Exiting the prison, Torin found himself wandering toward the cemetery.
His feet carried him there without conscious thought—through the fog-shrouded streets, past the darkened houses, between the ancient pines that stood guard over the dead.
The air was cold and damp, heavy with the scent of wet earth and old stone, but he barely noticed. His mind was elsewhere, turning over everything Sheogorath had said, everything he'd seen, everything he still didn't understand.
Before long, he was sitting on the grass near Camilla's grave, a bottle of mead in his hand.
He leaned back against the back of the weathered headstone, stretching his legs out in front of him, and gazed up at the moons hanging low in the sky. Masser and Secunda, pale and distant, casting their silver light across the fog.
This wasn't for Camilla's sake. Much as he loved her, much as he owed her, this visit wasn't about honoring her memory. It wasfor him. He needed a quiet place to think. To weigh his options. To sort through the chaos in his head and figure out what to do next.
And this spot—this hill, this grave, this sacred ground where he'd come again and again over the years—brought him peace like no other.
He took a long swig of mead, letting the warmth spread through his chest, and closed his eyes.
Sheogorath had all but confirmed it.
If his words could be trusted—and that was a very big if—then Hrogar didn't kill his daughter. His memories were still sealed when it happened. The monster inside him was still locked away, still suppressed, still dreaming.
The man who'd raised Eydis, who'd loved her, who'd tried so desperately to be worthy of her—that man was not guilty... of her death at least.
Going by that same logic, the timeline became clear.
Hrogar had been in control when the guards surrounded his house. Calm. Methodical.
Then he'd gone to Krovos's cabin.
And after that... after that, he'd become an absolute mess. Muttering. Laughing. Crying. Unable to string together a coherent sentence. The kind of wreck that only happened when something inside you had been torn apart and put back together wrong.
The culprit became obvious.
Krovos.
He'd done something to Hrogar. Broken through the barriers. Woken up the monster... and destroyed his mind.
But that all depended on trusting a Daedric Prince.
Torin took another drink, letting the mead burn its way down.
Sheogorath was the Prince of Madness. His sphere was chaos, insanity, the unraveling of the rational mind. He lied for fun. He told the truth for fun. He did whatever amused him in the moment, and the consequences—for mortals, for kingdoms, for the very fabric of reality—were irrelevant.
Even if Torin did trust the Mad God's words, how would he prove any of it?
Oh, yes, the Mad God came to me. We had a lovely chat over tea down in the dungeon—he didn't drink any, but he did threaten to turn a man into cheese—and he hinted to me all about how Hrogar definitely didn't do it.
Torin could already picture himself in one of those medieval contraptions where they locked the criminal's head and hands and forced him into a bent-over state so peasants could throw rotten tomatoes at him.
The stocks, that was the word. He could see it clearly: himself, bent over, tomatoes splattering against his face, while the crowd jeered and the Jarl looked on in disappointment.
Should've stuck to bandit hunting, they'd say. Should've stayed in Whiterun where you belong.
He shook his head, pushing the image away.
In the first place, his purpose in coming here was to build goodwill for the College, to show the Nords that mages could be trusted, to prove that it wasn't just a den of elven schemers and dangerous heretics.
Considering all of that, was it even a good idea to keep chasing after Krovos? To try to expose him instead of letting things take their natural course?
Torin took another long drink from the bottle, the mead warm now, almost lukewarm, but he didn't care. He needed something to steady his nerves, something to dull the edge of the thoughts that kept circling back to the same impossible conclusion.
Hrogar had all but confessed. In the eyes of the Jarl and his men, there was no question. The woodcutter had been found kneeling over his own bloodied wife, covered in her blood, a dagger in her chest.
The journal had detailed years of planning, of manipulation, of monstrous intent. The guards who'd surrounded his house had seen him fight—seen the magic, the illusions, the cold, calculating way he'd fought his way out of the encirclement.
To anyone looking from the outside, the case was closed.
As for Krovos...
Torin had asked around. Discreetly, of course—casual questions, dropped into conversations with guards and merchants and innkeepers.
The hunter had been in Falkreath for a few years now, living in that cabin in the woods, keeping to himself. He didn't interact much with people, didn't come into town often, didn't cause trouble.
But he wasn't a complete stranger. He'd helped more than one person in the wilderness—pulled a lost child out of a ravine, guided a merchant through a blizzard, chased off a bear that had been terrorizing a farmstead.
He was trusted. Respected, even.
Exposing someone like that—someone with a reputation for helping, for protecting, for being the kind of person you wanted to find when you were lost in the woods and the sun was going down—would be near impossible.
Especially when all Torin had to go on was a strange feeling and the words of a batshit crazy up-jumped elemental entity who turned people into cheese for fun.
To make matters worse, the Vigilants of Stendarr would show up sooner or later. They'd been summoned, after all—the guards had sent word the night of the harvester attack. And if there was even a hint that the problem wasn't resolved, that the killer might still be out there, they'd take over the whole investigation.
They'd poke their noses into every corner of Falkreath, interrogate every citizen, turn the town upside down in their search for Daedric corruption.
And then they'd hoard all the credit.
Not that Torin cared about credit for its own sake. But the College needed this. The reputation of mages in Skyrim needed this, not to mention Kodlak's soul and afterlife.
If the Vigilants swept in and "solved" the case that Torin had been sent to handle, everything he'd done—the hours of tracking, the fight with the harvester, the discovery of the shrine and the journal—would be worth nothing.
But on the other hand...
Torin was ninety-nine percent sure Krovos was like Hrogar. A member of Molag Bal's murder cult who came to Falkreath to find Hrogar, or someone who stumbled into that horrible cave and received the worst kind of inspiration...
Either way, he was a predator who wore a human face and played by his own rules. And someone like that—someone who'd caused this much trouble, who'd left this many bodies in his wake—wouldn't linger.
He'd pack up soon enough. Move on. Find another hunting ground, probably outside Skyrim, where no one knew his face or his name.
And then he wouldn't be Torin's problem anymore.
Not Falkreath's problem. Not Skyrim's problem.
Torin stared at the bottle in his hand, at the amber liquid swirling in the moonlight, and tried to convince himself that was enough. That he'd done his job. That he'd caught a monster—albeit the wrong one—and that was all anyone had asked of him.
The College would be pleased. The Jarl would be satisfied. The people of Falkreath would sleep easier, knowing that the man who'd killed their daughters and mothers and sisters was locked away, awaiting justice.
And Krovos would walk free.
Torin finished the mead in one long swallow, set the bottle down in the grass, and leaned his head back against the headstone.
The moons gazed down at him, silent and indifferent.
They offered no answers.
Then a voice came from beside him—soft, hesitant, barely more than a whisper.
"You seem conflicted. This one can tell."
Torin turned his head and felt something loosen in his chest at the sight of K'hila standing in the moonlight.
She looked smaller than he remembered. Thinner, maybe. Her grey dress was stained with dirt and what might have been blood, and her black fur was matted in places, tangled with twigs and dead leaves. But her yellow eyes were clear, sharp, and they were looking at him with an expression that was far too wise for a child her age.
Torin smiled slightly—tired, genuine, grateful for the company even if he hadn't asked for it.
"That I am," he said with a nod.
He opened his mouth to add that it was nothing she should concern herself with—the automatic response, the one adults always gave children when they asked questions that didn't have easy answers. But he swallowed the words before they could escape.
Because a thought had struck him. A realization that should have been obvious from the beginning.
K'hila had seen the monster's servant. The true culprit behind all of this. The one with the kind eyes and the white face, who'd tricked her, separated her from her caravan, hunted her through these woods for months.
And if that servant was indeed Krovos...
Wouldn't she be able to recognize him?
But would putting her in that position do her any good? Dragging a child—a traumatized child who'd been running from this monster for months—into the middle of an investigation that had already gotten people killed?
Making her stand in front of the Jarl and his guards and point a finger at a man who'd done nothing but help people, who had a reputation for kindness, who would look at her with those flat eyes and smile?
Would she even want to be in that position?
Just as Torin's mind began to overthink—as it usually did, spiraling down into darker and darker possibilities—K'hila spoke again.
"The one you caught isn't the monster's servant." Her voice was quiet, but certain. "Not the one K'hila knows."
Torin sighed and nodded, his shoulders slumping.
"No," he said. "No, he most likely isn't." He paused, running a hand through his hair. "And maybe only you can prove that. Your testimony might just be enough to cast doubt. To make people look closer at Krovos."
He shook his head bitterly, his jaw tightening.
"But would those stubborn Nords take the word of a Khajiit child? An orphan, no less? Someone they've been ignoring for months, someone who's been sleeping in their graveyards?"
He frowned. "They'd dismiss you before you even finished speaking. They'd say you were confused. Lying. Looking for attention."
K'hila said nothing. Just watched him with those ancient, knowing eyes.
Torin looked away, back up at the moons.
Is there really no choice but to let this go? he wondered. To accept that Hrogar will hang for crimes he didn't commit, and Krovos will walk free to kill again?
Or maybe there was another way. A darker way.
He could pretend. Smile at Krovos, shake his hand, thank him for his help. Let everyone believe the case was closed. And then, when no one was looking, when the hunter was alone in his cabin or walking through the woods, Torin could find him. Could end him. Bash his head in the dark and throw his corpse to the wolves.
No trial. No witnesses. No proof needed.
Only justice.
His face darkened at the thought. Because even then, he wouldn't be able to rest easy because he wasn't sure Krovos was the culprit. Not completely. All he had was a feeling. A suspicion. The word of a Daedric Prince who lied for fun... and K'hila, whose memory of the event was fuzzy at best, by her own admission.
And in the off chance that Krovos was innocent—in the off chance that Torin was wrong, that Sheogorath had been playing with him, then what difference would there be between Torin and Molag Bal's cultist filth?
Killing an innocent man in cold blood. Murdering someone based on nothing but a feeling.
That was exactly the kind of thing Hrogar had done.
Torin closed his eyes and let his head thunk back against the headstone. There are no good options, he thought. Only bad ones and worse ones.
Sensing Torin's distress—the tension in his shoulders, the weight of his silence, the way his jaw kept clenching and unclenching—K'hila settled down beside him.
Her small body was warm against his arm, a surprising comfort in the cold night air. She reached for his hand, her tiny fingers barely able to wrap around two of his, and held on with a grip that was stronger than it looked.
Torin opened his eyes and looked at her.
His heart overflowed with complicated emotions—gratitude, protectiveness, a strange kind of sorrow that he couldn't quite name.
Here he was, a grown man, almost fifty in mental age if you counted the years from his past life, dumping all his troubles on a little child. Hoping she'd fix them. Hoping she'd make everything better just by being there.
In the face of her well-being, he thought, what do Krovos and all my problems really matter?
He opened his palm invitingly, and K'hila placed her hand inside it without hesitation. Her fur was soft against his calloused skin, her fingers cool in the night air.
Torin smiled—a real smile, tired but genuine.
"Whatever happens," he said, his voice low and steady, "you don't have to worry about any of it. None of this is your burden to carry."
He looked straight into her eyes, those yellow, knowing eyes that had seen too much and survived anyway.
"How about you come with me? We'll have to stay sometime in the College—Winterhold's cold, but the fire's warm, and there's food enough for both of us. But after that, after I've finished what I need to do..."
He paused, choosing his words carefully. "I can take you wherever you want to go..."
K'hila seemed surprised. Her ears perked up, her tail twitched, and for a moment something flickered across her face—longing, maybe, or hope, or the echo of a wish she'd thought she'd buried a long time ago.
Then she smiled.
It was a small smile, tentative, but it reached her eyes.
"This one finds your offer most intriguing," she said, and there was a lightness to her voice that hadn't been there before. "I think it will be very fun. Traveling with the big, brave one. Seeing new places. Eating food that isn't stolen..."
She paused, and the smile faded.
Then she shook her head firmly.
"However... this one has already found her place. Where she belongs." Her voice was quiet, but certain. "In fact, it's time to leave, and this one only came to say goodbye."
Torin stared at her in surprise.
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Disappointment flooded through him—sharp and unexpected, hot in his chest.
He'd grown fond of this little Khajiit girl in a very short time. Her courage, her cleverness, her stubborn refusal to be broken by everything the world had thrown at her.
He'd wanted to protect her. To give her something better than sleeping in crypts and eating scraps.
But was that what she wanted? Or was that just what he wanted?
He was a warrior. A scholar. A man who hunted monsters and studied ancient magic. He traveled constantly, fought constantly, put himself in danger constantly.
That wasn't a life for a child. Not for any child, and especially not for one who'd already been through so much.
He couldn't give her the peace and stability she deserved. Not now. Maybe not for years.
Torin sighed, the sound heavy with resignation, and did his best to keep the disappointment from showing on his face.
"Oh?" He kept his voice light, curious. "And where would that be?"
K'hila smiled—a secret smile, the kind that held mysteries she wasn't ready to share.
"It's a good place," she said. "A safe place. This one will be happy there."
She withdrew her hand from his and stood up, brushing dirt from her grey dress. The moonlight caught her fur, turning it silver at the edges.
"But before this one goes..." She looked down at him, her yellow eyes serious. "This one will help you one last time."
She shook her head disapprovingly, like a mother scolding a stubborn child.
"Otherwise, this one will have to continue to worry about you. And this one has done enough worrying for one lifetime."
Before Torin could respond—before he could ask what she meant, how she intended to help, what she was planning—she turned around and sprinted into the fog.
Her small form vanished almost instantly, swallowed by the mist, her footsteps fading into silence.
Torin raised his hand. Opened his mouth to call out her name.
But he didn't.
He just sat there, his hand still raised, his mouth still open, and watched the fog swirl where she'd been.
K'hila will be okay, he told himself. She's survived this long. She'll survive whatever comes next.
He lowered his hand. Leaned back against the headstone.
And raised his bottle.
...
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