I came back hard. Like I'd been hurled out of the sky and slammed into stone.
One breath, and the air scorched my lungs. The stink of burnt dust, rot, and whatever Malkoran had become filled my chest like poison. My back screamed when I tried to roll over, and for a second I thought I'd cracked something.
The chamber was quiet now. Too quiet.
I pushed myself up slow, palms slipping against grit and old blood. My arms shook like wet rope. Every bit of me screamed to just lie there, to sink into the cold floor and let the dark take me.
But I was alive. Somehow.
The Beacon was still there. A faint glow pulsing a few feet away, like it had been waiting for me to notice it. Its light cut soft across the blackened walls, showing scars where shadow and fire had torn the stone apart.
Malkoran was gone. Not even ash left. Just a mark in the floor—charred black, deep, like the rock itself had been hollowed by the fight.
I dragged myself closer, kneeling to scoop the Beacon up. It was warm, humming faint in my palm. Not gentle—never gentle—but steady. Relentless.
"Figures," I muttered, my voice little more than a rasp. My throat was raw, dry like sand. "Not even a 'good job.' Just right back into it."
Meridia's voice echoed faint in the back of my skull, her last words before she'd thrown me out of her presence. You shine because I will it. Do not mistake that light for your own.
My grip tightened on the Beacon until my knuckles ached.
Part of me wanted to hurl it against the wall. Smash it until the glow died, until her voice went quiet for good. But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. It wasn't just hers now. Somehow it had become mine, too.
The chamber was dead silent except for my breathing. No more shades. No more voices. No more screams.
But I still felt watched.
Not by her.
Something colder. Heavier. The kind of stare you don't see, but you feel in the back of your skull.
I staggered to my feet, every step like knives up my shins. My ribs hurt when I breathed too deep. My right arm burned where the voidblade had grazed me, skin raw and torn.
The shadows twitched at the edges of the room. Just barely. Like they were trying to move when I wasn't looking.
My pulse spiked.
"I know you're there," I said under my breath. The words sounded stupid the second they left my mouth, but I couldn't help it.
No answer. Just the steady hum of the Beacon.
I shoved the thing into my satchel and slung it back over my shoulder. Its glow leaked through the fabric, soft but unignorable.
My head pounded. Meridia's arrogance still clung to me, even now, even when she was gone. Her words had teeth, biting deeper the more I thought about them. But behind that pride, she had been… almost afraid.
Not of me. Not of losing her Beacon.
Of something else.
Hermaeus Mora.
I'd felt him here. The whisper at the edge of the fight. The wet laugh brushing across my ear when I thought it was over. The way the shadows didn't look right now, even when the chamber was empty.
It wasn't like Meridia's blinding light. Mora didn't force himself on you. He crept. He slipped into the cracks. He made you wonder if you'd already been his long before you noticed.
I pressed my palms against my temples. My skull throbbed.
Why me?
What did he want with me?
The question twisted in my gut, and for the first time I let myself actually consider it.
Mora had always been about knowledge, secrets, the things no one else was supposed to see. But it wasn't just the whispers now. He was circling me. Biding time. Pushing at the edges of whatever this new… body of mine was.
Meridia called it a wound. The gap between my flesh and my soul.
And if Mora really was pushing into that crack—if he was already reaching through—then maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn't about the Beacon, or about her crusade against the dark. Maybe I was already marked.
My stomach twisted cold.
Miraak.
The name surfaced like a stone breaking water. I didn't know how I knew it—maybe from Skyrim, maybe from the fragments of memory that didn't fit neatly anymore. But it stuck in my chest like a blade.
The First Dragonborn. Mora's champion. A man who had bent under the weight of secrets and power until he wasn't a man anymore.
If Mora wanted me… if he was grooming me the same way he had Miraak… then sooner or later I wouldn't just have to face Mora. I'd have to face Miraak himself.
And the thought of that froze me harder than Malkoran ever could.
I wasn't ready. Not even close.
I pressed my back against the wall and slid down until I was sitting again, legs stretched out in front of me. My sword lay across my lap, stained black from shadow-blood. I couldn't bring myself to clean it. Not yet.
I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling. The cracks in the stone looked like veins, spiderwebbing outward, black smoke still clinging faint at the edges.
"You're not dragging me down," I whispered, voice shaking more than I wanted it to. "You hear me? I'm not yours. I'll never be yours."
The Beacon hummed in my satchel, louder now. Not comforting—reminding.
But underneath it, faint, soft, came another sound.
A chuckle. Wet. Endless.
I shoved my palms against my ears, but it didn't stop.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash the Beacon, smash my head against the wall, do anything to get it out.
But the laugh faded on its own, slithering back into the dark where it had come from.
Leaving me shaking. Breath ragged.
I don't know how long I sat there. Minutes. Hours. Time had no meaning in that place.
But at some point, my eyes shut. My body sagged forward. Sleep dragged at me like chains, heavy and merciless.
I told myself I'd only close my eyes for a second. Just to breathe. Just to let my muscles stop screaming.
But the last thing I felt before it pulled me under was the Beacon's steady hum, beating like a second heart against my chest.
And the last thing I saw—when the dark finally swallowed me—was not Malkoran. Not Meridia.
It was a figure standing in the void. Masked. Cloaked. Staff in hand.
Miraak.
Waiting.
Watching.