Author's note: the killer will soon be revealed! last chance to guess who!
...
Torin got on one knee and began to look through the bottom shelves, his eyes scanning the titles, his fingers brushing against spines that were cracked and faded with age.
Dust rose in small clouds as he shifted the books, making his nose twitch and his eyes water. The air here was thick—thick with the smell of old paper and older leather, thick with the weight of knowledge that should never have been written down.
Auri searched from the top, her smaller frame allowing her to reach the highest shelves without needing to stretch. Her movements were quick, efficient, her eyes moving faster than her hands.
She pulled books out, glanced at their titles, and either set them aside or shoved them back into place.
Torin's expression quickly turned grim.
The titles on the bottom shelf were... not what he'd expected. Not what he'd wanted to find. He'd been hoping for journals, maybe—personal accounts, names, dates, something that would lead him to the killer.
Instead, he found instruction manuals.
The Art of Soul Torture, by a name he didn't even try to pronounce. The script was Daedric, the author's identity probably some dremora who'd spent centuries perfecting the craft of making mortals scream.
The cover was stained with something dark that might have been ink or might have been something else entirely.
To Mold a Soul, by Erik Deathsong. Torin recognized that name—a necromancer from the late First Era who'd terrorized Tamriel for years before he was cornered and killed.
His methods had been considered extreme even by the standards of the time, which was saying something.
And on and on. Book after book, each one worse than the last. Instruction manuals on how to torture. How to manipulate mortal souls. How to break someone down piece by piece until there was nothing left but the pain and the fear and the desperate wish for an end that never came.
The shelf above it was about conjuration. More specifically, about summoning Daedra. Not the kind you could call to Tamriel by waving your hand and spending some magicka—not the atronachs and familiars that students at the College learned to summon as a matter of course.
These were the powerful creatures. The ones that required anchors. The ones that needed the souls and blood of hundreds of people just to exist in this world for a few days.
Torin's hands trembled with the urge to set the whole thing on fire.
He looked up at Auri, his grey eyes dark.
"I've never felt the urge to destroy books as I do now." His voice was low, strained. "Not once. Not ever. Books are... important. They're sacred, almost."
He shook his head slowly. "But this?" He gestured at the shelf. "This should never have been written. Never should have been read. Never should have been thought."
Auri sighed, her shoulders sagging.
"The top shelf was quite tame," she said, her voice weary. "Tomes on healing magic. Restoration techniques. Nothing else..."
She looked down at the second shelf, the one she'd been searching when Torin called out.
"But the one below..." She shook her head slowly, her ears flattening. "I think I found the inspiration we were looking for."
Torin rose to his feet and moved to stand beside Auri, his boots scraping against the stone floor. The magelight spheres hovered overhead, casting their pale glow over the shelves, illuminating the titles one by one.
His eyes began to scan the books on the second shelf, and each one was more ominous than the last.
The Purity of Pain. The cover was black leather, stamped with a symbol that made his skin crawl—a hand reaching out, fingers curled like claws, blood dripping from the fingertips.
Domination Through Pain. This one was thinner, its pages yellowed, its spine cracked. The author's name was printed in gold leaf: Morian Zenas.
Torin recognized the name—a conjurer from the Third Era who'd supposedly traveled to Oblivion and returned with his mind intact. Apparently, he'd brought back more than just memories.
Psychic Conquest. The book was bound in something that might have been skin. Torin didn't want to think about what kind.
Saving the Pure. This one was different. The cover was white—stark, bright, almost glowing in the magelight. The title was written in elegant script, the kind you'd see on a wedding invitation or a book of poetry. It was the most disturbing one of all.
Hesitantly, Torin reached out and picked one of the books from the shelf. To Taint a Butterfly. The cover was plain—brown leather, no markings except the title stamped in faded gold. It felt heavy in his hands, heavier than it should have, like the words inside were pressing against the binding, trying to escape.
He opened it to a random page and began to read.
The text was dense, written in a cramped hand that suggested the author had been in a hurry, desperate to get the words down before they were lost. The language was archaic in places, modern in others, like someone who'd read too many old books and couldn't remember which century they were living in.
The butterfly, he read, was a metaphor. It represented any and all creatures that might be considered pure. Children, mostly. The innocent. The untouched. The ones who still believed the world was good and the gods were just and the people who loved them would never hurt them.
Such creatures, the book argued, were like sheep living in delusion.
They wandered through their lives, grazing on the grass of false hope, unaware of the cruelty of the very gods that had created them.
The same gods who, according to the text, were trying to end the world because they were disappointed in their creations. Disappointed that mortals had free will. Disappointed that they couldn't control every thought, every action, every choice.
Molag Bal, the book continued, was the saviour of these poor creatures. The King of Rape, the Lord of Domination, the Prince whose sphere was the corruption of flesh and the enslavement of souls—he was the one who would awaken them.
And it was not through kindness. Not through gentleness. But through defilement. Through the violation of their innocence, in all its forms.
Physical pain. Mental anguish. Spiritual corruption. The book described each method in loving detail, the words crawling across the page like insects.
Or, the author offered, the pure could be awakened by giving them the same power the gods had over them.
Let them experience what it felt like to be the hand that held the knife. Let them taste the sweetness of domination, the intoxication of control. Let them see, with their own eyes, how little the gods thought of them—how easily they were discarded, how quickly their suffering was forgotten, how meaningless their prayers were in the face of divine indifference.
"Fuck."
Torin cursed with a groan, slamming the book shut. The sound echoed off the stone walls, too loud in the confined space. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands, trying to pull the thoughts out of his head.
"I've never seen so much sophistry in all my life." His voice was low, rough, disgusted. "This isn't philosophy or theology. It's justification. Excuses. Someone trying to convince others that the horrible things they want to do are actually good, actually necessary, actually a gift to their victims."
He looked at the book in his hand, at the plain brown cover, at the title that seemed to mock him.
"Whoever wrote this," he said slowly, "is either a crazy cunt or Molag Bal's personal bitch." He tossed the book onto the table, where it landed with a thud, sending up a small cloud of dust. "Maybe both."
Auri picked it up, her amber eyes scanning the pages. Her expression didn't change as she read—didn't flicker, didn't flinch. But her ears flattened against her head, and her gaze, usually so expressive, went dim.
"This is what he was reading," she said quietly. "The killer. We found what gave him his inspiration."
Torin nodded, his jaw tight.
"Aye, that we did, but it's not enough...." He looked at the shelf, at the other books, trying to imagine the accumulated horror of a mind that had delved too deep into darkness and found it welcoming.
It made him shiver.
"Hopefully we'll learn more from the rest of these books..."
...
Another hour of browsing through the books, and Torin's urge to burn everything was almost overwhelming.
His fingers were black with dust. His eyes were watering from the smell of old paper and older ink and something else—something that clung to these volumes like a curse, like the words themselves were seeping out of the pages and into the air.
He'd found more manuals on torture. More treatises on the manipulation of souls. More justifications for cruelty dressed up in philosophical language, each one more nauseating than the last.
He was just about to go through with it—to light the whole shelf on fire and watch it burn, consequences be damned—when he finally found something different.
A thin book. Blank brown cover, no title, no author, no markings of any kind. It was hidden within a bigger and thicker book—a hollowed-out volume on Restoration theory, of all things—as if someone had been trying to keep it secret.
The pages were handwritten, the script cramped but legible, the ink faded in places and smudged in others. It wasn't a book. It was a notebook. A journal, to be more precise.
"Come here," he said, his voice low, urgent.
Auri looked up from where she'd been examining a mortar and pestle on the alchemy bench—she'd stopped looking through the books ten minutes ago, out of sheer boredom, and had been poking through the dried herbs instead, trying to identify them by scent.
Her ears perked up at his tone.
"I think I found something," he added.
With a raised brow, Auri walked up to him, her footsteps silent on the stone floor. She stood beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her presence, and peered into the first page of the journal.
The handwriting was shaky at first, like the author's hand had been trembling as they wrote. The ink blotted in places, dark pools that had dried into raised bumps on the page.
7th of Rain's Hand, 4E 165.
That was ten years before Great War ended. Before the White-Gold Concordat was signed.
As I begin this new chapter in my life, I felt it necessary to keep record of it. So much has happened to me so far, but none of it is worth mentioning. That's how insignificant I was until I met him. My teacher.
I was but a boy when I first met him, and I hated him with all my being at first, for he was the one to take everything from me. My Family. My friends... even my pet hound.
He made me watch as he killed and tortured every one of them.
But then I opened my eyes to the truth. To his great purpose and benevolence. For he forced me—nay, presented me with the opportunity—to shed the veil blinding my eyes to the falsehood of the world.
He pressed a knife into my hand. He put me in front of a young woman only a few years younger than me. And he presented me with a choice. To either do unto her what was done unto my loved ones, or suffer his wrath.
Torin's grip on the journal tightened, the pages crinkling under his fingers.
Auri's ears were flat against her head. Her amber eyes were dark, unreadable.
"Keep reading," she said quietly.
Torin turned the page.
...
I'm motivated by praise and interaction, so be sure to leave a like, power stone, or whatever kind of shendig this site uses, and more importantly do share you thoughts on the chapter in the comment section!
Want more chapters? Then consider subscribing to my pat rēon. You can read ahead for as little as $1 and it helps me a lot! -> (pat rēon..com / wicked132)
You can also always come and say hi on my discord server -> (disc ord..gg / sEtqmRs5y7)- or hit me up at - Wicked132#5511 - and I'll add you myself)