A couple hours later, the fog had thinned to a hazy mist, and the first grey light of dawn was beginning to seep through the trees.
Torin's boots were soaked, his legs ached, but he didn't slow down. Couldn't slow down. Not when they were this close.
He found himself standing behind Auri, staring at an old hunting cabin in the woods south of Falkreath.
It was unremarkable, almost disappointingly so.
A single-story structure built of rough-hewn logs, their bark still clinging to the wood in places. A stone chimney, cold and dark. A small porch with a rocking chair that swayed gently in the morning breeze.
The windows were shuttered, the door was closed, and the only sign that anyone had been here recently was the faint trail of blood leading to the threshold.
Torin stared at it with a strange expression—half disappointment, half confusion.
Auri, noticing his reaction, raised an eyebrow.
"What's wrong?" she asked, her voice low, her bow still in her hand.
Torin shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the cabin.
"Nothing. I just thought we'd end up in another cave. Another shrine. Another place full of darkness and old magic." He gestured at the cabin with his axe. "This just looks so... mundane."
Auri let out a hum, her ears swiveling forward.
"The cabin does look too mundane," she agreed. "But this is where the tracks lead. There's no mistaking it." She pointed at the ground, at the faint impressions of boots in the damp earth, at the smears of blood on the grass, at the broken branches that marked a desperate flight through the woods. "He came here. Recently. Within the hour, maybe."
Torin took a step forward, his grip tightening on his axe.
"Aye. And since we're already here, we might as well—"
His sentence was cut short as the cabin's door swung open.
It creaked on old iron hinges, the sound loud in the quiet morning. A figure emerged from within—tall, pale, moving with a slow, deliberate grace that spoke of someone who wasn't afraid of who might be waiting outside.
He was tall, even for a Nord. Thin, almost gaunt, his cheekbones sharp and his eyes deep-set. His hair was long, black, and tangled—the kind of hair that hadn't seen a comb in weeks, maybe months. His beard was patchy, unkempt, and there was something feral about the way he held himself, like a wolf that had learned to walk on two legs.
In his hand, he held a longsword.
The blade was stained with blood—fresh blood, still wet, still dripping onto the wooden porch in slow, heavy drops.
Krovos.
The hunter Torin and Auri had met on the road to Falkreath. The man who'd been camping at the Talos shrine, sharpening stakes, talking about hunting the killer. The man who'd claimed he was after the same monster they were.
Torin's eyes widened. His axe came up, the blade catching the grey morning light.
"What are you doing here?" His voice was sharp, demanding, the voice of someone who'd been surprised and didn't like it.
Krovos gave him a calm look—too calm, maybe, for a man holding a bloody sword in the doorway of his hunting cabin.
"I should ask you the same." His voice was low, rough, the voice of someone who'd been shouting—or screaming. "This is my hunting cabin. Has been for years. I don't appreciate uninvited guests."
Torin's eyes narrowed. He looked at the blood dripping from the longsword, at the fresh stains on Krovos's shirt, at the way the man's chest was heaving slightly, like he'd just finished something strenuous.
"This might be your hunting cabin," Torin said slowly, "but I have reason to believe my prey is hiding within it."
Krovos frowned, his brow furrowing. The expression looked almost genuine, almost confused.
"Prey?" He tilted his head, considering. "You mean Hrogar?"
He glanced back at the cabin behind him, at the darkness within, at the shadows that seemed to shift and move.
"He appeared here not long ago. Attacked me without warning." He raised his sword slightly, showing Torin the blood on the blade. "I defended myself." He paused, his grey eyes meeting Torin's. "Was he running from you?"
Torin didn't answer immediately. He studied Krovos's face, looking for the tells, the small signs that someone was lying. The hunter's expression was open, almost innocent—but that could mean anything.
"He's running from the entirety of Falkreath," he said, his voice hard. "He's the one who's been killing all those people. The women. The children. His own wife and daughter."
Krovos's eyes widened slightly—just enough for Torin to catch it. The hunter's grip on his longsword tightened, then relaxed.
"So the bastard I've been hunting all this time," Krovos said slowly, almost wonderingly, "came all the way to my doorstep. Walked right up to my cabin. Attacked me in my own home."
He shook his head, a strange smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "The gods truly are humorous beings... in their own way..."
Torin's frown deepened. Something about the man's manner was different from their first meeting at the shrine. Krovos had been terse then, almost surly—a man of few words who'd rather sharpen stakes than make conversation.
Was this guy always so talkative? Torin wondered. Or is something else going on here?
He pushed the thought aside. There'd be time for questions later. Right now, he needed answers.
"Did you kill him?" Torin demanded. "Where is Hrogar?"
Krovos calmly gestured at the cabin behind him with his bloody sword.
"In there." He pointed at the open door, at the darkness within. "I didn't kill him."
He paused, his eyes meeting Torin's. "Knowing what I now know, perhaps I would have made different choices... would have aimed for his gut instead of his leg."
He shrugged, the motion casual, almost careless.
"But I didn't know. So he's in there. Feel free to take a look, drag him out, do whatever you need to do." He took a step back, then another. "I have other things to attend to. The blood in the cabin needs cleaning up. The traps in the woods need checking. I've wasted enough time on this."
He turned to walk away.
Lightning arced around the head of Torin's axe, white and gold, crackling in the damp morning air. The runes along the blade blazed to life, casting flickering shadows across the clearing.
Krovos stopped mid-step.
"You're not going anywhere," Torin said, his voice calm but iron. "Not until I know you're not lying."
Krovos stared at Torin for a long moment. His expression didn't change—still calm, still unreadable—but something flickered in his eyes. Frustration, maybe. Or annoyance. Hard to tell.
Then he let out a long, slow sigh and simply nodded.
"Fair enough," he said. "You're right to be suspicious. Anyone would be, in your position."
Torin gestured toward the cabin with his axe, the lightning still dancing along the blade.
"Lead the way."
Krovos turned and walked back toward the open door, his longsword still in his hand, his boots leaving prints in the blood-spattered earth. He didn't look back. Didn't check to see if Torin and Auri were following.
He just walked into the darkness, and Torin followed close behind, his axe ready, his eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of movement, any hint of a trap.
Auri brought up the rear, her bow drawn, an arrow nocked, her amber eyes missing nothing.
The cabin's interior was dim, lit only by the grey light filtering through the shuttered windows and the faint glow of Torin's magelight. The air smelled of old wood, dried herbs, and something else—something metallic, something that reminded Torin of the shrine in the cave.
Blood. Fresh blood.
And there, on the floor near the cold hearth, lay a figure.
Hrogar.
His shirt was soaked with blood—too much blood, more than a man could lose and still live. His face was pale, his eyes closed, and his chest rose and fell in shallow, irregular breaths.
He was alive. But barely.
Torin knelt beside him, his hand reaching for the wound, his magicka already flowing toward his palm.
"He's still breathing," Torin said, his voice tight.
Krovos leaned against the doorframe, watching, his longsword hanging loose in his hand.
"For now," he said.
Torin shot him a look—cold, hard, the kind of look that promised violence if answers weren't forthcoming.
Krovos just shrugged.
"I told you He attacked me. I defended myself. Didn't ask questions." He paused. "Maybe I should have. But I didn't."
Torin turned back to Hrogar, his hand hovering over the wound, his magicka probing, searching.
For now, he needed to save a monster.
And then, after that, he had questions to answer.
...
Sitting in front of the deepest holding cell in Falkreath's prison, Torin watched through the iron bars as Hrogar lay on the dirty cold ground.
The woodcutter—the monster, the father, the killer—had curled into a fetal position, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his head. His expression was manic, shifting like clouds across a stormy sky.
Sometimes, he'd laugh.
It wasn't a happy sound—nothing close. It was high and brittle, cracking at the edges, the kind of laugh that came from someone who'd seen something they couldn't unsee and was trying to laugh it away.
It would start softly, almost gently, and then build into something louder, more desperate, until it broke into sobs.
Sometimes, he'd cry.
Those were quieter, more private. He'd press his face against the cold stone floor, his shoulders shaking, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He'd whisper—Torin could never quite catch the words—and his hands would claw at the ground, nails scraping against the stone.
And sometimes, he'd mutter.
Only a few sentences. The same ones, over and over.
"I did it. I killed them."
A pause. A shudder.
"I remember."
Another pause. Another shudder.
"This is what I deserve."
Torin sat on a wooden stool that had been brought down from the Jarl's longhouse, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting on his clasped hands. He'd been here for hours, watching, waiting, trying to piece together the fragments of truth from the wreckage of a broken mind.
There was only one logical conclusion, and it made sense... on paper.
Somehow—through means Torin still didn't fully understand—Hrogar had regained his memories. The ones he'd tried to erase. The ones he'd buried beneath magic and denial and the desperate hope that he could become someone new.
They'd come crashing back, all at once, and the conflict between the man he'd been and the man he'd tried to become had shattered something inside him.
Even in his former life, the human mind had been barely explored. All manner of experts studied the brain for centuries, and they'd still barely scratched the surface. The effects of trauma, of repressed memories, of the kind of extreme stress that came from having your entire identity ripped apart and rebuilt...
That wasn't a precise science. Anything could happen. The mind was a fragile thing, and when it broke, it broke in unpredictable ways.
And then there was the fact that madness had an actual physical manifestation in this world.
Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, the Skooma Cat, the Lord of the Never-There—he took pleasure in exacerbating the symptoms of the insane, in pushing them further into the abyss, in watching them fall.
Torin had met him once, in Solitude. He had no desire to meet him again.
So yes. It made sense. Just not to him.
Hrogar had remembered. Hrogar had broken. Hrogar had killed.
But Torin still wasn't convinced.
All the evidence was pointing at the woodcutter. But Torin's mind couldn't help but circle back to Krovos.
That bastard had felt wrong since the moment they'd met at the Talos shrine. Something about him—the way he held himself, the way he talked, the way he'd looked at Torin and Auri with those flat, unreadable eyes—had set off alarms in the back of Torin's mind.
He'd dismissed it at the time, put it down to the stress of the hunt, the strain of the storm, the natural suspicion of strangers met in the wilderness.
But now?
Now, he couldn't shake the feeling that Krovos had been overflowing with held-back giddiness back at the cabin. He hadn't shown it—not outwardly, not in any way that Torin could point to and say see, there, bastard's grinning from ear to ear—but Torin had felt it.
Krovos had been happy. Pleased. Satisfied.
Torin's frown deepened.
In the first place, why would Hrogar run to Krovos's cabin in the woods? He knew the cave at the foot of Shriekwind Mountain—he'd used it for his rituals, had hidden his journal and the Stone of Cold Fire there.
If he'd wanted to escape, why not go back there? Why not run to the place he knew best, the place that had been his sanctuary for years?
And why was it that he'd seemed entirely sane to the guards before running? He'd been calm, controlled, methodical. He'd taken down three trained guards without killing them, had cast elaborate illusions to cover his escape, had vanished into the woods like a ghost.
That wasn't the behavior of a broken man. That was the behavior of someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
But when Torin had found him at Krovos's cabin, he'd been a mad mess. Muttering. Laughing. Crying. Unable to string together a coherent sentence.
Something had happened between the house and the cabin. Something Torin didn't understand.
Just as his mind was wandering down that dark path, searching for answers that wouldn't come—
Tap.
The sound of a cane hitting the stone floor echoed through the prison corridor.
Tap. Tap.
Torin's eyes went wide. He turned, his hand reaching for his axe, his body tensing for a fight—
And instantly stiffened.
An old man stood beside him.
He hadn't been there a moment ago. Torin would have noticed. Would have heard his footsteps, his breathing, the rustle of his clothes. But there he was, as if he'd stepped out of the shadows themselves, leaning both hands on a cane that was polished to a high shine.
He was wearing a yellow and purple suit—the colors clashing, the fabrics expensive but mismatched. The jacket was too long, the trousers too short, and the vest beneath was embroidered with patterns that seemed to shift when Torin looked at them directly.
His face was weathered, lined with age, but his eyes—his eyes were young. Slit-pupiled, yellow, gleaming with an intelligence that was almost painful to look at.
They were fixed on Hrogar.
The old man studied the woodcutter the way a critic might appreciate a masterpiece of art—tilting his head, narrowing his eyes, taking in every detail with obvious satisfaction.
His thin lips curved into a smile that didn't reach those yellow eyes.
Torin's blood ran cold.
...
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