The streets of Solitude thinned as night pressed closer, the torches burning brighter against the stone. My legs ached from the climb up the hill, but the sight of the inn's sign swinging in the wind was enough to push me forward.
The Winking Skeever.
I remembered the name, vaguely. A place I had walked into a hundred times on a screen, where menus popped up and I picked dialogue options with a button press. But here the wood was real, weathered by storms and salt. The hinges creaked like they were ready to give. And the glow spilling through the windows was warm in a way no loading screen had ever been.
I pushed the door open.
Heat and noise struck me first. The fire in the hearth roared, casting long shadows over stone walls and wooden beams blackened with age. The smell of roasting meat wrapped around me, thick with grease and spice. Voices overlapped in the air—soldiers talking over ale, merchants bragging, travelers trading stories. Boots thumped against floorboards. A mug slammed against a table, followed by a burst of laughter.
For a moment, I just stood there, frozen in the doorway.
It was too much after days of snow and silence. Too bright, too loud, too alive.
Someone cursed behind me, shoving past with a mutter about blocking the door. I blinked, forced my legs to move, and stepped fully inside.
The innkeeper spotted me almost immediately. A heavyset man with thinning hair, polishing a tankard as if it had personally offended him. "You need a room? Food? Ale?" His tone was brisk, businesslike, but not unkind.
"Both," I said, though my voice rasped rough from disuse. "Room. Food. Ale."
He nodded once, waving a hand toward an empty table near the hearth. "Sit. I'll have it brought to you. Room's ten septims for the night. Pay after you've eaten if you like."
I slid onto the bench, the wood groaning under my weight. My body sagged against it, every muscle screaming to finally stop moving. The fire's warmth licked against my frozen hands, thawing the ache in my knuckles.
For the first time in days, I felt like I wasn't about to collapse where I stood.
The food came quick. A trencher of bread, still warm. A bowl of stew thick with meat and carrots. A tankard of ale that foamed over the rim. My stomach growled so loud a soldier at the next table laughed under his breath. I ignored him and dug in.
The bread tore rough in my hands, soft inside, salty and perfect. The stew burned my tongue, but I didn't care. Every bite sank like a stone into the hollow pit of my stomach. The ale washed it all down, bitter and sharp, but the weight in my chest loosened with every gulp.
I hadn't realized how empty I was until that first bite. How much I had been moving just to move, running on scraps and potions and fear.
The fire crackled. My shoulders loosened. My eyes drifted closed for half a second before a sound caught them open again.
Music.
A lute.
The notes rose clear above the noise of the inn, sweet and practiced, weaving through the clatter of mugs and the drone of voices. A woman's voice followed—low, warm, carrying words of love and loss that I couldn't hold onto long enough to repeat.
I knew that voice.
My head turned slowly, eyes drawn to the far corner where the bard stood. She was older now, hair streaked with gray, her hands steady on the lute's neck. Wrinkles lined the corners of her eyes, carved deep by years of smiling or frowning—I couldn't tell which.
But I remembered her.
From the game.
In the Winking Skeever, there had always been a bard. She had sung the same songs every time I walked in. Her face hadn't aged, her voice hadn't cracked, her life hadn't changed. An eternal loop of songs coded into the world.
But here—
Here she was real.
Older. Flesh and blood. Time had touched her like it touched everyone else.
My chest tightened.
It was a small thing, almost nothing. A single face among dozens. But it shattered something in me I hadn't even realized I was holding onto. The belief—somewhere deep—that this world would still be just a game if I looked at it sideways. That the people here were only actors repeating lines until I stepped close enough to trigger them.
But no.
This was no script.
She had aged. She had lived. And she would die someday, whether or not I ever spoke to her.
The song ended. Applause rose, scattered but genuine. The bard dipped her head, strummed another chord, and began anew.
I stared into my ale, the foam clinging to the rim like frost. My throat felt tight.
This world was real.
And I was trapped in it.
…
The inn thinned out as the night stretched on. Soldiers drifted upstairs in pairs, merchants slumped asleep over their mugs, travelers stumbled into the cold with slurred words and unsteady steps. The fire burned low, throwing embers instead of flames.
I sat alone with the dregs of my ale, watching the bard pack away her lute.
Part of me wanted to stand, to go to her, to ask something stupid like if she remembered me. As if she could. As if I hadn't been a stranger watching her through glass all this time.
But my legs stayed planted. What would I even say?
So I sat until the innkeeper came with a key, gruff and tired. "Up the stairs, second door left."
The room was small but clean. A straw bed, a chest, a single candle flickering on the sill. I closed the door, set my pack down, and sat on the edge of the bed.
The silence pressed in.
I thought of the bard's face. Older now. Human. Real.
And I thought of Miraak's eyes, of Hermaeus Mora's shadow curling at the edge of vision, of Meridia's voice still echoing somewhere in my skull.
The two truths collided—this was a world of people who lived and aged and sang songs for coin, and it was also a world of gods and monsters watching me like a piece on a board.
I lay back on the straw mattress, the smell of hay thick in my nose. My body ached for rest, but sleep didn't come easy.
Somewhere below, faint through the floorboards, the bard sang one last song before silence claimed the inn.
Her voice carried me under, uneasy and restless, into dreams I couldn't remember when I woke.