IN Falkreath Hold a day's ride Northwest of the city, the road rambles between forests of pine and granite outcrops. Few people are seen here, the occasional forester or hunter, a traveling party or carriage full of goods. There are many settlements around the great Lake Ilinalta, fishing villages, lumber mills, but here, in the higher forests closer to the Jerall Mountains the population is thinner, as is the air.
When I was traveling there alone one day, I found beside the road an ancient ruin, indeed, long since ancient, the arched entrance of granite pillars partially buried by time, the former roof overgrown with mountain flowers and thistles, the rock encrusted with lichen and moss. The pines clutch to the sides, shadowing the narrow passage, such that only a dark opening is seen.
I, being curious, slipped inside, ducking under the mantle into a curved hallway with monolith sarcophogai empty, lidless. The cracked corners of the low hall sprout bleeding crowns and tree roots. Scattered on the ground are bone fragments and below these, dust of ages. The walls are smooth, the stories of these forgotten dead long since worn away. The curved path opens into a round courtyard filled with brambles and ivy, the sides hung with mosses. Above me the bright summer sun enters dimly through the pine leaves as a narrow beam, rendering the scene gray and gloomy. Amid the bushes I find a rusted helm, partially buried, the image of an unknown clan barely visible on the front. The only sound is of a pine jay, his shrill call in the wind between the trees above and from time to time a far off raven.
How old must this place be, that even the ghosts have departed? How it must have been in the days of the Last Dragonborn? Did she visit here on her legendary passage? Perhaps she found bandits, or soldiers. Or perhaps something more natural, wolves, or rats, or giant spiders, or something more terrible, a hagraven, or draugr guards, or a spriggan spirit. I try to see these things in my mind, but they are soon lost to the wind. The spriggans are but false imaginings, a flicker of movement among the ancient trunks, and the draugr gone to permanent rest long ago. The land reclaims the rock. Soon naught but a smooth hill will remain, covered with flowers.