Torin drank, and waited, and tried to find a solution to the Krovos dilemma.
The mead was warm now—unpleasantly so—but he drank it anyway, letting the alcohol blur the sharp edges of his thoughts. The bottle was half empty, then a quarter, then nearly gone, and still no answers came.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find a path that ended with him keeping his honor intact and accomplishing his goal. Every option led to the same dead end.
Either he let Krovos walk free and lived with the guilt of knowing what the man would do next, or he found a way to stop him and destroyed everything he'd been working toward.
His mind wandered to Kodlak.
The old Harbinger had faced impossible choices before—Torin knew that. He'd led the Companions through prosperity and hardship, and never wavered. Never compromised. Never done something he knew was wrong just because it was easier.
What would Kodlak do in Torin's shoes?
Torin scoffed, the sound bitter in the quiet night. The answer was so obvious it was almost stupid to even consider.
Kodlak wouldn't let things be.
He'd continue to hound Krovos. Would follow him, watch him, gather evidence. Would confront him openly, honorably, and let the chips fall where they may. Consequences be damned. Reputation be damned. Plans be damned.
The old man thought his honor more important than his own life. He'd told Torin that once, years ago, when Torin still thought honor was just a word politicians used to fool people.
Without honor, Kodlak had said, we're no better than the beasts we hunt. Without honor, we're nothing.
And to Kodlak, only the gods could judge a man's choices. Not other men. Not Jarls or kings or the fickle opinions of the masses. So long as he knew he was doing the right thing—so long as his conscience was clear—then nothing else mattered.
As for Torin...
He knew himself very well. He wasn't quite so selfless. He cared about his reputation, his plans, the future he was trying to build. He cared about Kodlak.
But would he go so far as to let Krovos get away with murder simply because doing anything else would ruin his plans?
Torin stared at the bottle in his hand, at the amber liquid swirling in the moonlight.
That, he didn't know.
He was drowning in conflicting emotions—guilt and duty, honor and ambition, the weight of everything he'd done and everything he still had to do. The mead wasn't helping. Nothing was helping.
Just as he was about to give up and drink the rest of the bottle in one long swallow, a figure emerged from the fog.
Auri.
She walked toward him with her usual silent grace, her bow slung across her back, her amber eyes sharp and alert. She stopped a few feet away, looking down at him with an expression that was hard to read.
"There you are," she said. "I've been looking for you."
Torin looked up at her, feeling slightly tipsy and more than slightly reluctant to move. The headstone was comfortable. The grass was soft. The moons were pretty.
He sighed and forced himself to focus.
"The guards found something," Auri continued. "Runil thinks you need to see it."
Torin looked down at his bottle—empty now, somehow, though he didn't remember finishing it—and then back at Auri.
"What is it?" he asked.
Auri just shook her head, her lips pressing into a thin line. "He said you should see it for yourself."
Torin heaved another sigh—long, heavy, the kind that came from somewhere deep in his chest—and pushed himself to his feet. The world spun for a moment, then steadied. He tucked the empty bottle into his belt pouch, brushed dirt from his trousers, and met Auri's eyes.
"Lead the way," he said.
She turned and walked into the fog without another word.
Torin followed, leaving Camilla's grave behind, leaving the moons and the headstones and the silence of the cemetery. Somewhere ahead, something waited.
He just hoped it was the answer he'd been looking for.
...
As they walked through the fog-shrouded streets toward the Hall of the Dead, Torin felt the mead's haze begin to lift. The cold air helped—sharp and clean, cutting through the warmth in his chest like a blade through fog. He rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and forced his mind to focus.
Could it be that a new body was found?
The thought sent a jolt through him. If that was the case—if someone else had been killed since Hrogar's arrest—then it was exactly what he needed to salvage the situation. Fresh evidence. A new victim, killed while the woodcutter was locked in a cell under a dozen watchful eyes.
It would prove, beyond any doubt, that the real killer was still out there.
But would Krovos be stupid enough to kill again? So soon? In the same place, with Hrogar already arrested and the whole hold on high alert?
Torin's eyes narrowed. The hunter was clever. Cautious. He wouldn't risk everything now, not when he was so close to walking away clean.
Unless... unless he wanted to. Unless he was arrogant enough to believe he couldn't be caught. Unless he was sending a message.
Oblivious to his thoughts, Auri stepped up to the door of the Hall and knocked—three sharp raps, the kind that demanded attention. The door opened almost immediately, and Runil's pale face appeared in the gap.
His expression was tense, urgent, but there was something else there too. Something that looked almost like hope.
"It's a good thing you came when you did," the old Altmer said, stepping aside to let them in. "I think this might absolve Hrogar. From the killings in Falkreath, at least."
Torin's gaze sharpened. His heart, which had been sluggish with mead and exhaustion, began to beat faster.
He wasn't used to such conveniences falling out of the sky into his lap. The world didn't work that way—not for him, not for anyone. If something seemed too good to be true, it usually was.
But if Runil was right...
He wouldn't complain. He'd take the gift and run with it.
He and Auri stepped inside, and Runil quickly closed the door behind them, shutting out the fog and the cold and the watching night.
The Hall smelled of incense and old bones and the faint, sweet herbs the priest used in his embalming work. Candles flickered on every surface, casting dancing shadows across the stone walls.
Runil led them to his work table—a long slab of dark wood, scarred by years of use, currently covered by a heavy cloth. Whatever lay beneath it was large. The size of a filled hemp sack, maybe, or larger. The shape was irregular, lumpy, impossible to identify.
The old elf took hold of the cloth and pulled it away.
Torin froze.
Beneath the cloth lay a skeleton.
Small—so small, so terribly small—its bones arranged on the table with the careful precision of someone who respected the dead.
The bones were old, stained brown in some places, touched with hues of green in others, evidence of exposure to sun and humidity and the slow creep of algae across surfaces that should have been buried.
It undoubtedly belonged to a child.
But the elongated jaw gave it away. The pronounced canines, too large for any human or elven mouth. The shape of the skull, the curve of the orbital ridges, the slight upward tilt of the nasal cavity.
This was no child of man or mer.
This was a Khajiit child.
Torin stared at the skeleton, his mind reeling, his heart pounding. The mead was gone now—burned away by shock and the sudden, creeping horror of realization.
"This one had died at least two years ago... after recieving the same torture as Eydis, judging by the bones..." Runil declared, his voice clinical, measured, the voice of a priest who had learned to distance himself from the horrors he witnessed.
"And yet the latest entry in Hrogar's journal is only a few months old." He paused, his brow furrowing. "The timeline doesn't—"
Torin barely registered what he was saying.
He couldn't hear anything but the thumping of his own heart in his chest—loud, insistent, drowning out the world. He stepped toward the table, his legs moving without his conscious command, his eyes fixed on the small, tragic remains.
He inspected the bones. The elongated jaw. The pronounced canines. The delicate structure of the skull, so different from a human child's, so unmistakably Khajiit.
No distinguishing features remained—not after two years in a shallow grave, exposed to rain and sun and the slow, patient work of decay.
The flesh was gone. The fur was gone. But there were patches of cloth clinging to the bones. Faded, tattered, barely recognizable as clothing. The pieces were very small—too small for an adult, too small for any but the tiniest of bodies.
The color was grey.
Torin's breath caught in his throat.
Grey. Like K'hila's dress.
His eyes moved to the tufts of fur still clinging to the bones in places—caught in the joints, pressed against the underside of the ribs, matted into the fabric of the dress.
The color was black.
Black. Like K'hila's fur.
The size didn't differ either. This skeleton was small—so terribly small—but it was the same size as the little girl who'd been hiding in graveyards and eating bread from Runil's back door. The same size as the child who'd sat beside him under the moonlight, who'd held his hand with her tiny fingers, who'd promised to help him one last time.
Torin's hand, shaky, reached for the little skeleton's hand.
The bones were dry and brittle, fragile as old parchment. Two fingers were missing—lost to animals, maybe, or simply crumbled away with time.
The whole thing separated in his palm, the tiny metacarpals sliding apart, the delicate phalanges scattering across the table.
There was no warmth in them. No life. No spirit.
But they felt oh so very familiar.
She'd held his hand. Just an hour ago. Her fingers had wrapped around his, small and warm and full of quiet strength.
How?
Suddenly, a great many things began to make sense.
The way a child had been able to survive so long in the forest—months on end, through storms and cold and hunger, evading guards and hunters and a Daedric harvester. The way she'd appeared and disappeared at will, leaving behind no tracks, no traces, no evidence that she'd ever been there at all.
The way the guards had searched for her and found nothing.
She was already dead.
Torin's mind reeled, trying to reject the conclusion even as every piece of evidence screamed it was true. But then he remembered what she'd said to him when they first met in the cemetery, her yellow eyes wide and perplexed.
"You can see K'hila? Your kind always looks through this one."
He hadn't understood then. Had thought she was just a child, bitter and lonely, commenting on the way Nords disregarded Khajiit.
But she'd meant it literally.
No one else could see her. No one else had ever seen her. He was the first—perhaps the only—one who had looked at her and truly seen.
Torin couldn't help but chuckle.
The sound was bitter, hollow, wrong. Sorrow welled up from somewhere deep within him—a grief that had no name, no shape, no easy outlet. He'd known this child for only a few days, and yet... and yet she'd burrowed into his heart in a way that few people ever had.
A part of him might have expected this. Might have known, on some level, that something wasn't right. That a child couldn't survive alone in those woods for so long. That the guards weren't that incompetent.
But knowing something and facing it were two different things.
Facing it meant accepting that she was gone. That she'd been gone for years. That the little girl who'd held his hand and called him "big, brave one" was nothing more than a ghost, lingering in the world because she couldn't—or wouldn't—let go.
Torin gently lowered the bones back into place, arranging them on the table the way Runil had laid them out. His hands were steady now—too steady, unnaturally so—but his face was beginning to twist.
The sorrow was rapidly turning into rage.
He could feel it building in his chest, hot and hungry, spreading through his veins like fire. His magicka flared in response, crackling around his fingers, making the candles flicker and the shadows dance.
The air in the room grew heavy, charged, thick with the promise of violence.
The change was so sudden, so abrupt, that both Auri and Runil stopped their conversation and turned to look at him.
Auri's amber eyes widened. She'd never seen him like this. Never seen the barely contained fury radiating from him like heat from a forge.
Runil took a step back, his face pale, his hands raised as if to ward off a blow. He'd known Torin for years, had watched him visit Camilla's grave, had listened to the story of her sacrifice.
He thought he understood the young man.
He'd been wrong.
...
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