to react. Their screams were swallowed in the inferno as the fire consumed them, flesh and cloth and bone alike, until nothing remained but drifting ash.
At the center of one blackened pile, the strange dragon soul gem lay untouched.
Zindreyth kept breathing fire until there was nothing left to burn.
Then the flames cut off.
A violent fit of coughing overtook him, followed by a wet spray of blood. The effort had emptied him of what little strength remained. His head dropped heavily to the stone with a final thud.
"Zin!"
Falwon rushed to his side at once, dropping to his knees beside him. His eyes darted wildly around the cave, desperate for anything—bandages, herbs, magic, something—to help.
"Don't worry, I've got you, friend. I'll find some—"
"Spare me your aid, Falwon," Zindreyth rasped. "I need you to hear me... and hear me well."
Falwon stopped immediately.
The cave had gone quiet now except for the distant river and the weak, ragged breathing of the dying dragon. Blood was spreading across the stone beneath Zindreyth, dark and shining in the moonlight. Falwon's throat tightened, but he held himself still. He could tell from the tone alone that whatever came next mattered.
"Those men..." Zindreyth said, each word heavier than the last. "They meant to capture my soul. Using that gem over there."
Falwon glanced toward the relic lying in the ashes. "I don't understand. Is that even possible?"
"Their aim," Zindreyth said, coughing blood between words, "was to control who becomes the next Dragonborn... and through that, their master would do the same." He forced his gaze onto Falwon. "I want you to finish what they set out to do."
Falwon stared at him. "You cannot be serious." His voice cracked with disbelief. "You want me to trap your soul in that crystal? For what? And what in Oblivion even is a Dragonborn?"
"Listen," Zindreyth growled, though the growl had gone thin and weak. "Time is short. I will leave this life soon. When I do, my soul will depart my body. I want you to capture it... and keep it from the hands of the one called Miraak."
The name hung in the cave like a curse.
"He is the master they serve," Zindreyth continued. "Once, he was a great enemy to dragons. A hero to men. He was Dragonborn." Another cough wracked him. "Now he serves only himself... and his own towering ambition."
Falwon swallowed hard. "And what am I supposed to do with your soul once it's inside that thing?"
Zindreyth's great eyes dimmed, but his voice held steady.
"You will become the chooser of the next Dragonborn. Whoever you choose will be the key to stopping the war Miraak means to bring."
Falwon's grip tightened against his own knees. "If I take your soul... if I trap it in that gem... then how are you supposed to find peace in the afterlife?"
For the first time, Zindreyth gave something like a tired smile.
"It seems I will not." He coughed again, weaker now. "Apparently... I have one last war to fight." His voice faded almost to a whisper. "This time... on the side of man."
Falwon looked at him for a long moment, then slowly rose and crossed to the pile of ash. He bent down and picked up the soul gem.
It was warm.
Wrongly warm.
He turned it over in his hands, studying the scales embedded in the crystal.
"I'm going to need more instructions than that," he muttered. "I don't know the first thing about trapping souls. How am I supposed to use this? How will I know who to choose?"
He looked back toward Zindreyth, waiting.
No answer came.
Falwon frowned.
Then the truth hit him.
In the span of his questions, Zindreyth had slipped into death.
The old dragon's body had gone still. Falwon heard the last of his breath leave him—a soft, final exhale that seemed far too small for a creature that ancient. Then there was nothing.
"No..."
Falwon took a step toward him. "Wait, Zin, you can't leave me yet. I don't know what I'm doing. I need answers in order to—"
He broke off.
A sudden spiral of luminous wind burst from the dragon's corpse.
Falwon's cloak snapped backward as the force rolled over him. The cave began to glow. He had never seen anything like it—never imagined such a thing could exist outside of myth.
It was the power of a dragon's soul.
He sank back to his knees, soul gem clutched tightly in both hands, and watched in awe as the light poured from Zindreyth's body in a storm of swirling color. It whirled through the cave in radiant currents, beautiful and terrible all at once, filling the darkness with the last living essence of his friend.
Then, as though seized by an unseen force, the soul twisted violently and rushed into the gem.
The crystal shook in Falwon's hands so hard he nearly dropped it.
Light flooded into it in wave after wave until, at last, the storm was gone.
The cave fell dark again.
Only moonlight remained, glinting off the blood on the stone.
Falwon knelt there in the growing pool, clutching the gem to his chest as tears slid down his face. Grief hit him first, sharp and immediate—but it did not come alone. Questions followed. Heavy ones. Crushing ones.
What had Zindreyth just made him part of?
What would this mean for him? For the world?
How in all the hells was he supposed to prevent another dragon war?
How was he supposed to choose the next Dragonborn?
For a moment, anger rose in him—not at the cultists, not even at Miraak, but at Zindreyth himself. At the selfishness of burdening him with such a task and then slipping away before explaining any of it.
But the anger passed.
Or at least quieted.
Falwon rose slowly to his feet and looked down at the gem, now glowing softly with the soul inside it.
"Fine," he said, voice rough. "Have it your way, friend."
He wiped his tears with the back of his hand.
"But one day... we'll meet on the Far Shores."
A bitter little smile tugged at his mouth.
"And when we do, you're getting an earful about this."
He let out a short laugh to himself—tired, broken, but real—and gathered his things. His clothes were streaked and soaked with blood now, but he barely seemed to notice.
At the mouth of the cave, he stopped and looked back one last time at the fallen wyrm.
"Until then, my friend."
Then Falwon turned and disappeared into the mountain storm.
Chapter End—