The ashy ocean lapped gently at the shore, though to Miraak it sounded more like the steady sloshes of the inky sea back in Apocrypha. He layed sprawled upon the dark sands of Solstheim’s coast, his chest rising in ragged gasps, every muscle trembling with the excitement of their escape. Beside him, the Dragonborn layed with equal fatigue, their skin glistening with sweat and the faint matte of ink-black residue that Apocrypha left upon all who wandered too long in its shifting libraries. They had torn themselves free from Hermaeus Mora’s tendrils, not by strength alone, but through a desperate mix of will, dragon-tongue, and secrets ripped from the Daedric Prince’s own realm. Even now, Miraak could still feel the looming presence of those thousand eyes, watching, calculating, hungering for what had slipped away.

It all became a blur as they dragged themselves from the beach, moving with the sluggish pace of the ash spawn that wandered nearby. What had begun as desperate search of shelter soon hardened into resolve; Herma Mora had not claimed them, and that defiance deserved to be tur es into something more than survival. An abandoned cabin near the Bulwark offered them shelter, its wood long-gone to rot. Its hearth was cold, but still it stood, and for their purposes it was enough. Within those musty walls, firelight pushed back the shadows, and for the first time since his dive through the dark library of Apocrypha and search in knowledgeable pages that cut like blades, Miraak felt the faintest breath of freedom.

But freedom was a cruel thing after so long. The Dragonborn had their Thu’um as they always had while Miraak’s power remain in the mind of Hermaeus. The definition of his being had been robbed by Mora’s tendrils, leaving him empty, his mastery now a useless muscle memory. They searched for a solution in everything they could: the gathering of herbs, the resonance of ancient word-walls, the meditations of dovah speech, even the crude healing arts of man from the nearby Skaal village. All of it was for not. Miraak was free—alive, breathing the air of Nirn once more, not reduced to dust in the face of the modern age. But there was no kindness in it. He knew this freedom was meant as torment, to strip him of what he was and leave him to rot in his own mind. Without his gift, without the strength that had once bent dragons to his will, he was a shadow of himself. Mora knew it would eat at him, gnawing at his pride until madness seemed the only escape. That was the game the Prince played and now it was up to the Last Dragonborn to aid the first.