The Border of Frost

4E 201 | Mid Hearthfire | Day 1 in Skyrim

A scream tore through the snow.

Tsukihana was small again, barefoot in the courtyard of a home she had spent years trying not to remember. White flakes gathered in her black hair. Torchlight burned against lacquered walls. Her mother's sleeve lay across the snow, embroidered flowers darkening beneath blood.

A man's hand reached for her. Her father's fingers struck the ground first, trembling once before going still. Beyond him stood shapes without faces, their outlines hidden beneath masks and winter smoke.

Her mother turned. Her lips formed Tsukihana's name, but the world had forgotten sound.

Steel rose.

Blood struck Tsukihana's cheek.

The final blow descended—

The carriage hit a rut hard enough to throw her against the wooden wall.

Tsukihana woke with one hand locked around the hilt of her katana. Rain-speckled canvas swayed overhead. Wheels groaned over uneven stone. For several breaths she saw snow where there was only gray sky beyond the carriage flap.

"Apologies," the driver called. He was an older Nord wrapped in patched furs, broad-backed and silver-bearded. "Road has more holes than road these days."

Tsukihana released the hilt by degrees. "How close are we?"

"To the border? Less than an hour." He glanced back. "Last chance to change your mind."

She looked past him toward the mountains. Their white peaks cut into the clouds like broken teeth. "Continue."

The driver nodded, though concern remained in the set of his shoulders. "Skyrim is not quiet country. Civil war on one road, bandits on the next. Dragons in the sky if half the stories are true." He clicked his tongue and guided the horses around a washed-out section of road. "Then there is the Dragonborn. Noctis Arontis. Every tavern tells a different version of him."

"Which do you believe?"

"The version where he is somewhere else when trouble finds me."

A faint smile touched her mouth before she could stop it.

The driver noticed. "There. Knew you had one."

The smile vanished.

He laughed and left her the silence.

The border outpost appeared beneath Imperial banners. Soldiers inspected the wagon, her papers, and the curved sword at her side. One guard asked whether she served the Stormcloaks. Another muttered about a dragon sighting near Whiterun. A third insisted he had seen Noctis Arontis climb toward High Hrothgar without stopping to breathe.

Tsukihana offered only what was required. Her name. Her destination. No allegiance.

The barricade lifted.

"Welcome to Skyrim," the ranking guard said.

The road descended into a forest burning with autumn color. Crimson leaves turned in the wind. Mist threaded between ancient pines, and the smell of wet earth replaced the cold mineral air of the mountains.

"Falkreath Hold," the driver said. "Hunters, graves, and more trees than people."

"Graves?"

"Falkreath keeps its dead close. Maybe that is why the living speak softly."

They passed beneath an old stone bridge.

The forest went silent.

Tsukihana felt the absence first: no birds, no insects, no wind in the leaves. Her hand shifted toward her sword.

A whistle cut the air.

The arrow entered through the driver's temple and came out red.

His body folded over the reins. The horses screamed. From the slope above, rocks broke loose and crashed into the road. One struck the rear wheel. The carriage lurched sideways, wood splitting, canvas tearing.

Tsukihana hit the ground beneath a rain of splinters.

Bandits poured from the trees.

Seven shapes. Axes, bows, rusted swords. One laughed when he saw the foreign woman dragging herself from the mud.

"Pretty blade," he said. "I call first claim."

Tsukihana looked at the driver lying beside the wreckage. Ten minutes earlier, he had made her smile.

Now blood ran beneath his cheek into the autumn leaves.

She drew.

Steel whispered through the forest.

The first bandit raised his axe.

Tsukihana lowered her center of gravity and remembered her master's hands correcting her stance beneath another winter sky.

The blade does not think. The blade remembers.

The axe came down.

First Moon: Crescent Draw.

One flash of steel opened the road into Skyrim.