Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Skyrim, the characters from the awesome mod Skyrim Romance by Maralightfeather, Kaidan 2 by livtempleton, or any other mod-related content referred to in this story. This story is purely fan-made and I only claim ownership of the character I'm playing as.

(Updated 11/27/2020)

Prologue: Firelight

Noir's POV

An old friend once told me that destiny has a funny way of bringing the most unlikely people together. And I believe that's absolutely true. The Divines have an odd sense of humor too because somehow I ALWAYS seem to end up in the most bizarre situations even when I'm trying to be careful. Although now that I look back on everything that's happened recently I can't help but laugh at the irony of it all.

I suppose I do tend to get a bit too nosy for my own good whenever something interesting is going on or when someone needs help. It's hard to resist getting involved whenever that happens and that's usually when the trouble starts. But the thing is, I also really enjoy the thrill of a good adventure and causing a bit of harmless mischief now and again can be fun in small doses. So to me, it's not always a bad thing how unpredictable life can be...

It all started a few months ago after I saved a man named Ralof from a nearby cave while searching for survivors from Helgen. I was camping just outside of the village when I suddenly heard a deafening roar and saw a real dragon fly right overhead from that direction. It was an enormous creature and deadly looking creature with dark gleaming scales as black as a moonless sky and its eyes as red as the flames of Oblivion itself.

I have no idea where it came from, but the danger it posed was real enough which meant something big was going on. Either way, once it was safe to come out into the open again I hastily extinguished my campfire, grabbed my belongings, and ran up the hillside as fast as I could to see if there was anything I could do to help even though I already knew it might be too late and even if there were survivors they probably wouldn't accept my help easily. Then again, given how devastating the dragon attack was I had a feeling that the remaining guards wouldn't bother trying to kick me out when they had bigger things to worry about even though my kind, the Khajiit, aren't usually welcome inside of the city walls. At least, not very often.

By the time I finally managed to find a way inside what remained of the village, everyone was dead. It was a heartbreaking and truly horrible sight. The only thing that still gave off any warmth were the dimly glowing embers of what was once a thriving community and the burnt bodies of the villagers strewn all around me. And normally, I would have tried to at least bury them but their charred skin turned to ash at the slightest touch, so in the end, all I could do was pray for their souls. I was just about to leave when I came across the journal of an adventurer who had been mistaken for a Stormcloak rebel. I found it poking out from under a rock I tripped over while searching through my satchel and quickly realized the fallen stone from one of the walls must have protected the journal from the flames that had engulfed everything else...

That is, with the exception of the single survivor I DID manage to find.

To tell you the truth Ralof should count himself lucky I found that journal because I honestly had no intention of coming back this way for a while, especially not when there was a dragon around. And so, after following the directions from the journal's last entry I found him in a cave I dragged Ralof all the way back to my campsite where he told me what happened while I was tending to his wounds. Apparently, he and his fellow Stormcloak soldiers were caught during an ambush near Darkwater Crossing and were brought to Helgen in a couple of carts where they were all supposed to be lined up for the headsman's ax.

Even the leader of the rebellion, Ulfric Stormcloak himself, was captured too and he was about to go up to the chopping block when that black dragon appeared and started destroying everything in sight. The only reason I knew any of that is because I like to make sure I know who to avoid crossing paths with out in the wild. Especially when this civil war in Skyrim between the Empire and Stormcloaks first started. I was actually a bit surprised they managed to capture Ulfric so easily even though he's supposed to be this powerful Nord warrior from the rumors I've heard...

Now I understood why I didn't notice what was going on much sooner and why I never saw these carts, it's because they must have entered Helgen from the opposite side of the road and by then I had set up my campsite further down the hillside. That dragon must have also flown down from the other side of the mountains too since I never saw anything or smelled the smoke until the village was already in flames. Obviously, I had no idea at the time what a dragon's supposed to smell like either because they were all supposed to be extinct so there's that too. More importantly, I just couldn't figure out why a dragon would attack Helgen specifically if it was there searching for food. There was much easier prey for it to catch in the wilderness that couldn't fight back but since most of the bodies were burnt and then left like instead of being torn apart and eaten, as morbid as that is, so it must've been provoked by something they did for it to slaughter an entire village of people like that...

Anyway, once Ralof regained his strength even though he said it might be safer for us to travel separately so no one suspected me of being involved with the Stormcloaks I decided to accompany him to Riverwood. I didn't have anything else better to do and besides, I was a bit concerned that Ralof might collapse somewhere along the way in that condition. And when he finally asked me straight out why I cared so much about his well-being I smiled and pointed out how it would have been completely pointless to save his life only to find his corpse somewhere along the road after a wolf or a bear caught his scent and had him for breakfast. He laughed in response and seemed to appreciate the gesture all the same so he warmed up to me fairly quickly.

As soon as we arrived Ralof asked his sister Gerdur to give me some supplies as a small way to repay me for my kindness. And since I had proven to them I could be trusted Gerdur also asked me to travel to Whiterun and tell Jarl Balgruuf in Whiterun about the dragon attack so he could send some of his guards to help protect Riverwood from a similar fate as Helgen. I'm sure Ralof would have tried to do it himself but since he hadn't slept for days and was still recovering from his wounds I agreed that it would be better if I went in his stead. That wasn't the only reason though. The other reason is that Ralof wasn't sure if they'd believe anything a Stormcloak rebel had to say and they might have assumed the story about a dragon attacking Helgen was all just part of an elaborate trap to weaken Whiterun so that Ulfric could storm the keep and take control of the city.

I highly doubted I was going to have any better luck convincing them I was telling them the truth given the fact that I'm a Dagi-Raht Khajiit and given the bad reputation of my kind there was always a chance they would throw me out long before I told the Jarl anything useful. After all, I may look slightly more human than most of my kind, but I'm obviously still a Khajiit and being accepted for who I am is a rare privilege. Still, I was happy that Ralof and his sister were willing to entrust me with such an important task even though it was anyone's guess if the Jarl would listen to me.

I wasn't able to save anyone else from the destruction in Helgen though so regardless of whether they asked for my help or not I wanted to make sure Riverwood would be able to protect itself if that dragon returned and struck again. That's why I agreed to do it without hesitation. But like I mentioned earlier, my life has been full of many unexpected surprises so nothing went the way I expected them to at all. Because not long after I made it to Whiterun, once I finished explaining what I saw in Helgen the Jarl gave me the task of retrieving something called a Dragonstone from a Nordic ruin near Riverwood.

He said he was hoping that maybe we could learn more about these ancient creatures from it and said I looked up to the challenge which is why he sent me to do it. Looking back on it now, it's more likely that Balgruuf was just unwilling to send one of his own men to take care of this for the same reason Ralof didn't come here himself. With this civil war still going on between the Empire and these Stormcloaks, it's hard to know for sure who you can trust which I can understand all too well.

Either way as far as the Jarl of Whiterun was concerned protecting the common people of his hold takes priority over everything else which is also why he's been trying so hard to remain neutral in this war and I could respect him for that. So it made sense why he would be so willing to ask me to go in place of his own men since I'm not on anyone's side, I'm just a hunteress and the occasional adventurer which made me perfect for the job. As luck would have it though I had already explored the ruin his court mage mentioned to me called Bleak Falls Barrow earlier that same week so it actually saved me a trip back to Riverwood.

Originally I was planning on selling the Dragonstone to a historian or something the first chance I got which is the only reason I still had it with me at the time. I had no idea how important the stone was so the fact that I found it just as all these strange events had begun to unfold one after another made me feel like I was about to take part in something much greater than I could have imagined. I didn't know what exactly, but I couldn't wait to find out!

It all seemed so exciting at first, but as you can imagine, things escalated from there when another dragon was seen attacking one of the watchtowers just outside of Whiterun and they abruptly asked for my help fighting it off. Why they seemed to believe I was suddenly some kind of a dragon expert after 'surviving Helgen' I had absolutely NO idea. I mean, it wasn't as if I actually fought the first one! I only saw it from a safe distance as it was flying over my campsite.

As a result, I began to worry that I may have gotten myself in over my head because I had never fought anything so large before, but at the same time, I wanted to use this opportunity to prove to everyone that not all of my kind enjoy resorting to thievery, assassination, making and illegally selling skooma, or becoming sell-swords to make a living. This was my way to change all that, to show everyone that I was serious about wanting to help and that I'm not like that at all. To me this wasn't about gaining gold or glory, it was about doing the right thing.

But while we were fighting the second dragon I remember feeling this...strange thrum in my chest every time it closed the distance between us which was very unsettling. It felt familiar somehow too so I knew it wasn't just my nerves, I was sensing something powerful from that dragon that I couldn't quite explain. And once we had it pinned down with arrows sticking out of both wings so it couldn't fly away, I seized my chance to attack and dashed to the side, jumped on its head, and began slashing at its eyes with my daggers in an attempt to blind it. Then, using all of my strength I let out a savage cry and plunged one of my daggers directly into the dragon's temple for the final blow.

It thrashed around wildly as it died, eventually knocking me to the ground, and through sheer force as it uttered a strange word with its last dying breath that I didn't recognize, and yet I could almost feel what it meant instead of actually recognizing the word itself. It was almost like that dragon was referring to me by some kind of grand title as a sign of respect and fear. But now I understand that this feeling was an echo of my true nature as the Dragonborn, a mortal born with the soul of a dragon who has the power to slay them permanently and absorb their power somehow which is what happened next.

When I absorbed a dragon's soul for the first time I was so overwhelmed by the sudden surge of power that I fell to my knees, gasping. Though to be fair that was also a tough fight so I was pretty exhausted too. I resisted it at first until I felt drawn to one of those threads of the dragon's memories, almost like it was resonating with something that already existed inside of me. And as soon as I allowed that knowledge to unlock that part of me that's how I learned the first word of what one of the Nord guards call a Thu'im, or "Shout."

Until that moment I had never felt more alive in my life, not even when Masser and Secunda are both glowing full and bright in the night sky above Nirn, and I remember thinking that if I really was this "Dragonborn" the guards spoke of then that meant I actually could make a difference here in Skyrim and help a lot more people with this new power. Not only that but I was so happy when I realized that with this new title it might finally be possible for me to meet other people besides Kaidan and the people of Riverwood who would accept me for who I am or at the very least would see my value as a warrior.

I knew that was a lot to hope for, but even so, it was the start of a whole new life for me. And more than anything I wanted to feel like I belonged again and like I was needed since I was so tired of feeling so alone in the world. And maybe someday, I would find someone special who would remind me that I'm not alone, that I have friends, and might one day be part of a family again. Only time would tell though...

At any rate, as soon as we returned to the city after the battle I told the Jarl what happened at the watchtower after we killed the dragon and he insisted that I answer the Graybeard's summons from all the way from on top of the Throat of the World which we heard on our way back. At first, his steward was a bit skeptical about my claim of being the Dragonborn but after giving everyone a small demonstration by Shouting up into the rafters there was no doubt about it. After all, it's not every day a Khajiit woman discovers she can use the ancient Nordic art of Shouting without any training let alone much knowledge about their culture to begin with.

I wasn't really expecting what happened after that but I was also even given a Thaneship as a reward for my services which meant I was welcome in Whiterun with open arms from now on. And I suppose the Jarl mostly wanted to make it easier for me to do travel in and out of the city without the usual hassle which was appreciated too. It took a while for the rest of the townsfolk to accept me as their Thane, but after doing a few odd jobs for them that helped me build up my reputation and gain their trust. A couple of them were impossible to please no matter what I did but I expected as much so it wasn't a big deal.

Once I finished saving enough gold to buy the supplies I needed for the difficult journey to Ivarstead and upgraded my gear though, I left Whiterun and made my way up the mountain by climbing the 7000 steps to reach the home of the Graybeards. And it was there that I discovered once and for all that I really was the Dragonborn and they taught me many things, including more about the history behind my gifts. Truthfully I'm very grateful to them for being so patient with me since I couldn't contain my curiosity and kept asking them questions almost nonstop whenever they taught me something exciting and new. Especially Arngeir, who is the only Graybeard that can speak normally without accidentally unleashing a small fraction of his power into a Thu'um with every word.

That brings us to where we are now...

I greatly enjoyed our lessons together, despite his many warnings about the risks of becoming too obsessed with my newfound power since it was given to me for a greater purpose. But apart from that Arngeir seemed very amused by my child-like antics and he was happy I was so eager to learn from them and that I deeply respected their peaceful way of life. Deep down though all I really wanted was to know what being the Dragonborn really meant for me and what it is I was destined to do because frankly, I had no idea why someone like me would be given this power instead of a Nord.

I told him I could see why he was concerned about my intentions in High Hrothgar at first since I doubt many Khajiit would have dared to make such a dangerous journey up here since we have our own beliefs and customs, but I also told him that I didn't come here because I'm trying to gain more power I just wanted to learn everything I could while I was here with them since I wasn't sure how often I would be able to make the journey. It's a difficult journey to make alone. And more importantly, I wanted to understand myself better so that I could accept this new part of me and use this gift to help those I couldn't before.

Arngeir seemed satisfied with my answer and he assured me that as long as I continued to follow this path, the Graybeards would be there to pass on their knowledge and wisdom to me to help guide me as the Dragonborn. He also hinted that it's entirely possible that there might be others out there who are also like me, other Dragonborns who have yet to be revealed. But for the time being, all we knew was that I was the only one in Skyrim at the moment.

After that, as more of a traditional rite of passage, Arngeir gave me the task of retrieving something called the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller. It seemed like an easy enough task at first because even with all the Draugr that infest most Nordic ruins I enjoy exploring them every so often. I've actually ventured inside quite a few of them over the years in search of treasure and interesting books preserved through magic or were made of more sturdy materials that kept their pages intact even hundreds of years later.

Sadly that's when my luck suddenly took another unexpected turn for the worse when someone else beat me to it and had stolen the horn before me! When I saw the note they had left for the Dragonborn I was so angry because it had taken me forever to reach the final chamber of this ruin. The message told me to meet "a friend" at the Sleeping Giant Inn and that I was supposed to let them know it was me by asking to rent the attic room. But I had already been to that inn several times and knew for a fact that it didn't have a basement let alone an attic so this code phrase made NO sense to me. Sadly, it wasn't like I had much of a choice unless I wanted to return to Arngeir empty-handed and freeze my tail off going up that mountain again...

And that's how I first met my newest "friend" who ended up being a woman named Delphine and how I've been dragged into more political affairs than I ever planned to be since she's being hunted by the Thalmor. To make matters worse, Delphine said she basically wanted me to kill a dragon JUST to prove to her that I could absorb it's soul before she would trust me enough to tell me the whole story behind who she was and what she believes is going on with the whole dragon situation. As it turns out though, the black dragon I saw back in Helgen reappeared at the burial ground in Kynsgrove we went to and that alone already proved to both of us that her theory about the dragons coming back to life was true since we heard him Shout at the grave and how the dragon buried there was brought back to life as a result.

Honestly, this fight was even more difficult than the last since the guards in Kynsgrove were too scared to offer us any sort of backup unlike the men who helped me in Whiterun but once the dragon was slain Delphine finally told me who she really was. She told me that she was one of the last Blade which were part of an ancient order of Akaviri warriors that once served as the Emperor's personal guards 200 years ago. Turns out they were also known as dragon slayers that served the Dragonborn before that. Personally, though I wasn't really buying the whole idea of the Blades actually "serving the Dragonborn," at least not as far as Delphine is concerned since she seems all too happy to send me off to do her bidding so I have a feeling she's just using me to get answers about the dragons.

I suppose in the end Delphine did give me some helpful information, but I'm not really looking forward to seeing her again. Something about that woman gets on my nerves. Still, if she's serious about wanting to help me stop the dragons from killing innocent people I need to listen to what she had to say and go along with her plan, at least for now. That's exactly why I've been traveling across Skyrim in the meantime while trying to gather more information and waiting for Delphine to put together this crazy plan of hers to sneak me into a party at the Thalmor Embassy. There's a twisted sort of irony to that since Elsweyr is technically a part of the Aldmeri Dominion so I suppose that's another reason why she suspected me of being a Thalmor spy when we first met. Not that I've met any Khajiit actively serving them since most are either traders traveling in a caravan or have resorted to a life of banditry to survive this harsh climate.

Personally, I've never been a fan of the Thalmor or thought very highly of them, especially not after what they did to my friend Kaidan I mentioned earlier but that's another story. Ever since then I've been avoiding them for the most part which used to be a much easier task since their patrols rarely venture outside of the city unless they're escorting a prisoner for questioning to their prison base further north and rooting out Talos worshipers wherever they go. In fact, about a year ago I was offered a job by one of them when a Thalmor wizard leading of one of their patrols noticed my skills when I was snuck up on a thief who had stolen my satchel while I was out fishing and I wanted payback. Besides, there was no way I was going to lose my belongings to some random bandit in the wild without doing something about it since it was all I had to begin with!

The high elf wizard saw me not only steal it back without being seen and but he actually laughed at the fact that I pushed the thief into the river instead of slitting his throat which I could have. Not that I would since I try to only kill as a last resort since you never know who might turn into an unlikely ally or what tragic past has led them to this way of life and how there's always a small chance for them to change their ways. Not many people would be so understanding and forgiving about having their things stolen though so while I can laugh about it now, at the time I'll admit that was pretty upset about it because my favorite book and a few letters I had received from Kaidan were in that satchel.

At any rate, when the Thalmor wizard saw what happened he told me he was impressed that I could move with such silence and grace and offered me an official position with them, but I politely refused. Now that Delphine expects me to sneak into such an important Thalmor party to find out if they're responsible for the return of the dragons, some small part of me is actually afraid I might run into the very same wizard. Anything could happen and it was only then after realizing how much of a risk I'm actually taking by doing this that I seriously began to wonder what in Oblivion I've gotten myself into this time letting Delphine talk me into this. I hope it will be worth it in the end because while I do want to make more friends and allies, the last thing I need in my life is another wizard taking a bit too much interest in me or marking me as an enemy...