We stepped into the corridor at the other side of the room. I haven't really played the opening much before I installed a mod that replaces it, so I might be forgetting some important things here and there. But that's alright, it just makes it exciting.
At the other end of the corridor is another room. This one isn't quite as big, probably an extension of the torture room from before. There are cages chained to the ceiling, with one having a dead Nord inside it.
"Oh, a friend." I muttered, walking towards the corpse.
"The Imperials really do love their torture rooms." Ralof commented, examining a nearby shelf for any remaining loot.
"It does have quite the appeal though, doesn't it?" Kaela replied, grinning.
What a psychopath. And to think she's the Dragonborn. I have a slight feeling that she's going to join Alduin in destroying the world for funsies.
"Hmm?" My eyes caught onto a leather bag at the floor. There are a few bloodstains on some parts, but it looks usable.
I picked it up, taking note of the weight. Sounds like it's not empty. I set it onto a nearby table and took a peek inside.
"A steel dagger. I could use that. A pouch with gold on it? Useful. And...oh?" My eyes twinkled at the last item I saw. "A Restoration spell tome."
"Mage, are you done there? We should go." I heard Ralof speak.
"Of course." I replied, putting the leather bag on my back. We continued onto the next area, which was just a typical cave—dark and moist. Ralof led the way, Kaela in the middle with a torch, and me at the very back.
It was too quiet, so I just flipped to the first page of the Restoration tome I found. It was a bit dark, but Kaela's torch offered enough visibility to the letters.
"Healing: A novice spell of Restoration that accelerates the body's natural healing by channeling Magicka to reinforce the vessel. The flow must be steady and regulated. Inhale intent. Exhale reinforcement."
"Huh." Useful spell.
"Restoration is the act of anchoring the soul more firmly to its physical form. As Destruction expels force, Restoration solidifies. Magicka here is not expelled violently, but tuned into the natural rhythm of the body. Controlled flow is vital—like breath, like heartbeat."
My brow twitched. Rhythm?Flow?
I flipped again, eyes narrowing. Kaela's torch casted shadows over the words.
"Too much Magicka will rupture the channel. Too little, and the spell fades. All Restoration follows this principle of internal harmony—steady in, steady out."
That made me stop walking for half a second.
"So... you're telling me I've been throwing my entire lung into every spell like a lunatic, when I could have just been... pacing it?" I muttered aloud.
Kaela glanced back at me. "You are a lunatic."
"Correct," I said, tucking the book into the leather bag and sliding it over my shoulder. "But an informed one now."
At the same moment, Ralof raised a hand. "Shh. I hear something."
We froze. From deeper down the corridor, past the bend, came the unmistakable clink of armored boots and the low murmur of voices. I tightened my grip on the dagger and raised my free hand.
The air grew thicker. The pulse of my soul-beath stirred again. Inhale, exhale. Lightning coiled at my fingertips.
The tunnel widened into a roughly circular cavern, lit by torches jammed into cracks in the wall. Five Imperials, armed and ready, turned as we entered.
"Stormcloaks!"
Kaela was already halfway there by the time the word left the soldier's mouth, yelling something incoherent and joyful. Ralof followed, more composed but no less lethal.
I raised my hand and inhaled.
The first Imperial didn't have time to react. The bolt hit him in the chest and dropped him twitching.
The second raised a shield. Lightning burst through the seams, grounding into his arm. He collapsed, spasming.
The third tried to dodge, only to catch a bolt to the neck. He went down screaming.
By the fourth, I felt it.
A sudden weight in my chest. Like I'd run a mile with no air. My vision blurred. A dull ache surged through my limbs, slow and creeping like a fever. My ears rang.
Then, I dropped.
Knees hit the stone with a crack, and my body pitched forward. The smell of dirt and blood filled my nose.
"Oh," I muttered through the ringing. "So... breathing from the soul might be more literal than I thought."
Kaela and Ralof were still fighting ahead, blades clashing. Ralof threw a glance over his shoulder.
"You idiot! You overcast, didn't you?!"
"I cast efficiently," I replied. "There's a difference."
Ralof parried a swing and kicked an Imperial back. "You do that again, your damn soul's gonna unplug from your body!"
"Ah," I mumbled, forehead now flat against the cold stone. "That explains the taste of copper and existential dread."
And to the sound of agonized screams and steels clanging, I fell asleep against my will.
***
I awoke to the scent of pinewood, fresh bread, and something floral. Lavender, maybe. Definitely not scorched flesh, blood, or electrocuted corpses. So that was an improvement.
The world felt muffled, like I was underwater. My limbs were heavy, but not in the bruised or broken way. Just...drained. Soul-hungover, if the spell tomes aren't lying.
I blinked at the thatched ceiling above me. Wooden beams. Soft mattress beneath my back. Faint chatter through the walls.
My eyes drifted to the window. Sunlight filtered through in soft beams.
Not Helgen.
Not the cave.
A house.
"I didn't die," I said aloud, mostly to confirm it.
"Not for lack of trying."
I turned my head slightly to see Ralof sitting in a chair beside the bed, arms crossed, looking thoroughly unimpressed. His forehead was freshly bandaged.
"Ah. You survived. Good," I said.
He huffed. "Barely. Same with you. You cast yourself unconscious, you maniac."
"I didn't cast myself unconscious," I corrected, sitting up slowly. "I overextended the breathing metaphor."
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer to Talos and stood.
"We made it out," he said. "You collapsed while fighting the Imperials. Kaela and I finished off the rest. Spiders came after that—big ones. You missed the fun."
"How convenient."
"And then a bear. Kaela fought it. Alone. On purpose."
"That... tracks."
Ralof glanced toward the door. "She's around somewhere. Said she wanted to see what our townspeople looked like when they weren't screaming."
"How thoughtful."
He ignored me and continued. "We're in Riverwood. My sister Gerdur's place. You've been out for a few hours. She says you'll live, but didn't sound entirely happy about it."
"Understandable."
He moved to the door, then turned back with a graver look.
"I'm heading back to Windhelm. I need to report to Ulfric about what happened today. But before that... I want to ask something."
I raised an eyebrow.
"You two," he said. "You and Kaela. The way you fought. Ulfric would want people like you. We need people like you. Smart, powerful. You could help free Skyrim."
I stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Something to consider."
Kaela chose that moment to kick the door open, grinning like a child who'd been told she could pick out her own weapon.
"Look who's awake!" she chirped. "Did your soul finish throwing its tantrum?"
I gave her a flat look. "Yes. It's now sulking quietly."
She plopped onto the floor beside the bed, arms crossed behind her head.
"You missed the bear. It was adorable. Screamed like a man."
Ralof shook his head. "Divines help me."
Kaela stretched. "So what now, boss man?"
Ralof looked to us both. "You two need to head to Whiterun. Tell the Jarl what happened in Helgen. He needs to know about the dragon."
Kaela shrugged. "Sure. I'm good with walking. I like the scenery."
"And you?" Ralof asked me.
I swung my legs off the bed, standing slowly. "I do need to get some exercise."
Ralof nodded and left, muttering something about me being Gerdur's problem now.
Kaela stretched again and sauntered out after him, already shouting something about chickens.
I stayed behind for a moment.
Then I grabbed my leather bag on the table beside the bed and followed them out, stepping into the open, and—
Stopped.
The air hit different out here. Crisp. Real. Not smoke-choked or copper-tanged like Helgen. It carried pine and the distant scent of tilled soil, a kind of earth-sweetness I hadn't realized I missed until it filled my lungs.
I stood at the threshold of Gerdur's home, the wooden porch groaning faintly beneath my weight. Morning sunlight filtered through the tall trees, dappled gold scattered across the grass like flakes from a broken crown. Birds chirped overhead, not screeching or fleeing for their lives—just... existing.
It was quiet.
Not the kind of silence that screams with tension, like the stillness before a fight, but the gentler kind. The sort that only small towns know. A peace so steady it bordered on absurdity after everything that had happened.
Children laughed somewhere down the road. A hammer clanged from the blacksmith's forge. A chicken strutted by without a care in the world.
This was Skyrim too. Not war. Not dragons. Not dead mages in torture rooms.
Just life.
It felt disorienting. Like my mind hadn't caught up yet. Like this world was too fragile for what I'd already seen.
I took a slow breath, letting it fill my chest—not my soul this time, just my lungs. Grounding.
My eyes followed the path that curved gently toward the edge of town, where the treeline broke and gave way to the gentle rush of water.
The river.
Drawn more by instinct than thought, I walked.
Grass crunched under my boots, still damp with morning dew. A dragonfly zipped past my face, ignoring me completely. I passed an old woman hanging linens to dry and a young man hauling firewood. Neither looked at me like I didn't belong.
I reached the riverbank and sank onto a flat stone, legs crossed beneath me.
The water moved steadily—clear, cold, and constant. It rolled over rocks and branches without resistance, singing its soft, mindless song. The sunlight kissed the surface, scattering diamonds across the current.
And finally, I exhaled.
No spells. No lightning. No dying men.
Just breath.
I slid the leather bag from my shoulder and drew the Restoration tome from within.
The wind flipped its first few pages for me, as if eager.
"Let's begin again," I whispered.
The pages smelled of old parchment, dust, and faint traces of some dried herbal ink—juniper, perhaps. The kind of thing a Temple acolyte might use to mask the scent of blood and failure.
I turned to the first page again, but this time I wasn't skimming.
This time, I was devouring.
Healing (Novice): The spell restores the physical body by reinforcing the connection between soul and flesh. Magicka flows from the caster into the target—or into the self—and stabilizes wounds through spiritual resonance.
Stabilizes. Not replaces. Not regenerates. Not reconstructs.
Stabilizes.
"Which means," I muttered, "the flesh already wants to heal. The spell just gives it the push to remember how."
Makes sense, that's how the human body works.
My fingers moved unconsciously as I traced the diagrams. Flow charts of Magicka paths through the body, pressure points along the soul's 'breath channels.' They weren't just artistic fluff. They were instructions. Incomplete ones, but enough for me to reverse-engineer the missing variables.
I flipped the page.
"Magicka must be regulated. Surging too much energy into damaged tissue will cause backlash: organ disruption, cellular trauma, even soul-dislocation in rare cases."
Backlash. Like overfeeding a fire until it devours the hearth.
"The caster's own internal rhythm must match the natural pulse of the vessel. This is essential. A jarring frequency will result in spell failure or spiritual scarring."
I stopped and read that line three times.
Rhythm. Pulse. Breath.
This wasn't just a spell.
It was a dialogue. A harmonic exchange between body and soul.
I turned another page. More diagrams. Someone had scrawled notes in the margins in a tight, desperate hand: "Sustain with the breath. Let the flow match the wound. Less is more. Less is more."
My lip curled.
"So the temples teach caution." I flipped the book shut and tapped my fingers against the cover. "Safety. Predictability. Weakness."
Then opened it again.
"Idiots."
I wasn't interested in mending bruises and boo-boos. If this spell could stabilize the body, then theoretically, it could be repurposed. Redirected.
"If Healing draws from Magicka to reinforce the soul's tether... then there must be a way to feed the tether directly. Skip the middleman. Strengthen the source, not the symptoms."
I scribbled into the margin of the page with a piece of charcoal I dug from the bottom of the bag:
A spell that offsets the cost of another spell. A loop.
My foot began tapping against the rock, steady at first, then quicker. I stared at the scribbled diagram like it owed me an explanation.
If casting a spell is exhaling Magicka... and Healing is a way to reinforce the soul's grip on the body...
...then what if the Healing is aimed not at the body, but at the part of the soul that breathes? What if we restore the breath itself, while in the middle of casting?
A spell that restores the act of spellcasting.
That shouldn't work.
It can't work.
It's like...
I ran a hand through my hair, eyes darting across the page.
It's like pouring water from a cup into a filter that fills the same cup.Or running a treadmill to power the lights in the room you're using to run on the treadmill.
Closed loop. Zero net gain. Self-contained. Bullshit.
It violates every rule I knew—thermodynamics, conservation of energy, logic.
And yet...
I clenched the tome.
But then again—I woke up in a dead man's body inside a video game, so clearly reality's been taking liberties.
Maybe Magicka didn't follow classical physics. Maybe it was less like energy and more like pressure, or heat—something the soul produced naturally, like sweat, or breath, or radiation. Something that could be stimulated.
My foot stopped tapping.
So what happens if you align the rhythms? Time the Restoration spell to begin just as Destruction finishes? Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Feed the next breath with the last?
I tapped the tome.
"This is madness."
And then, very softly.
"I need it to work."
It was an insane idea.
I wanted to disprove it.
But gods help me, I wanted to try it more.