The interior of the first Sundered Tower was exactly as grim and unwelcoming as expected. The air was thick with dust and the damp, mineral smell of old stone.
Slivers of light cut through cracks in the crumbling ceiling, illuminating floating motes and the bones of long-dead things. Echo immediately began snuffling along the base of a wall, her nose twitching at scents only she could decipher.
They'd only taken a few steps into the gloom when Qasim broke the silence. His voice was conversational, but it carried a pointed edge.
"Did you know," he began, his eyes scanning the shadowy corners, "that this camp was a gathering of outcasts? Even amongst the Forsworn, these were considered too extreme, too… broken. The Briarheart was likely their punishment, not their champion."
Torin watched Echo for a moment, then turned a flat, uninterested look on the Redguard. "What difference does it make? Dead is dead. Trouble is trouble."
"If you did know," Qasim pressed, turning to face him fully, "it would explain why you did not seem overly concerned that our actions might ignite another war in the Reach. You were culling weeds that even the other weeds wanted gone."
Torin gave him a long, sidelong glance, his expression unreadable in the half-light. "Is that what you think?" He shook his head, a short, dismissive motion. "Then why would I have wasted two whole days thinning out every Forsworn patrol for twenty miles around if I knew these ones were already pariahs? Seems like a lot of extra effort for 'weeds' nobody would miss."
Qasim merely offered a small, knowing smile. "I do not know your reasons, Torin. But I am sure you had one. You always do. Efficiency, perhaps, ensuring no witnesses remained to point a finger back towards Whiterun, or any number of reasons..."
Torin just scoffed, the sound loud in the dusty quiet. "'Had a reason,' he says…" He made a sharp, brushing motion with his hand, as if clearing the air of flies. "Look, either help me find this damn sword or go away and commune with your new spirit-blade somewhere else. I'm a busy man, and I don't have time for your philosophical post-mortems."
Qasim watched him for another moment, then shook his head, a weary but unsurprised expression on his face. He didn't argue further. Instead, he turned and began methodically examining a collapsed bookshelf, prying apart rotten wood with the tip of his newly-acquired ancient sword.
Torin let out another, heavier sigh, the sound full of exasperation. He stomped over to a deep corner heaped with rubble from a partially collapsed wall. He turned to echo with a grin. "Yell if you find something, girl."
The bear chuffed in acknowledgment.
If talking was a waste of time, then searching it was. He shoved aside a large chunk of masonry with a grunt, sending a cascade of smaller stones clattering, and began the tedious work of looking for a needle in a very dark, very dangerous haystack.
On one knee, Torin peered into yet another moldy, iron-banded chest. Its contents were depressingly predictable: a bundle of rags that disintegrated at his touch, releasing a cloud of spores, and a ceremonial dagger so corroded it was more a lump of orange rust than a weapon.
He sighed, a sound of pure, bone-deep annoyance, and slammed the lid shut. The thud echoed in the hollow silence of the tower.
An hour. A full hour of methodical, dusty, fruitless searching. The towers were indeed as spacious as they'd seemed from the outside—a warren of empty rooms, collapsed corridors, and chambers filled with nothing but decades of wind-blown debris.
The one small mercy was the distinct lack of additional danger. No Draugr stirred in ancient sarcophagi. No spectral Nord or Forsworn warriors haunted the passages. It was just empty, crumbling, and profoundly boring.
Just as he was about to shove himself to his feet and move on to the next barren room, a sound cut through the quiet. A low, rumbling growl from Echo. It wasn't her battle-growl, the one that vibrated the floor. Nor was it a sound of distress.
It was the grumpy, persistent rumble she made when she was nosing at a sealed food pack, or when he'd been leaning on her in his sleep. Just… louder. More insistent.
Torin's brows raised. He pushed himself up, dusted off his knees, and followed the sound.
It led him to a small, particularly dark side chamber off the main hall. Qasim was already there, standing a few feet back, watching Echo with quiet curiosity.
The massive bear was at the base of a wall, her snout buried in a pile of rubble where part of the ceiling and wall had given way long ago. She was sniffing furiously, pawing at the larger stones with a focused, almost frantic energy.
Torin frowned. "What've you found, girl?" he muttered, stepping closer.
The room was too dark. With a flick of his wrist, he conjured a small, bright sphere of magelight.
He gave it a gentle push, and it floated forward like a captive star, settling directly over the rubble pile Echo was investigating.
The pale, cool light washed over the broken stone and ancient mortar.
And there it was.
Half-buried, jammed deep between two heavy, collapsed blocks of masonry, was a pommel. An ancient, heavy-looking one, made of darkened, aged bronze or iron.
The carving on the handle it was attached to—what little they could see of it, as the rest of the blade was completely entombed in stone and dirt—was unmistakably Nordic.
Intricate knotwork, worn smooth by time but still holding its shape.
Torin's pulse gave a single, hard thump against his ribs. He exchanged a quick glance with Qasim.
The Redguard's expression had sharpened, all weary philosophy gone, replaced by the alert focus of a hunter who'd finally spotted his prey.
"Well," Torin said, his voice dropping to a whisper in the hushed room. "Maybe the ghost at Old Hroldan wasn't just telling stories."
"There is only one way to find out," Qasim said, his voice hushed with anticipation. He moved towards the pile of stones, reaching to start clearing them by hand.
"Stand back," Torin interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Let me handle this. Less chance of bringing the rest of the ceiling down on our heads."
Qasim gave him a strange look, but he stepped back without protest, giving Torin space.
Torin raised his hand, fingers spread wide toward the rubble heap. He took a slow, deep breath, focusing his will, feeling the latent magnetic fields in the surrounding stone and the lodestone core of his own axe humming in sympathy.
Then, his fingers clenched into a tight fist.
The pile of broken masonry shuddered. Not just the surface stones, but the deeper, heavier blocks buried within. Dust rained down. Then, one by one, and then in small clusters, the stones began to lift.
They didn't fly; they drifted, peeling away from each other with a grating, gritty sound, and floated with a ponderous, controlled slowness across the room to settle in a neat, if imposing, pile in the far corner.
After years of practice, Torin's telekinesis was formidable. But the true edge came from the lodestones he'd bartered for from Dushnikh Yal. Using them was the difference between gently lifting a basket of apples and hurling a full-grown mammoth. One was useful. The other was battlefield artillery.
In less than a minute, the collapsed section was cleared. What lay beneath was revealed in the stark, white light of the magelight.
It was a corpse. Long dead, nothing but bones held together by scraps of leather and the remnants of strange armor crafted from yellowed beast bones and sinew. And stabbed straight through the ribcage, pinning the skeleton to the stone floor, was a sword.
The blade was unremarkable at first glance—a simple, sturdy-looking longsword of Nordic make. But the area around it told a different story.
The beast-bone armor and the bones themselves were blackened and scorched in a perfect circle around the entry wound, as if the metal had burned with a cold, intense heat that had cauterized its path and left a permanent stain of violence.
Qasim watched as Torin carefully wrapped his hand around the hilt. There was no dramatic resistance. With a soft, gritty shhhhk, the blade slid free from stone and bone. Torin held it up, turning it slowly in the light, his eyes tracing the fuller, the crossguard, the worn leather of the grip.
"Well?" Qasim finally asked, unable to contain his curiosity. "Is this Hjalti's blade? The sword of promises?"
Torin continued his inspection in silence for another moment before giving a single, definitive nod. "It is. The markings match the ghost's description. The age is right. The… history is right." He tapped the blackened scorch mark on the crossguard with a thumbnail.
Qasim frowned, stepping closer to peer at the weapon. It looked… ordinary. Well-made, certainly, but not legendary. "It does not seem as impressive as I thought it would be," he admitted, his voice tinged with disappointment.
He turned his puzzled gaze back to Torin. "You seemed very interested when the spirit at the inn spoke of it."
Torin smiled, but it was a bitter, thin expression. Qasim, for the lack of a better description, was annoyingly sharp when he wanted to be.
"Yes, well," Torin conceded, his voice dry. "I thought it would be a powerful relic. Or at least hold enough historic value to make a collector in Solitude drool. Something that would translate into a very large pile of coins."
He shook his head, looking at the plain blade in his hand. "But that was years ago. I've had time to think. Any enchantment, any real power this thing had would have bled away into the stone centuries ago. And all I'd have to prove its pedigree are the ramblings of a half-mad ghost in a haunted inn. Not exactly a solid sales pitch."
He passed his thumb along the edge of the blade. It was dull, not from neglect, but from sheer age—the metal itself seemed to have lost its will to cut. "This thing isn't worth much to anyone… except for the one it was promised to."
Qasim's grin widened, a flash of understanding in his dark eyes. "And yet," he said softly, pointedly, "here you are."
Torin didn't say anything. He just looked at Qasim, his own eyes narrowing into thoughtful slits.
Their interactions over the years had been few, brief, and almost always chaotic. But each one had only served to confirm the suspicion that had first lodged in Torin's brain when they'd parted ways in Markarth all those years ago.
This preachy, trouble-magnet Redguard wasn't just some obsessed pilgrim. He was a chosen one. The universe had clearly marked him for something. A quest, a destiny, the usual tiresome cosmic baggage.
And Torin was almost certain that their initial meeting, the bandit, the spriggan, the haunting at Old Hroldan Inn—the whole bizarre chain of events—wasn't just bad luck.
It felt like a scheme. A cosmic nudge, or maybe a shove, designed to tie Torin's path to Qasim's, to make sure the stubborn Nord was there to help the chosen one reach this exact point, in this exact ruin, for reasons only the gods understood.
The coincidences had piled up too high to ignore. The signs had been there, flashing like warning beacons, and Torin—who spent most of his energy trying to avoid divine attention—had still been unable to look away from them.
Eventually, he'd stopped trying to fight it. Fighting fate in Skyrim was like trying to punch a mountain. Exhausting and ultimately pointless. So he'd made a cold, pragmatic decision: just get through it. Finish the stupid quest, fulfill the ghost's promise, sever whatever mystical string was tying him to Qasim's destiny, and be done with it.
Hence why he was here, covered in dust, holding a worthless sword, and listening to the chosen one have a moment of delusional 'revelation.'
Torin hefted the ancient, unimpressive blade, feeling its dead weight. "Yeah, well," he said, his tone shifting to something more pragmatic. "I gave my word to the innkeeper at Old Hroldan that I'd help set things right. A debt's a debt."
He turned and presented the sword, hilt-first, to Qasim. "And seeing as I just helped you dig up your own legendary artifact, you can return the favor. Take this to the ghost. Fulfill the promise. Let the old soldier rest."
Qasim took the proffered sword, his grip firm. He studied Torin's face. "Are you really that eager to see this College of yours?"
Torin chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. "I can't say I'm not eager. But that's not it. I'd like to reach Winterhold before the worst of the winter sets in. That doesn't leave much time for scenic detours to haunted inns."
Qasim simply nodded, tucking Hjalti's sword alongside the dormant blade of Red Eagle. "Alright. I can do that much for you. A fair trade." He gestured back the way they'd come. "Let us get out of here first. Aela and Auri are waiting. They will want to know the outcome."
Torin shook his head, a decisive motion. "No. You go back that way. Give them the news. Bid them farewell for me." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, deeper into the interconnected ruins of the towers. "I found another way out while I was searching. A collapsed section leads to a slope that puts me right on the main road, towards Solitude."
"Solitude?" Qasim asked, surprise evident in his voice.
Torin grinned, a flash of cunning. "Yes. I'll take a ship from there to Winterhold. Saves me a month of trudging through snowdrifts and getting ambushed by ice wolves. The path of least resistance."
Qasim just smiled, a knowing look in his eyes. "And what of Auri, then? She did rather strongly imply she wished to accompany you north."
Torin just shrugged, the picture of feigned indifference. "What does that have to do with me? Tell her I'm heading to Solitude. If our paths are 'meant to cross' or whatever nonsense she believes in, then that's where she can find me. I'm no tour guide."
With that, he turned on his heel, not waiting for a reply. "Come on, girl. Time to go. I wonder if we'll get seasick."
Echo let out a rumbling, noncommittal growl—clearly unenthused about the prospect of a boat—but fell into step beside him without hesitation, her massive bulk a comforting presence in the gloom.
Qasim could only watch them go, the towering young man and his equally imposing bear, disappearing into the darker passage of the ruin. He shook his head slowly, a mixture of amusement and resignation on his face.
The stubborn bastard didn't even bother to say goodbye...
Then, with the two ancient swords in hand, Qasim turned and began the walk back to the cave entrance, to the light, and to the waiting hunters.
...
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