We went slowly—painfully, maddeningly slowly—up through the narrow, steep ravine, the trail now a sodden mess of mud, hidden ice, and melting snow. The sun had long since vanished behind the western peaks; it was cold, and fatigue gnawed at me, hunger too, sharp as fangs. Yet I welcomed it. Hunger honed my senses, stripped away the softness of thought, left only the predator in me awake, eager and ready. And I was sure I would need that predator tonight for what awaited me in that strange, dark crypt. Or whatever it was, because even then, I refused to believe it—hundreds of undead dwelling in a single mausoleum? Utterly absurd! Surely, there must have been some other explanation... some ancient sorcery, a darker power long forgotten, working its foul tricks in that cursed place.

  Behind me, ten paces back, came my sworn man, just as I ordered. I listened carefully to the rhythm of his steps, every crunch and slide in the snow. I do not like having untrustworthy folk at my back. Never.

  As we climbed, I pressed him for more about the barrow. He told me most of the band had been slaughtered inside, though he could not swear they were truly dead. Their leader, Arvel, and many others had been trapped in the crypt while a handful fled in terror. Lovis remembered clearly the sound of Arvel's voice ringing through the gloom: "Stand your ground, you cowards!"—while the "cowards"—he included—in question scrambled for their lives.

  I asked if Arvel carried some peculiar trinket with him—a bauble, useless yet strange, with markings. The man nodded quickly and said that Arvel had boasted that the thing was "the key to the barrow's riches."

  "Then our first move is to find Arvel—or at least his corpse," I said, testing him. At once, I smelled the fear, and he did not answer. So I kept my tongue busy, filling the silence with chatter meant to steady him. First, I asked his name.

  "Lovis," he muttered.

  "Oh, not a Nord then, lad..."

  "No, lady. A deserter from the Imperial ranks. Born in Leyawiin County, on the Lower Niben. I was just a fisherman's brat before the army took me."

  He rambled then—of the Topal Bay, of the black, dripping forests in the south, of waters warm and brackish where the moonlight gleamed like oil. His words stirred something raw in me, a pang for the hot, lush lands of my youth. Ah, the South... it pulled me back like an invisible chain!

  But that was just a lost dream, and this was Skyrim, frozen and cursed. What mattered was that Lovis grew braver with his own voice, his fear easing slightly as he spoke. And by the time we reached the mouth of Bleak Falls Barrow—its gaping stone maw rising out of the mist, its carved fangs rimed with ice—his trembling had dulled into silence.

  The barrow's gates loomed before us, vast slabs of bronze, greened with age and carved with runes I could not read. The patterns twisted and knotted on themselves, full of strange beasts with too many eyes, of warriors who seemed neither man nor mer. In the center, a dragon coiled, its wings broken, yet its jaws wide in an eternal scream.

  But we did not enter there; the main gate stood sealed, welded by centuries of rust and precipitation, perhaps even by some long-forgotten spell. To one side yawned a lesser door—low, narrow, a servants' or low-rank priests' passage hacked like an afterthought into the temple of the gods. Lovis lingered at the threshold, eyes wide with dread, but I only uncoiled the rope, bound us together, and gave it a sharp tug. He stumbled forward, unwilling, and so I dragged him with me into the tomb.

  Inside, we stood beneath the vault of a huge cavern, and far above, the stone roof had cracked, letting in a pale, grudging light. It dripped down in silver shafts, touching broken columns and heaps of rubble, painting everything with the hue of an old dream.

  The silence was worse than the cold. It pressed against my ears, heavy, absolute, like the air in a sealed tomb. Even the drip of water, faint somewhere deep, sounded too loud. I could feel Lovis tugging nervously at the rope, his steps uneven, his breath too quick.

  We moved on. I led, my claws half out, my heart steady, and he hobbled behind, limping, clutching the line like a child to its mother's skirt. The ground sloped down, and the air grew damper and thicker. The pale beams of daylight dwindled until only a faint twilight clung to the stone.

  And then—the bodies of the dead.

  They lay scattered on the ground like broken dolls: men in ragged furs, others in rusted mail, a few still clutching their weapons.

  Lovis whimpered when we stepped over the first body, and I hissed for him to hush. The cavern was too vast, too hollow-sounding, every noise swelling like a blasphemy under the cracked dome above us. I dared not light a torch—warm light, smoke, the smell of burning resin, all that would have called to whatever slumbered here. Instead, I whispered the spell, a meager orb of pallid glow blooming in my palm, no brighter than a dying ember.

  Under its sheen, the corpses looked worse—faces contorted in terror, mouths frozen in screams that had long since turned to silence, blood gone black and stiff. Some bore gashes from steel, others wounds that no living blade had made—chests caved in, flesh seared, eyes missing. The air itself was heavy with two scents: the ancient dust, dry and choking, like the breath of a tomb, and the sweeter, fouler stench of spoiled blood. To my shame, it did not repel me. My stomach clenched, my tongue pressed against my teeth, and for an instant I wanted—oh gods, I wanted—to lap at the black crust in their wounds.

  My gaze slid to Lovis. He trembled, lips pale, the rope between us taut as a bowstring. For a heartbeat, I saw not a man but prey—warm, living prey—and his pulse drummed so loud in my ears I could almost taste it. Not because I was some cursed blood-drinker—Nocturnal save me from such kin—but because the beast in me, starved of warmth and raw meat after the ward drained me, howled for sustenance. I dug my claws into my palm until the hunger dulled, then licked the blood from my hand with a hiss, forcing the predator back into its cage. Lovis was not a meal, I reminded myself. He was my mule and perchance my lockpick, and I needed him whole.

  I knelt by each corpse instead, rolling them over, prying at stiff fingers, rummaging through pouches and satchels with a hunger more fevered than revulsion. My breath came fast—not from fear, but from expectation. Arvel had to be here. The bauble, the key, it must be here.

  But corpse after corpse yielded nothing. One after another, the men's belongings were pitiful scraps—rusted knives, a few copper coins, moldy bread... And then again: a brute with a cleaver buried in his skull. A woman with arrows through her spine. A young lad whose chest had been gnawed open. Yet nothing, nothing at all in their pockets... When I had gone through them all, my lips curled in frustration.

  "They are all here, lady," Lovis whispered hoarsely, his voice nearly breaking. "All... except the three you killed yesterday... and me." He swallowed, trembling. "But not him. Arvel is not here.

  We went deeper. The rope between us drew taut as Lovis faltered, his steps sluggish, each one quaking with dread. The air grew sharper, colder, until even our breath felt heavy, clinging like frost to our lips. Above us, the last pale trace of daylight vanished into the stone, and we moved in utter darkness.

  But where Lovis feared, I felt a strange, grim solace. The silence, the cold, the blackness pressing in—these were no strangers to me. It was almost as though I were going home. And somewhere below, and behind us, I felt it pulsing: the source of the ancient arcane currents that throbed through the barrow's walls like veins through flesh.

  As we descended, the gallery grew narrower, its slope steeper, the stones slick underfoot. Then, looming from the dark on either side, two massive shapes revealed themselves—great bronze sarcophagi, judging by their appearance. They were not laid on the ground but fused into the very walls and floor, like growths of some ancient, metal root.

  I called forth my faint light again and leaned close to one. Its surface was greened with age, and covered by worn and pitted runes; it was open, its lid shifted aside, and from the hollow within drifted that unmistakable odor—not rot, but the dry, specific breath of an ancient tomb just opened. The other, opposite it, was the same, save that its lid lay cast two paces off, the bronze bent outward despite its impressive thickness, as though flung aside from within by something monstrously powerful.

  We pressed on, and soon there were more of them—dozens—some set upright like sentinels, others stretched flat, all gaping empty. Between them crouched clay urns of varying sizes, some intact, others fractured into pale shards. I stooped, rummaging eagerly through a few, my heart quickening. Only to find ashes. Or mold. Nothing more.

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  'Ah, so much for the dough,' I spat inwardly. 'Where in Oblivion is the gold? The jewelry, the rubies, the sapphires—the smaralds?'

  And at once, She was there. Nocturnal. Laughing. A deep, rich laughter that rippled through my skull until my teeth ached.

  'And what do You find so amusing?' I snapped into thought.

  But She shut me off, answering with silence. Cold, impenetrable silence. Typical.

  So I bit down my frustration, tightened the rope in my hand, and led poor trembling Lovis deeper into the bowels of the barrow.

  After what seemed like an eternity—mostly because I'd had enough of Lovis's shivering and moaning—the wavy, winding corridor began to open, its slope easing, and soon we stepped into a large chamber. I had felt it long before, like an odd, horizontal abyss yawning ahead: the air itself had changed. Strange—somehow it was fresher and warmer the closer we drew, a reminder, in a peculiar and dangerous place, of the central dome of the Imperial City sewers, only without the faint blue light or the marble walls. There was none of that melodic hum either—only an oppressive silence. Yet for initiates, sometimes the silence may be a kind of music. I know that now.

  I felt movement ahead. I stopped and pulled the rope, hauling Lovis—more dead than alive—closer. Leaning over, I hissed at him to take off his boots, shut up with his whining, and keep close.

  "Or I'll cut your throat where you stand," I added, low and hard.

  We moved on, slowly and as quietly as we could; the dread had already made the man's teeth chatter uncontrollably. Then I saw a silhouette stumbling away from us in hesitant, wrong steps—not human steps. He walked a little crooked, his head jerking oddly, hands stretched out before him like a blind man groping into an unspeakable void.

  The thing—or he—vanished between two massive sarcophagi. I went straight to them, forgetting caution and silence, for I smelled fear in that presence. Though his scent was odd, not wholly human, so I drew the Lucky Dagger from its secret sheath and stepped into the narrow, short passage.

  There—we found him at last. Arvel.

  Not sprawled among the corpses, not neatly dead. No, Arvel crouched near the wall, back pressed against the stone, clutching the bauble with both hands as if it were his very heart. His eyes snapped open when my faint light fell on him, wide, glassy, and not empty. Not quite. A film, like oil on water, moved across them; beneath it, something small and human still fluttered. He fixed me with a stare I knew too well—the look of a man who had gazed into the abyss and tried to bargain with it, who had tried to protect himself against the darkness with a small trinket, until it began to eat him from the inside.

  "Boss... Are you alright?" Lovis stammered.

  "Stay away," Arvel croaked. "Damn coward... you'll not get any gold!" He started to laugh—a laugh that scraped his throat raw, like rocks grinding. His lips trembled; the skin of his face seemed to sag, as if some unseen hand had already begun pulling him into the grave.

  Lovis, frightened, stepped ahead, and I whispered, tasting his name, "Arvel... You're alive."

  He gave another ghastly laugh, hollow and wet. "Alive...? No. Not here. Not anymore." His fingers tightened around the trinket, knuckles white, nails blackened. I saw his chest heave, not in breath but in spasms, as though some other rhythm was fighting for dominion inside him.

  Lovis whimpered behind me. I felt the rope tighten.

  I knelt, slowly, like a hunter coaxing a wounded beast. "Give it to me, Arvel. The key. And you may yet walk out."

  His eyes met mine, and for a heartbeat, there was clarity—desperation, the plea of a man drowning. Then his pupils split, long and narrow, like a serpent's. The clarity shattered. His jaw clenched, and from his mouth spilled not words but a low, guttural rattle that made the hairs on my neck rise.

  He half rose, half lurched toward me, dragging his feet as though clay bound them. The light struck him: skin mottled, veins dark and raised beneath the flesh, fingers curled like claws around the gleaming trinket.

  "Yes... Yes... I'll give it to you... but not him!" He pointed to Lovis, still whimpering.

  And right then, a sad and ridiculous thing happened: the gold fever struck me, seizing my exhausted mind in its burning arms.

  "Where is the dough? What does your key do? Show me, Arvel!" I croaked.

  Arvel smiled and shuffled closer, holding the bauble before him like a priest with a relic. A pungent stench burst into my nostrils—the smell of a grave newly opened, with its death still raw and recent, and instantly my instincts screamed, 'Run, you fool!' But I held my ground, though every nerve begged to recoil, and I could see clearly now: Arvel was no longer a man, nor yet a draugr, but something drowning between both states—and I, gods help me, felt that inane hunger in me stir, whispering that he, only he, could lead me straight to the treasure!

  I could already see it — the shimmering piles of coins, endless heaps of septims; I pictured myself rifling through ancient chests, pulling out trinkets one more brilliant than the last: crowns and diadems, scepters, gems set in gold mounts. Ah, gold — so much gold! All mine, mine alone. Of course, I had no intention of sharing. Lovis was expendable cattle, and Arvel... Arvel didn't need gold anymore, did he?

  It was a ridiculous moment—one I dare not smile at now as I write with trembling hands. This fever is a dangerous thing: it drives a mortal to the brink of madness, so that he sees almost nothing but an illusory, devilish wealth that sings like a siren, leading him forward to his death. And so it happened that cursed night.

  While I stood there, dreaming awake of shiny things, Arvel lunged with sudden ferocity. He shoved me aside like a dry leaf, seized Lovis by the head with both hands, and crushed it as a boy crushes an egg. Lovis's body slumped; the rope dragged me after him, and Arvel was above me, monstrous hands scrabbling for my throat.

  I struck blindly with the Lucky Dagger and floundered off to one side. Arvel fell to his knees and howled—such a roar as no man should be able to make. I fumbled at the rope, desperate to cut free, and slashed down with the Lucky Dagger. The treacherous blade nipped at the hemp, severing a few fibers with a crisp whisper—then stopped. A soft, contemptuous hiss seemed to breathe up from the dark steel itself, and the edge refused to bite deeper—the rope held as if stitched of iron. In my hand, the hilt grew ice-cold, pulsing with a malice I knew too well—mocking me, refusing me. It would kill flesh eagerly, oh yes, but to sully itself on coarse hemp? That was beneath it. My cursed, spiteful, sweet little daedric toy would rather see me strangled and dragged to Oblivion than stoop to such humiliation!

  From the dark came heavy, rare-footed steps that made the stone floor tremble. Death was already greedy above me; I crawled like a useless, filthy worm while Arvel stood up, staggeringly and roaring, a voice from beyond the grave pouring from his throat. Then the predator inside me took control — cold, patient, ferocious.

  I snuffed the light, letting the faint glow die, and with my right hand drew the knife. It bit clean through the cursed rope, and I rolled gracefully and hard, as far as I could from that narrow, dangerous place, and lay there watching. Calmly.

  I lived through the next hours like in a dream—please note, a dream, not a nightmare. I'll set it down here, in this manuscript:

  And the Great Cat of Shadows came with soft steps, mushy paws on velvet rugs. Her eyes—molten amber. Her fur—dark silk of midnight. Her claws—ivory jewels. Her tail—a banner of defiance. Her breath—musk fragrance. Her fangs—merciless little daggers.

  She lay coiled on the cold stone floor and watched the two monstrosities that sought Her. One of them was recently a man, a wicked one, and now just a hideous and dangerous doll that moved with disjointed steps, shambling and dragging its feet. The other, tall as an ancient oak and crowned with a circlet set with sapphires—small, faint stars in the dark, wielded a great axe, his armor thick, and the Great Cat of Shadows would have liked to know what craft shaped them, but alas, though She saw his shape clear in the dark, no color or detail reached Her eyes. Her keen nose told Her only of stone, ancient beyond memory. 'Intriguing,' She thought. 'The elder smells of old rock, while the newer one—the once-Arvel—reeks of rot.'

  They circled the headless corpse in motions stiff and strange, like ancient dwarven contraptions, their heads jerking, twisting, as if sniffing around, scenting rather than seeing.

  After a time, the Great Cat grew bored—for She is playful by nature!—and began flicking pebbles into the shadows, testing them. Yet they did nothing, and the velvet feline judged that their hearing was dull—attuned not to whispers or faint stirrings, but only to louder ruptures in the air. Or perhaps, She thought, their ears no longer knew sound at all, but only the raw tremors beneath it, and so the small vibrations slipped past them, while the greater ones made them stir.

  And so the Great Cat of Shadows pressed Her belly to the floor and began to glide forward. She loathed the chill of the stone, but endured, for the hunt was on.

  The velvet shadow crept closer to them, silent, breath held, and chose Her prey—the young one. 'The youngsters are always the weaker,' She remembered with pleasure from the wet, hot, howling jungle within her. Then the Great Cat of Shadows lunged gracefully, swift as lightning, and drove the Daedric toy into the undead's neck, ripping downward in a merciless, long pull. Flesh tore like rotten cloth. She rolled away, sudden and very, very fast. Too fast...

  The prey came apart at once: limbs flew, tar-thick blood spattered the floor, and its head—oh, his dead head!—screamed on, shrill and endless. The velvet predator blinked in amazement at the death of the dead thing—then froze. For the elder, the crowned one, was no longer still.

  With a completely unexpected swiftness for so ancient and big a corpse, it turned, came, locked upon Her, and the axe fell. She hissed the ultimate spell's words, but Her magic essence was spent; the shield flared weakly, only deflecting the edge aside. Even so, the blow struck. A dull sound of torn flesh and shattered bones reverberated in the darkness; the velvet shadow, gravely wounded, uttered no sound and crawled away like a miserable worm, slowly, extremely slowly, as the draugr raised its axe and struck again. And again. Once more again. In the same place, on the stone floor. Apparently, it did not see Her anymore, and its axe continued to tear the ground where She had flung Herself before.

  Inch by inch, with the patience of a predator, the Great Cat of Shadows slid away, pressing Her body low, each movement measured, almost imperceptible. The draugr's crown turned, its hollow eyes searched, yet it loomed blind and deaf to anything slower than a sudden move.

  Thus, the black panther reached the narrow corridor, where She and a man named Lovis found Arvel some time ago. She stumbled over the mangled torso of the slain draugr, and near it gleamed the bauble. Her paw closed around it, and at last, all strength and will vanished. She slumped against the cold stone wall, breath ragged, clutching the cursed prize that had cost Her near everything.