The next thing I felt was a hand on my shoulder. Starting, I turned to see Frea staring at me with wide ice-blue eyes.

"What happened to you?" She gasped. "You read the book, and then… It seemed as though you were not really here. I could see you, but also see through you!"

"I saw… I saw Miraak, I think. He had a dragon, and…" I rubbed my forehead, trying to make sense of what I'd just seen. My head still buzzed from the shocks those things had given me.

"Where? Where is he? Can we reach him? Can we kill him?" She demanded.

"I don't know. Reading the book took me to where he was, somehow."

She looked at it with a worried frown. "This is a dangerous thing, then. We should return to my village and show this to my father. Perhaps Storn can make sense of what is going on. Come, there looks to be a way out through here."

I followed close behind as she hurried out through another doorway leading out of the chamber. I kept the strange book tucked under my arm. If she felt it was best for her father to see it, then so be it.

The tunnels led out onto a snowy path overlooking a river. Frea glanced around for a moment, seemed to get her bearings, and kept walking. Moments later, she pointed down below, toward an odd beam of light.

"You see that green light?" She asked. "That comes from the Wind Stone, where my people work against their will. They must be freed soon. The village is just ahead. Storn has used his magic to raise a barrier around it, protecting the few of us left. That the barrier is still there is a good sign."

Soon enough I saw what she was talking about. A shimmering dome, nearly transparent, rose above the tops of the trees. Moments later I saw the houses that were protected by the magical barrier. They were small, with high roofs, and they were made entirely of wood. I followed Frea as she hurried between them to the village's central square.

Several Nords dressed in heavy coats sat there in a circle, the wind whipping their hair. All of them had their eyes closed as they focused on the white energy that came from them and rose up to join the barrier over our heads. Frea went over to one of them, an elderly man.

"Father! I have returned! There is yet hope!"

His only response was to open his eyes and ask, "Frea? What news do you bring? Is there a way to free our people?"

Frea shook her head. "No, but I have brought someone who has seen things. She has confirmed that Miraak is the one behind the suffering of our people."

"I feared that it would be so."

"But how is that possible? After all this time…"

The old man closed his eyes again, worry creasing his brow. "I fear there is too much we do not yet know." Without opening his eyes, he said to me, "So, you have seen things, yes? My magic grows weak, and so does the barrier around out village. Time is short. Tell me what you know."

"I've seen Miraak," I said, kneeling down beside him.

"Really? How?" He asked.

"There was a book in Miraak's temple. I read it and… I don't know how, but it led me somewhere. Miraak was there."

Storn nodded. "The legends speak of that place. Terrible battles fought at the temple. The dragons burning it to the ground in rage. They speak also of something worse than dragons buried within. Difficult to imagine, but if true… It means what I feared has come to pass. Miraak was never truly gone, and now has returned. If you could go to this place and see him… are you like Miraak? Are you Dragonborn?"

My hands tensed. I wrapped my arms around myself, warding off the chill both inside and out, and looked away. There was something about the way he'd asked "Are you like Miraak?" that made me uncomfortable.

"Yes," I whispered. "I am Dragonborn."

"Then perhaps you are connected with him. The old tales say that he, too, was Dragonborn."

"What does it mean, both of us being Dragonborn?" I asked. The cold feeling was getting stronger.

"I am unsure," he said slowly. "It may mean that you could save us… or it may mean that you could bring about our destruction. But our time here is running out. The few of us left free of control cannot protect ourselves for much longer. You must go to Saering's Watch. Learn there the word that Miraak learned long ago, and use that knowledge on the Wind Stone. You may be able to break the hold on our people there, and free them from control. Some dark influence wields power over them, forces them to forget themselves and act against their nature. At first it was only during the night, but now every moment is spent building some strange shrine around the Wind Stone. I believe if the shrine can be destroyed, the Skaal will be free once more."

Saering's Watch was an old Nordic ruin some way to the northwest. It sat nestled into the mountainside, overlooking the Sea of Ghosts.

I kept to the deep shadows cast by the ancient stone walls, watching the few draugr that roamed the ruin. A set of stairs led up to the upper levels built against the face of the cliff. That was probably where I needed to go to look for the power Storn told me about. Between them and me were a few of the undead. Quietly, I knocked an arrow and drew it back, aiming at one of them. It dropped when I shot it and the others quickly followed suit. Once the path was clear, I hurried up the stairs.

There was one of what I'd learned were called Word Walls carved into the cliff at the top. It was written, like all of them, in the dovah language. The text was fragmented, leaving only pieces speaking of someone named "Bhar the Earth-Hunter." I could feel the thrum of power in the words, as I could in some of the other Word Walls. They almost seemed to call to me.

Storn had said that what Miraak did forced the people to work against their nature. Against their…

I noticed one word standing out amongst all the others. Gol. Earth. I brushed my fingers over the letters. That was it.

I hurried back down the mountain, toward where Frea had shown me that green light. Sure enough, there was another one of the shrines like the one at Raven Rock. The one before me seemed more complete than the one I'd seen outside the Dunmer town, however. The Nords from the Skaal village all trudged through the snow with their arms full of stone, or knelt in the water around the stone. It must have been freezing. I heard them murmuring their chant as I got closer.

It was time to put a stop to that.

If Miraak had somehow corrupted the stone itself, and that was where the control was coming from as a kind of beacon… then I had to cleanse it of whatever he'd done to it. Summoning up the feeling of the word, I took a deep breath and faced the stone.

"Gol!"

The ground beneath my feet rumbled. Water from the pool sloshed up onto the snow. As I watched, glowing cracks appeared in the shrine's stone arches. They exploded and I ducked to avoid the flying chunks of rock. When I looked back up, the previously possessed Skaal all stood still looking at each other with expressions of fear or confusion.

That was when the monster rose from the pool.

It just seemed to appear, the thing too massive to have been there the whole time. It was at least ten feet tall and covered with bruise-colored scales. Its head resembled the statues that Frea and I saw in the temple. It had the same bulging eyes, fish-like snout, and mouth full of sharp teeth. The monster towered over us, making a gurgling, snarling noise.

The Skaal seemed to snap out of their daze. All of them drew their weapons and attacked, shouting angrily as they descended on it. I stood back, firing arrows at its head. It tried to block the attacks, but there were just too many. It quickly fell beneath the onslaught.

Once the creature was dead, the Skaal turned, one by one, to look at me.

"I don't know what spell you freed us from, outsider," one of them said, "but I thank you."

I followed them back to the village. When we arrived, the barrier was gone and all those that had been left were waiting for us. There were cries of relief as the two groups hurried to greet one another. I slipped through the crowd to where Storn was waiting. He nodded to me.

"The air is different. We are safe," he said.

"Yes. Your people are free."

He nodded again. "So they are. You have proven yourself an ally to the Skaal, and so the Skaal shall be allies to you."

I looked back at the reunions still taking place. "What do we do now?"

"If you have released the Wind Stone and broken the hold on my people, perhaps you can do the same for the rest of Solstheim. I doubt it will fully stop whatever Miraak is doing, but it may slow his progress."

"That's not enough," I told him, feeling frustrated. "He needs to be stopped."

He shook his head. "I cannot help you with that. None here can. You will need the knowledge Miraak himself learned."

"Tell me more about this strange book I saw him though, then," I said, holding out the black-covered tome to him.

The shaman didn't take it. Instead he stared at it with a worried frown. "Miraak had this? This does not look like something of the Dragon Cult. It is a dark thing, unnatural."

"But what is it?"

"Our traditions do not speak of anything like it, but it and Miraak are connected. You read the Black Book, and saw him. And the book's power comes from the same dark source as that which corrupted the Wind Stone. Beware. You are now walking the same road as Miraak."

That wasn't exactly something that I wanted to hear.