The first room of Bleak Falls Barrow was wide enough to house a village green and cold enough to flash-freeze one. Ancient stone columns, cracked and blackened with age, rose into a ceiling half-shrouded in darkness. Broken urns littered the corners. Ice had seeped into every crevice, glistening like veins of crystal.
And then there were the bodies.
Two bandits, bloodied and broken, had been unceremoniously stuffed into a massive urn near the left wall, legs dangling like grisly party streamers. Kaela had jammed them in there with all the elegance of a child cramming toys into a chest. One still wore his helmet. It was dented.
"Creative," I muttered.
Kaela grinned proudly from where she lounged by the fire.
Thorgar sat cross-legged beside the flames, methodically turning a slab of cow meat on a skewer he'd stolen from the bandits. The smell of roasting fat filled the room, mixing weirdly with the scent of damp stone and long-dead things.
Ragar and Kaela practically drooled at the smell, their faces illuminated by the flickering light. Thorgar didn't say anything, but his posture radiated smugness. Like a chef who knew he was about to win the world's weirdest cooking competition.
Meanwhile, I peeled away from the warmth and made my way toward Lissette.
She sat on a broken chunk of column, polishing her longsword with a scrap of cloth. Her movements were slow and practiced, someone who'd done this ritual a thousand times before. Not lovingly. Not reverently. Just… automatically.
When I sat down next to her, she didn't look up.
Instead, she smirked sideways. "Sorry, not looking for romance right now."
I sighed. "You're safe. I just have questions."
"About what?"
"Magic."
Now she looked up, one brow arching in genuine surprise.
"Well, well. Looking for lessons, are we?" she said, twirling the rag between her fingers.
"I'm willing to pay," I said.
Her eyes lit up slightly. "Oh?"
"All my share of the gold from this expedition. Plus my share of the monetary reward the Jarl of Whiterun promised us for recovering the artifact."
She blinked.
Then laughed.
"Aren't you generous," she said, sheathing the sword and resting her elbows on her knees. "I was joking when I asked for payment. But you offered it. So, tough luck. No take-backs."
I nodded serenely, ignoring the growing sense of regret pooling behind my sternum.
The horses will have to wait until later. Just endure for a little more, my legs.
"Alright then," she said, stretching slightly. "What do you want to know, golden goose?"
I paused.
There were so many things.
I thought back to every scrap of knowledge I'd scavenged since Helgen; the Sparks tome, the Healing tome, Farengar's Lightning Bolt. The fragments of theory. The gaps.
The places where what I felt didn't quite match what was written.
I gathered the chaos in my mind into a coherent thread.
"I want to know," I said slowly, "how magicka really grows. How the Schools of Magic actually differ, not just by spell lists, but by how they function at the soul-level. And..." I hesitated for a breath, "...how to control magicka at the most fundamental level."
Lissette's eyebrows climbed her forehead.
For a moment, Lissette simply stared at me, brow creasing in slow, growing disbelief. Then she barked a short laugh and shook her head in pure incredulity.
"Wait—you're serious?" she said, eyebrows practically climbing off her forehead. "You don't even know that much?"
I simply nodded, unbothered.
She laughed again, louder this time, slapping her knee. "By the Divines, you're greener than the moss on these walls! I thought you were just playing humble. You're actually a blank scroll."
She leaned back, grinning wide, enjoying herself far too much.
"You sure you're a mage?" she teased. "Or did you just trip and fall onto a spell tome and call it destiny?"
I sighed quietly, choosing to endure it. One of the perks of being a sociopath is a stronger tolerance for most insults.
After a moment, her laughter faded. She squinted at me, studying my expression.
Her grin softened into something more thoughtful. She rubbed the back of her neck and gave a short, breathy chuckle.
"Fine. You bought yourself a lecture."
She stretched slightly, like a cat, then settled herself more comfortably against the stone.
And began.
"You grow magicka," she said, "the same way you grow muscle. You stress it. You empty it. You strain it past comfort, but not past breaking. Then you let it recover. Over time, the soul adapts. It deepens. Breathes wider."
She spoke plainly, without any attempt to dress it up.
A simple truth, delivered simply.
I let it sink in slowly.
It made sense, in an ugly, beautiful way.
Stress adaptation. Biological principles mirrored in metaphysical structures. Use, rest, strengthen. Breath more. Grow more.
I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the memory of Helgen; the near-collapse when I first overcast Sparks, the nausea, the aching weakness.
I hadn't just burned Magicka. I had pulled too hard on lungs that weren't ready to gasp.
Of course growth required risk. Nothing living grows without cost.
But then came her next words, and they hit harder than the first.
"But if you push too hard," she continued casually, "you crack. Tear the weave binding your soul to your body. It's not like pulling a muscle. You don't heal a cracked soul."
She looked at me, sharp-eyed now.
"You either die. Or you survive… broken. Unable to cast ever again. But that would be the least of your concern. Vitality is in the soul. Lose your connection with it, and you're a walking corpse. Rotting from the inside; and you'll be having the privilege of experiencing all of it while alive. That is, if you don't lose your mind."
I sat very still, feeling the weight of that revelation settle like frost across my bones.
Cracking the soul.
Permanent damage.
My Restoration theory will need a foundation built on safety first. Controlled stress, not reckless experimentation. Progressive conditioning, gradual rhythm adaptation. No shortcuts.
No sprinting without first learning to crawl.
I needed to treat my soul like the most precious organ I had.
Because it was.
She shifted slightly, warming her hands at the fire.
"And the Schools," she said next, "aren't just categories. They're mindsets. Languages."
I frowned slightly.
"Languages?"
She grinned, a little wickedly.
"Every School is a different way of giving magicka an order. A different emotion you pour into your breath."
She tapped her fingers one by one against her knee as she spoke.
"Destruction is rage. You're telling the world to burn, to shatter, to scream."
"Restoration is mercy. You're telling it to knit, to heal, to mend."
"Alteration is arrogance. You're telling reality it's wrong, and you know better."
"Illusion is deceit. You're not changing the world, you're lying to everyone who looks at it."
"Conjuration is ambition. You're reaching into places you shouldn't and dragging things back with you."
"Enchanting," she finished, with a half-smirk, "is patience. Imprinting magicka into matter and trusting the world to hold your intention without supervision."
She leaned back, hands laced behind her head.
"Different mindsets. Different heartbeats. Different commands."
I sat there, letting it pour into me.
Each School wasn't a branch of magic. It was a philosophy. An emotional resonance. A soul-timbre.
Casting wasn't just about shaping a spell.
It was about tuning yourself to the right wavelength first.
My mind raced through the implications, connecting dots at a speed that got me a little dizzy.
I've been treating magicka like a blunt tool.Forcing it. Shoving it.But magicka isn't just an energy to be burned. It's a breath. A song. A dance between my will and the shape of the world.Without the right mindset—without the right language—every spell I cast would be clumsy at best. Hazardous at worst.
I realized, then, that every novice tome I had read had been simplified beyond recognition. Baby-steps. Flashcards. The real truth was rawer. More dangerous.
More beautiful.
Finally, Lissette straightened up again, growing a little more serious.
"And as for control..." she said quietly.
"Most mages just vomit magicka out and pray it lands somewhere useful."
She made a rude gesture with her hands, like throwing a bucket of water at a house fire.
"But real control?" she continued. "It's about breathing. Tempo. Flow."
She drew a slow breath through her nose. Released it even slower through her mouth.
"You don't shout with your soul. You whisper. You coax. You weave."
"Too fast—and you tear yourself apart. Too slow—and you lose the pattern, collapse the spell."
"Control," she said, tapping her chest with two fingers, "is learning to match the rhythm of your soul to the rhythm of the world."
I sat back, feeling the fire's heat on my face, the ancient cold at my back, and the gears of my mind spinning faster than they ever had before.
Tempo. Breath. Circulation. Resonance.Spellcasting isn't screaming commands at reality. It's learning the music reality already plays and inserting your own notes.The Restoration theory isn't just about healing magicka.It's about breathing properly—rhythmically—until the soul can regenerate mid-fight, mid-breath, mid-spell.
I exhaled long and slow, feeling the first faint tingles of a theory too large, too dangerous to voice yet.
Across the fire, Kaela let out a satisfied burp and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
Thorgar muttered a prayer to whatever gods he thought protected dignity.
Ragar was already humming some off-key drinking song.
And Lissette?
She just smiled at me knowingly, as if she saw the wildfires already starting behind my eyes.
"You're dangerous, golden goose," she said softly.
Then she picked up her sword again and began sharpening it; slow, steady strokes, like the sound of a pendulum.
I leaned back, watching the shadows dance against the Barrow's ancient stones, and smiled faintly.
***
The deeper we went into Bleak Falls Barrow, the more the air itself seemed to close in around us.
Gone were the wide, game-sized corridors I half-remembered from old memories. Now, the stone halls stretched wide enough to fit wagons side-by-side, with towering ceilings lost in shadow. Every torch we lit barely seemed to push back the dark, swallowing up sound and warmth like a living thing.
It was... unsettling.
And perfect.
I smiled faintly as I followed the others deeper into the Barrow's belly.
This was a place meant to be felt as much as traversed. A tomb not just for bodies, but for memories.
The first wave of draugr came soon enough.
They burst from the walls with the subtlety of a drunken bear, rusted axes in skeletal hands, hollow eyes gleaming.
Our formation snapped into place without a word.
Ragar and Kaela surged forward like twin battering rams, one roaring with a warhammer, the other carving arcs through the air with an Ancient Nordic greatsword so massive it looked ridiculous in anyone else's hands that she stole from a dead draugr.
Thorgar flanked to the side, short blades flashing with brutal precision. Unsurprisingly, he had hidden three more daggers underneath his clothing.
I stayed in the second rank, hands rising smoothly, this time not vomiting out magicka like a desperate fool, but shaping it. Breathing it.
Drawing the Lightning Bolt spell was different now.
It wasn't a violent shove of power.
It was a pull. A slow inhale through the soul, a shaping, a coiling, and then a snap, as I exhaled and released it.
The bolt struck a draugr in the sternum, sending it crashing backward with a flash of seared bone and a smell like burnt leather.
I moved smoothly into the next breath, cycling rhythm, tempo.
Breathe. Weave. Release.
It was intoxicating.
Lissette noticed.
I caught her smirk out of the corner of my eye as she covered the rear, weaving subtle spells that disrupted draugr charges before they even formed.
At one point, a draugr with a rusted greatsword broke through the melee and rushed toward me. Old me would've panicked, tried to channel all my magicka into a desperate shot.
Instead, I shifted my stance, breathed, shaped a tight spiral of magicka, and shot a clean bolt directly into the monster's knee.
It dropped like a stone, and Thorgar finished it without even slowing.
It works. The theory wasn't just words. It works.
I haven't felt a significant drain on my reserves despite having fired Lightning Bolts like a walking thunderstorm. Lissette's lessons had improved my efficiency by more than double.
And yet...The fights were longer. Harder. The draugr were faster, tougher. Some wore remnants of ancient armor. Others carried shields, parrying blows like they remembered the art of war.
This was not the dusty, bumbling skeleton army I remembered from the game.
This was an army buried in time, and time had made them angry.
We fought through them, corridor by corridor, chamber by chamber.
The traps were different too.
Pressure plates weren't conveniently obvious anymore. Swinging axes didn't slow to let you through, they spun endlessly, timed perfectly to maim and kill.
We barely avoided half a dozen deathtraps.
More than once, it was only because I spotted slight discolorations in the stonework, the hint of runes just under the moss.
More than once, it was only because my instincts screamed that the air smelled wrong, that something was wound, tense, ready to spring.
Thorgar once muttered something about me being "worse than a paranoid old crow," but he said it with something suspiciously close to respect.
Kaela just laughed every time I pointed out a trap and called me "Mister Featherfeet."
I accepted the title. Better featherfeet than flathead on a spike.
Eventually, we pushed into a chamber where the air changed.
The walls, once cracked and dusty, were now coated with something pale and thick.
Spiderwebs.
Thousands of them.
Clinging to stone, bones, ceiling. Choking the air itself with strands so fine and thick it almost looked like frost at first glance.
Ahead, faintly, I heard something.
A voice.
A man's voice, yelling, pleading.
The group tensed automatically.
Without a word, we advanced, blades ready, magicka simmering at fingertips.
The chamber opened into a vast cavern, so tall the ceiling vanished into darkness.
And from that darkness… something dropped. Of course, it was the lovely eight-legged freak of nature.
It fell from the darkness above with a sound like snapping cables, slamming into the ground hard enough to shake the dust loose from the cavern walls.
And it was huge.
Three meters tall if it was an inch, its carapace gleaming like frost-bitten iron under the dim light.
Multiple beady eyes locked onto us at once.
Kaela let out an excited whoop. Ragar muttered a prayer to a god I didn't recognize. Thorgar just sighed like this was a Tuesday.
I, personally, began quietly reassessing every decision that had led me here.
The spider lunged, faster than anything its size had the right to be.
Ragar bellowed a war cry and intercepted it, smashing the flat of his warhammer against one of the massive legs. The impact cracked chitin but barely staggered the beast.
Thorgar veered left, keeping low, twin blades flashing in his hands. Unsurprisingly, he had hidden more than four daggers underneath his clothing.
Lissette wasn't idling around either; she raised both hands, chanting under her breath in clipped, sharp syllables.
A wave of subtle pressure pushed outward—Illusion magic.
The spider twitched, its lunge stuttering mid-motion.
Mind-disruption. Just enough to throw off its coordination.
"Lovely timing," I muttered, inhaling, gathering the breath of my soul.
I didn't craft anything fancy.
No elegant weaves. No clever constructions.
Just pure, clean Lightning Bolts.
One after another.
Snap—crack—snap—crack.
Each breath-cycle fed another shot through my arms.
The first bolt scorched a leg joint. The second missed, searing past its shoulder. The third slammed into its side, sending a visible shudder through its massive body.
Damn. Its natural resilience is ridiculous.
"You're doing great!" a voice shouted.
I turned slightly.
A Dunmer thief—probably Arvel the Swift if my memory serves me right—was hanging from the wall, wrapped up like a harvest sausage, wiggling enthusiastically.
"Kill it faster!" he added helpfully.
I considered shooting him just a little bit. Later.
The spider turned, venom dripping from its mandibles, and spewed a jet of green acid toward Ragar.
Ragar raised his shield just in time, grunting as the acidic spray hissed against the metal.
Kaela came in from the side like a psychotic hurricane, greatsword dragging sparks across the stone before arcing up into a brutal slash.
One of the spider's legs severed cleanly at the joint.
It screeched, staggering sideways.
Thorgar darted underneath, carving a deep gash along the underbelly, black ichor splattering everywhere.
Lissette shifted her stance smoothly, hurling a ball of blazing hot fire at the creature's nearest eye cluster. The impact staggered it again.
Teamwork. Rhythm. Flow.
It wasn't elegant.
It was messy, brutal.
But it worked.
I pulled another Lightning Bolt into existence, breathing carefully, regulating the intake and output of magicka.
I couldn't afford overcasting now.
One misstep and I'd black out cold on the floor.
Snap—crack—snap—crack.
The spider reeled under the continuous barrage.
Its armor started to smoke where lightning and steel had chewed into it.
Kaela laughed aloud, flipping the greatsword into a backhand grip and swinging again, severing another leg.
The spider screeched—desperation now, not rage—and lunged wildly.
A massive, clumsy sweep aimed at crushing Kaela outright.
"Featherfeet!" Kaela yelled, grinning madly. "Little help?"
I cursed under my breath and hurled a bolt square into the spider's distorted center of mass.
The blast didn't kill it.
But it rocked it backward just enough that Kaela slipped under the swing, rolling and springing back to her feet with disturbing grace.
"That's more like it!" she called.
Meanwhile, Arvel kept shouting useless encouragement.
"That's it! You've almost got it! Get it, get it!"
Finally, Ragar found an opening.
He roared, sprinted forward, and swung his warhammer in a brutal, two-handed overhead smash.
The head of the hammer connected dead-center with the spider's head.
The sound was indescribable, something between a wet crunch and a shattering stone.
The spider's body convulsed once.
Then collapsed in on itself.
A twitch. A shudder. Stillness.
The battle was over.
The air stank of burnt chitin, ichor, and venom.
My hands trembled slightly from the heavy magicka output.
Around me, the others slowly straightened.
Ragar wiped blood and goo from his hammer. Kaela spun her greatsword in a lazy circle, whistling tunelessly. Thorgar checked his blades for nicks.
Lissette simply flicked ichor off her robe cuffs with the detached air of someone brushing away dust.
And from the far side of the room:
"You did it!" Arvel cheered, still dangling from the wall. "Ha! I knew you would! Knew it all along! Knew you'd win!"
Kaela sheathed her sword and gave me a playful slap on the shoulder.
"Featherfeet, you're really starting to earn your keep."
I grimaced. My magicka reserves were sitting somewhere around "pathetic." My legs felt like they were running on ghost fumes.
"Remind me," I said dryly, "to kick whoever decided spiders should be allowed to get that big."
Kaela just laughed and skipped toward the cocooned Dunmer.
The others followed, weapons still at the ready.
I rolled my shoulders, feeling the lingering hum of spent magicka across my nerves.
The battle had drained me.
But it had also proven something.
Tempo.Breath.Control.
I hadn't just survived the fight.
I'd fought properly.
And somehow, deep in my soul, I'm looking for more. It was like an itch on a severed limb.
Magic is far more complex that I've initially thought, yet I wanted more. I really need to spend a day at Farengar's study after this.
Drinking a Magicka Recovery potion that I nabbed from a dead bandit earlier, I turned to the annoying sausage on the other side of the room.
Arvel squirmed in his cocoon, the webbing creaking ominously with every movement.
"Alright, alright, you got me!" he gasped, voice cracking like old parchment. "Now be good lads and lassies and get me down, yeah? I'll make it worth your while! I swear it on my mother's bones!"
Kaela walked up to him with the casual air of a cat examining a mouse.
She tilted her head.
"Poke him?" she asked brightly.
"Later," Lissette said.
She stepped in, her expression unreadable. Calm. Professional. Deadly.
Ragar, big-hearted fool that he was, began tugging at the webbing with his gloved hands.
"I'm fine with letting him down," he said, glancing at us. "Poor bastard's probably been stuck here for days."
Thorgar muttered something about "soft heads" and "wasted rope," but helped anyway, slicing a few strands loose with his dagger.
Arvel dropped to the floor in a heap, scrambling to his feet the second he was free.
"Thanks! Thank you, thank you!" he babbled. "You'll see, I'm a valuable ally! Very valuable! I know all the secrets of this place! Riches! Treasure!"
He didn't get much further.
Before the words even finished leaving his mouth, Lissette had stepped forward smoothly and rested her sword against his throat.
Arvel froze, blinking rapidly.
"W-what's this?" he stammered. "We're friends, right?"
"That depends," Lissette said softly, tilting her head like she was studying a particularly stupid animal. "Are you the Dunmer thief who stole a precious artifact from a client of ours?"
"I—I don't—" Arvel began, sweating.
Thorgar, moving like a shadow, flicked his dagger downward.
Arvel's satchel tore open.
The Golden Claw tumbled out with a soft metallic clink, spinning once before coming to rest at Lissette's feet.
Ragar scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.
Kaela crouched down next to the Golden Claw, examining it with the fascinated expression of a magpie spotting a shiny coin.
Arvel looked at the Claw.
Then at Lissette's sword.
Then back at the Claw.
The Dunmer visibly paled.
He started babbling immediately.
"Listen—listen! It's not what you think! I only took it because there's something huge hidden deeper inside this tomb! A treasure greater than anything you can imagine! Power! Power beyond mortal reckoning!"
He gulped, darting a glance at Lissette's impassive face.
"A secret power lost to the ages! Enough to make any man a king! Stronger than Ulfric Stormcloak himself!"
He licked his lips, eyes darting between us.
"But—but listen! The way there isn't simple!" he continued. "The tomb is full of puzzles! Ancient traps! Only someone brilliant—a genius—could navigate them!"
He thumped his chest proudly.
"I am that genius!" he declared. "You kill me, and you'll never reach the treasure! Never!"
Lissette tilted her head slightly.
"That's all?" she asked, voice mild.
Arvel blinked, confused.
"Y-yes?" he said uncertainly.
Lissette smiled faintly.
"Good."
And with a single, fluid motion, she severed his head from his shoulders.
The body hit the ground with a wet, unpleasant sound.
The head rolled twice, bumping gently against an ancient urn.
Ragar scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"Bit harsh, wasn't it?" he asked.
Lissette sheathed her sword with a satisfied flick.
"He already gave us everything we needed," she said calmly. "Keeping him would just make things... messy."
Kaela wandered over to poke the severed head with the tip of her boot.
"Bet he wasn't much of a genius anyway," she said cheerfully.
"Anyone who brags about being a genius usually isn't." I spoke, voice low.
Lissette shot me a quick, amused glance.
Thorgar just grunted approval, rifling through Arvel's abandoned satchel for anything useful.
I bent down, picked up the Golden Claw carefully.
The ancient artifact was heavier than it looked.
Intricate carvings spiraled across its surface—owls, bears, moths—tiny, delicate symbols hidden among the claws.
Definitely a puzzle key.
Of course it was.
Leave it to the ancient Nords to turn grave robbery into an engineering exam.
At my side, Ragar crossed his arms, surveying the dead Dunmer and the collapsed spider carcass with a satisfied grunt.
"Well," he said, "that's our job done. Got the Claw. No point hanging around."
Thorgar grunted agreement, already checking the straps on his satchels.
Kaela pouted. "Boo. I was just starting to have fun."
I was about to toss the Golden Claw to Ragar and bid goodbye when a thought occurred:
How the hell are we going to get past the door to the Dragonstone without the claw?
I inwardly bashed my face in and set my brain on overdrive to think of a reason to borrow the claw just until the door. I would say the door is close, but the question of how I knew and whether that's even true in this expanded world is going to be a huge issue. Besides, no self-respecting mercenary would willingly dive into deeper dangers without much of a gain.
I was about to attempt to reason it out with Ragar's party when Lissette interrupted.
"We could go deeper," she said.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She shrugged lightly.
"There's bound to be more loot further in," she said. "Maybe something worth a fortune."
Ragar hesitated, frowning slightly.
"And," Lissette continued, smiling faintly, "helping a Jarl's personal agents—even unofficially—might look good for business later."
She turned a sly glance my way.
"Besides," she said, voice wickedly amused, "leave golden goose here alone with that—" she nodded toward Kaela, who was currently balancing her sword on one finger like a carnival act, "—and he'll probably die. Voluntarily, I might add."
Kaela grinned brightly, utterly ignoring the jab.
"Group adventure!" she crowed.
I sighed heavily.
But I couldn't help the small smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth.
Well, that solves the claw problem.
Ragar glanced between Lissette, Thorgar, and me.
He grunted, nodding.
"Aye. I'm in."
Thorgar, in typical Thorgar fashion, just gave a small grunt that could have meant anything from "sure" to "I hope the next skeleton kills me."
Close enough.
Kaela punched the air excitedly.
I just shook my head.
"Wonderful," I muttered. "A company of maniacs."
Still, I tightened my grip on the Claw, adjusted my satchel, and fell in step as we headed deeper into the Barrow.
The path narrowed.
The walls closed in.
Somewhere far ahead, the dead waited.