The air inside the temple was wrong.
Cold, not like Skyrim's winter cold, but something that seemed to bleed into the marrow. Each step echoed against stone that felt dead beneath my boots. Even the light from the torch in my hand seemed hesitant, its glow swallowed by shadows before it could reach the walls.
Kilkreath wasn't a ruin, not in the way the Nord tombs were. Its stones stood strong, its pillars unbroken. But still, something had hollowed it out. The presence of Meridia lingered faintly in the carved walls, in the symmetry of its halls, but it was smothered beneath a heavy darkness.
I could feel the Beacon's hum in my pack, steady, urging me forward.
When I reached the first chamber, I saw them.
Figures stood in the gloom, thin outlines of men and women, their bodies transparent and wavering like smoke. Eyes burning pale in the dark. They turned toward me without sound, as though they had been waiting for me since the moment I crossed the threshold.
Shades.
The first rushed me. Its form rippled, but the strike of its spectral blade carried weight. My arm shuddered as I caught it on my sword, sparks dancing where steel met nothingness. I gritted my teeth and shoved back. The shade dissolved into smoke, then reformed, slashing again.
I cut through it. My blade met resistance, but the thing shrieked without a mouth, shuddering apart before knitting itself together again.
They didn't die easy.
By the time the last one fell apart into nothing, my breath burned in my chest and sweat ran down my back despite the cold. I knelt by the altar at the end of the chamber, the stone darkened by some foul stain. With the Beacon raised, light flared out and sank into the altar. The gloom recoiled, the air clearing for just a heartbeat.
Then it thickened again.
The next hallway bled shadows. The more I moved forward, the heavier it pressed down. I could almost hear whispers at the edges of my hearing. Words I couldn't catch.
Another chamber. More shades.
They swarmed in pairs this time, blades cutting from opposite sides. I stumbled, my arm jarred from a heavy parry. Pain shot through my shoulder. One shade's weapon scraped my side, the wound burning cold. I struck blindly, forcing it back, then slammed the edge of my shield into the other's skull. It made no sound, no grunt, only a hollow wail as the form cracked apart.
I finished them in a flurry, wild and desperate. My breaths came ragged, the torch flickering low.
At the altar, I lifted the Beacon again. Its light burned brighter this time, searing the chamber clean. The shades dissolved, not shattered, but erased. For a moment, silence felt real.
But it never lasted.
Kilkreath was full of them. Corridor after corridor, chamber after chamber, each with its own altar drowned in shadow. Each demanding blood and strength to cleanse.
And each time, the shades grew stronger.
Some carried axes, others bows that loosed arrows of pure darkness. One hurled itself at me with claws like a beast, dragging me down before I drove steel through its chest. The fight blurred into survival. My shield cracked. My blade dulled. My arms screamed with weight.
By the fifth altar, my legs trembled beneath me. My cloak was torn, and my side bled where a shade's blade had cut deeper than the rest.
But every time, when I placed the Beacon against the stone, light erupted. And every time, I swore I could feel Meridia watching. Silent, distant, as if measuring me against something unseen.
It wasn't just a cleansing. It was a test.
When I finally pushed through the last hall, the air shifted. The cold grew sharper, biting harder against my lungs. The silence deepened until I could hear nothing but the beat of my own heart.
And then I saw it.
The great chamber stretched out before me, vast and heavy with shadow. At its center stood the final altar, drowned completely in black. The darkness wasn't absence—it moved, twisting like smoke, churning as if alive.
From within it, a figure stirred.
At first, I thought it another shade, but then the shadows peeled back, and I saw him.
A man stepped forward, clad in robes that once might have belonged to a priest. His skin was pale, sickly, his eyes hollow pools of night. But it was the way the shadows clung to him, dripping from his hands, that froze me where I stood.
Malkoran.
The corrupted priest.
The shades that filled the chamber turned their faces toward me, dozens of them, silent and waiting for his word. The darkness gathered around his feet, as though it lived for him, breathed with him.
He raised a hand, and the air grew heavier.
"You dare bring her light into my sanctum," his voice rasped, low and venomous, echoing through the chamber as if spoken from a thousand throats at once. "You will be unmade, as all her servants shall be."
The shades began to shift, their weapons forming from the smoke. My hand tightened on the hilt of my blade, though my body screamed against moving.
Malkoran stepped closer, the darkness following like a tide. The glow of his eyes burned through the black.
The Beacon pulsed at my side, trembling with light.
I raised my sword, breath ragged. The fight was coming, and I knew it would not be like the rest.
The shades closed in.
Malkoran's laughter filled the chamber.
And the world sank into shadow.