She smashed the mnemonic anchor against the Heart’s resonance point.
“I forget nothing,” Xero-Kal replied. “I am the Lord of Forgotten Edges.”
“You are late,” it said, its voice the sound of a book burning. “The first stone of the first war—I have already begun to unsing it. Soon, the Nords never came. Soon, the Dwemer never built. Soon, you will have never been born. You are a dream I am waking from.”
The snows of Solstheim do not forgive weakness. Vika had learned that lesson the hard way, carving her name into the island’s frozen bones with nothing but a stolen steel axe and a will harder than Stalhrim.
Vika approached, axe raised. The woman stirred, her eyes flickering open—deep brown, terrified, ancient. She spoke in a language that cracked the air, then switched to broken Tamrielic.
