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Night descends upon the world like some ravenous black-winged beast.
Rahgot watches it without so much as a flicker of expression, though uneasy whispers stir behind him. He has seen twilight hundreds of times before and, should the gods favor him, will see it hundreds more. Ordinary twilight, of course. Not those of gods. Not the twilight of the world — though perhaps one day there shall be no difference between them.
Beneath the darkening veil, the forest bristles like ranks of steel-clad warriors, while the mountains hemming the temple on every side grow ever more grim, until at last they bleed into the storm-clouds above so completely that one cannot tell where stone ends, and sky begins. Rahgot wonders whether Monahven hides among them now as well — peerless in her majesty, and no less terrible in her glacial mail. If so, the pilgrims climbing there are not to be envied: the slopes spare few even in summer, let alone upon the shortest day of winter. And yet, it's a blessing to greet the Solstice there. Rahgot himself might have dared challenge the untamed winds, were he not High Priest.
“Fine weather for the end of the world,” he remarks over his shoulder.
A quiet gasp answers him. Turning, Rahgot sees a young handmaiden, crimson-faced with fright, clutching to her breast a hand torn open by the thorn of a holly branch.
“Take bandages from my table,” he orders, unconsciously tightening his own scarred palm. Thirteen days ago, his blood and Voice lit the candles meant to ward these halls against frost-wraiths and wicked winds, and since then, Rahgot has made no attempt to heal the wound. It had been a sacrifice — the first, though not the last before the Solstice — and pain or scars had long ceased to trouble him. One more or one less mattered little. No one escaped death without leaving marks upon either soul or flesh.
Vosis, however, is still far from such wisdom. From time to time, Rahgot catches the young apprentice glancing first at the wound, then at the blackened peaks along the horizon. Rahgot wonders what troubles him more: the guests from Cyrodiil who had come for the feast, or the one yet to arrive — for in truth, this day had never truly been a celebration at all. Perhaps the two reasons are not mutually exclusive, and so Vosis keeps himself from biting through his own lips only by sheer effort.
“My lord,” he asks once the embarrassed servant disappears behind the doors with strips of cloth upon a tray, “do you truly believe the end will come tonight? I know the sun has risen many times before, and that if it fails to rise this time, nothing could avert it anyway, but I… I…”
“You are afraid?”
“No.” Color rushes into Vosis’s cheeks in place of pallor. Rahgot finds it faintly amusing, though he does not say so aloud. Vosis is still young. Still little more than a child, truthfully.
“You should be,” Rahgot replies. “Death is frightening. All the more so the death of a kalpa.”
“Do you fear it too? But you are brave.”
“The brave are brave precisely because they do what they fear. For instance, they face the unknown. When I die, that too will be something completely new, and perhaps I will fear it a little.” He smiles then, hoping to soothe the boy. “But it is exceedingly unlikely that it will happen today. Not to me, nor to you, nor to those within this temple — nor even to the world itself. I promise to care about it, so calm yourself and explain to the mer once more how they should conduct themselves tonight. Go to them while I prepare. And tell servants to bring the robes.”
Rahgot offers no further explanation. He cannot tell Vosis that time itself will fracture tonight — halt, settle like ash — and that from the four corners of the world the shadow of Alduin will spread its wings while the stars along its path gutter out one by one. There is no reason to think so. Endless though the wars may be, they have not yet begun to melt the very substance of existence as they once did during the Dawn. The Towers that pin the world together like needles remain standing, though some now lie beneath the dominion of the elves. And Ysmir — the Twilight God, upon whose altar Rahgot still faithfully lays the broken weapons of his enemies — has not appeared.
Thus, Alduin has no reason yet to devour reality whole.
Partly because he is satisfied.
At the same time, Rahgot cannot say their actions are meaningless. Lowering himself into the water, he shuts his eyes for a fleeting moment, and flashes bloom beneath his eyelids. Nahkriin once explained to him that it is merely nerves reacting to pressure and the mind answering with strange patterns. Yet Rahgot always sees only crimson circles: concentric, sharp, familiar. The color of dried blood. Many times, he had scraped such stains from his blade while far from home. Winged gods had circled above his warbands as well — sometimes sending them forth, sometimes greeting them upon their return. The circles of the firewood became the funeral pyres for those who came home on the shields. After funerals, families gathered in circles to care about the kids who had just started their journeys in this world.
Life and death were themselves a circle, and every life had its cycle, no less important than the whole calpa for someone.
Rahgot rubs at the wound upon his palm. The hot water has opened it again, but that no longer matters. After the cleansing bath that prepares him for prayer, he must step once more into the frost, and for that he silently thanks the Atmoran blood flowing through his veins.
In Atmora, his mother once told him, the sun simply failed to rise one day. In Atmora, Morokei theorized, time itself froze solid, and eternal snow began falling upward from the earth. Skyrim was never meant to become another Atmora, or, at least, his people shouldn't fear it. And though tonight’s ritual would not decide the fate of gods, men, or mer — regardless of what any of them believed — his actions still mattered.
Rahgot sinks beneath the water entirely and opens his eyes. Ripples of light above him blur into molten gold, and he watches them until his lungs burn for air. Gold streams across him as well once he rises again. Rahgot prefers that color to red.
Yet tonight he must wear both.
Silently, he allows the servants to dress him in ritual garb. Heavy despite its fine weave, adorned with genuine dragon scales. Treacherous torchlight dances along every ivory curve as Rahgot draws the hood over his still-damp hair, and the crimson cloth beside that near-metallic sheen deepens further still, almost alive. Blood vanishes easily upon such colors, leaving all eyes fixed only upon the grandeur of the Cult which he must embody tonight. Truthfully, Rahgot would rather face this clad in armor, for the one awaiting him cared little for gilding, which made him even more dangerous. Yet his greatest protection remains with him always: the moment his fingers brush the malachite mask resting upon the faceless bust in one of his chambers’ alcoves, the familiar warmth unfurls within his chest.
Rahgot appreciates it. In endless darkness, even the smallest spark is precious.
The corridor lies so silent that he can hear the beating of his own heart. It feels almost unnatural after the unbroken revelry that had filled the temple for twelve straight days, yet the thirteenth night is different. While laughter still rings through the cities and skalds tear at their strings with merry songs, here they surrender themselves to silence. Muted voices drift only faintly from beyond the great outer gates, and Rahgot knows even those shall fade the instant he crosses the threshold.
He gestures to the two shadows behind him — the finest warriors of his hird have earned the honor of accompanying their lord tonight — and they place their hands upon the heavy iron rings of the doors. Rahgot allows his gaze to linger upon them.
Upon Lysandra, so young and straight-backed, spear-like, with her braid silver since she returned from the wild eastern lands. Upon Hladir, her brother, older by a decade, who carefully combed those curls, though his hands were far more accustomed to weapons, that whose mastery he taught to all who wished to become the temple’s blade.
Rahgot knows they love to watch the sunset together, especially after some of their comrades die. They do not know that he knows, and Rahgot has no intention of exposing the secret. It is their ritual, and some rituals remain closed to outsiders, no matter their ranks.
With the groan of chains and hinges, Rahgot steps forward into the darkness and toward those waiting within it. There are no outsiders here tonight. All gathered have earned their place, and so he meets even the sharpest stares calmly, though not all belong to the faithful. The elves standing beside Vosis in the front row do not whisper local prayers, but Rahgot never expected them to. Such things are unnecessary for those who may be enemies again by tomorrow.
Provided tomorrow comes at all.
Paarthurnax despises waiting, and so he emerges from the grey belly of the clouds the instant a single hollow drumbeat heralds the beginning of the ritual. Such impatience is strange for a dovah born alongside time itself.
Once, Rahgot had wondered what it might be like to live so many years, but abandoned the thought after the first wrinkle appeared upon his brow. Even if the mask carefully preserves his life, one day he must still remove it and meet death face to face. That day will be a great blessing.
The dragon narrows his eyes in anticipation.
The sacrifice Rahgot has prepared for tonight is special. He knows well that Paarturnax is not easily pleased by mere lives, no matter how many are laid before him. Second only in might, he had always been first in hunger, and at times it had seemed that appeasing Lord Alduin himself was the simpler task: Nahkriin needed only a single death to sate his master’s appetite. Yet a god is still a god, and who, if not the High Priest, should treat with gods?
Rahgot inclines his head and draws a deeper breath of the biting cold.
“I have brought gifts, my lord,” he says without embellishment. “Worthy of the honor you have bestowed upon this temple.”
Unasked-for honor, in truth. Rahgot remembers well the day word first reached him that a most distinguished guest would visit upon the darkest night of the year, and how long he stared then at the evening blaze upon the horizon. He had months to prepare, and still it had not been enough — not when he needed to persuade his own patron to yield his place to another god for a single night, devise how best to welcome him, and prepare himself for the possibility that even then all effort might be rejected.
He expects it.
“Cloth. Metal.” The dragon’s voice vibrates somewhere deep within Rahgot’s ribs with faint displeasure. “And your knife. Strange offerings in place of blood.”
“Not in place of it. Blood stains the banner already, and the shattered blade — and if it is your will, it may feed my knife as well.”
“Whose blood? You brought no slaves, and besides you, I see no servants.”
Rahgot pretends not to hear the idle threat beneath the words, though for a fleeting moment, he wonders what lord Alduin would do if his brother tore the head from his High Priest. Then again, for the Ambitious Cruel Tyrant, curiosity alone might suffice as reason enough to test it. Yet curiosity may lead to another outcome as well, and Rahgot wagered upon that the moment he learned who would visit him.
“I would not begrudge you mine if you desired mine. Yet I have already spilled it to prepare a more fitting sacrifice. Not a slave. Not a servant. An enemy I deem worthy.”
From the dragon’s subtle lean forward, the narrowing pupils, the hot breath suddenly nearer than before, Rahgot knows his bet paid off. He traces the scar along his side.
“Here, my lord. A mark left by an elven lord who met me upon the borderlands at summer’s end. His blade could not pierce the scale armor gifted to me by the dovah, yet his hands proved skilled enough to find the seam where only metal guarded me. That… deserves respect, even if I felt some disgust upon seeing the trail of corpses he left behind. Few can wound a High Priest.”
“Few,” Paarthurnax repeats, savoring the word upon his tongue. “Yet you bear many scars, Rage.”
“Most were earned before I carried this name. But not this one. This scar was dealt to Rahgot.”
“Then show me the one who gave it to you.”
Rahgot gestures into the darkness before lowering his head in reverence. These moments stretch longest of all: while Lysandra and Hladir lead forth the sacrifice, silence settles over the altar. Rahgot prefers it to verbal games with a hungry god, though all the untold stories still leave a bitter taste upon his tongue. It is fortunate that Paarthurnax has no interest in them, for Rahgot doubts he could recount everything calmly, and dovahzul is far too sensitive to emotion. All of them hit fresh every time he recalls that wretched summer. Back then, it had almost seemed the world ending might not have been such a terrible thing after all.
The distant clatter of chains breaks his thoughts.
Rahgot does not need to turn to know whom he shall see, and yet when the tall figure of the elven lord emerges from the darkness, he feels a certain grim satisfaction. The Ayleid, though dressed suitably enough — one must care properly for a sacrifice offered to a god — is clearly freezing, yet he walks forward with near-proud disdain, as though refusing even to acknowledge the mortals leading him toward death. Only at the foot of the steps does he slow, and before Lysandra can shove him onward, he spits upon the ground before someone in the crowd.
Rahgot does not need to guess who stands there. Most Ayleids hated Atmorans, certainly, but sometimes detested certain others from their kin even more. Enough to ally themselves with humans simply to witness an enemy perish, even within the jaws of a foreign god.
Chains clang wildly. The procession continues.
“For one to live, another must die,” says Paarthurnax as the elf mounts the first step. “And indeed, it is preferable when they are enemies. After this sacrifice, there may be more of them — those who speak this mer’s tongue and pray to his gods. Tell me, Rage: does this endless war stir fear within you, or delight?”
“Neither, my lord. I do not live for war, but I know how to wage it, and even mer acknowledge as much. This summer, some among them offered me land and prisoners in exchange for alliance, desperate to tear the heads of their brothers and sisters from the stakes. They had been slain for worshipping the Aedra. He killed them,” Rahgot says, gesturing toward the elf below. “Thus, as High Priest, I have no reason to fear the hatred of my enemies. It was born long before tonight, exists now, and will continue to burn even if I were not about to take this elf’s life in glory of my gods.”
“But your gods shall war against one another someday. Whose side will you take then? Upon whose altar will you spill blood?”
Caught off guard, Rahgot stills for a heartbeat — long enough for the lord to climb two more steps. Far too long when speaking with Paarthurnax, and far too short to find an acceptable answer.
Still, he tries.
“I pray such a choice shall not fall within my lifetime, my lord. Otherwise, oaths of loyalty would tear me apart. I fear my wisdom is insufficient to answer such a question now. One could ponder it for eternity.”
“You do not have eternity, Rage.”
“Of course not. Which is why, tonight, I ask for only another year. Do I have it? Do all of us?”
Rahgot thinks of the great night that will begin once and never end, while stars gutter out wherever a winged shadow blacker than darkness itself passes overhead. Of time rippling and twisting until past and future merge into one pain-defiled source. Of corrupted reality begging for an ending, and of Alduin, his master, tearing off the heart of Shor, his protector, so from the cage of ribs a new and better world might bloom like scarlet poppies.
Rahgot thinks how blessed he is to be mortal enough never to witness such an end. And whether Paarturnax truly asks just about this legend. For some reason, Rahgot is no longer certain, but can it be anything else?
“Yes,” says Paarthurnax, and for a moment the cold bites deeper. By sheer will force, Rahgot drives the sensation away. It is only a ritual. Only words. “Even ten years if you need. Do not die before answering me… better yet, keep killing. Begin with him.”
"Him" climbs the final step still proud, almost disdainful, though this attitude withers in Paarthurnax’s presence. Understandably so. Glorious or not, death remains terrifying — even when less painful than the fate suffered by the elves writhing upon the stakes. Rahgot remembers the droning of fat flies, the ache in his neck from staring upward too long, and the Words of fire he wove into Ayleid funeral laments to consign their bodies to flame. They had not been friends enough to stir anger within his heart.
Yet neither did he feel any pity now for an enemy before him.
“If you do not flee, I will make it swift.”
“I have already prayed to my goddess, and I will join her to live forever among the stars. But you… You will spend your brief years in pain and vain serving a god whose hunger is untamed.”
Once again, Rahgot recalls why he had never liked the followers of Merid-Nunda. Even before his initiation into the priesthood, he had understood that cruelty dwells, in one measure or another, within all mighty spirits — whether wrapped in radiant robes or bared in fangs. And still, death frightened him less than eternity within the Colored Rooms. Death was merciful, though tonight Rahgot begged it to stay away.
“I serve the end. The one that shall one day devour even the stars, for all things are mortal. Especially you tonight.”
He shifts the dagger more comfortably in his grip.
And thus the counting begins.
One — a broad slash.
Two heartbeats.
Three seconds — and the light leaves the elf’s eyes.
“Five, six, seven,” Rahgot counts in mind as he catches the suddenly limp body.
Eight. Lay it upon the altar.
Nine. Inhale. Exhale.
Ten. A sharp sting from the reopened wound. The dagger bears two edges, just as any pact must bear two signatures — even those written in blood.
Mixing his own blood with that spilling from the lord’s throat, Rahgot raises the cup of the palms. His heartbeat quickens as the dragon’s hot breath scorches his skin, and the pulse grows faster still until crimson spills over the rim. Then Paarthurnax lowers and drinks.
It seems to last an eternity, though for a dragon, the whole cup is likely no more than a drop scarcely worth tasting. Yet it is not the quantity gods care for. When the bloodied maw lifts again, Rahgot sees something he might, distantly, call a smile.
“One more year,” says Paarthurnax. “While you still have it, consider the question I asked you, Rage. What shall you do when god wars against god?”
And without waiting for an answer, he rises skyward in a vortex of snow.
Rahgot is nearly certain the dragon will not return next year to ask again. Paarthurnax always chose a different temple upon which to bestow his favor, and not every priest was willing to mingle his own blood with an enemy’s merely to satisfy divine thirst with a single swallow. In those temples, the faithful died instead. But Rahgot loved his people too fiercely to send them upon so honorable yet distant a road when the year had only just begun.
He thinks of this while kneeling, wounded hands raised toward the heavens. This prayer is wordless, for no language — mortal or Thu’um alike — could ever convey what he feels. The thick droplets slide across his skin. The pleased purring of his mask as they fall upon it. The sting of salt upon his tongue when one slips through the mouth-slit. The silver chime of wind somewhere among distant trees. The silent coils of steam rising from breath and blood alike upon the snow. Circles again. Always circles.
Yet there is one he still awaits.
The shattered sword-fragment pales gray. The once-black banner blooms crimson. Crimson is everywhere now.
Slowly and inexorably, the circle of winter sun rises toward him from beyond the mountains through the hollow eye of a skull. And only then does Rahgot finally permit himself a smile beneath the mask — the first of this cold day, and the first of all those yet to come.
A fine year to die, he thinks, gazing almost tenderly upon the bones. But this one shall be even finer to live through.
Though it would be even better still if Vosis remembered to bring him a warm cloak once all this was done. After all, only one step remains.
Rahgot turns and takes it toward the gathered crowd.
“Let us praise New Life,” his Voice thunders through the morning haze threaded with gold.
And a moment later, dozens of others rise to join it.