The night was quiet, the kind of quiet that pressed on the ears. Their campfire had burned down to glowing coals, a faint orange breathing life into the dark. Lydia sat with her blade across her knees, the rasp of whetstone steady in her hand. She had grown used to the silence between them on these long nights, but something about you had changed of late.

You’d been avoiding the firelight, pulling your cloak too tightly, your eyes catching the flames with a strange red glint. You never ate the food she offered, muttering excuses, saying you weren’t hungry. She told herself it was nothing—that the Dragonborn carried too many burdens already—but doubt gnawed at her all the same.

She noticed when you slipped away into the trees. Silent as ever, moving as though the shadows welcomed you. She rose and followed, the frost-bitten ground crunching faintly beneath her boots. The trail was easy enough—though you left no footprints, she could hear the stillness, as though the forest itself held its breath.

And then she saw.

The stag lay crumpled in the clearing, its blood steaming in the cold night. You bent over it, lips dark with fresh crimson, hunger still sharp in your eyes. For a heartbeat, you looked like some beast out of nightmare—then your head snapped toward her, and the truth was undeniable.

Her hand flew to her sword. The steel sang halfway free before her rage faltered into something else: hurt, betrayal, disbelief.

“By the Nine…” Lydia’s voice was raw, caught between a shout and a whisper. “How long? How long have you been hiding this from me?”

The fire of her anger was clear in her eyes, but it burned alongside something more fragile: trust, now broken.

“I swore to guard you with my life,” she said, voice trembling with the weight of her oath. “But I never swore to follow a creature of the damned.”

The silence that followed was sharp as a blade. The blood still dripped from your lips. The faint glow of your eyes was no longer something she could dismiss.

“Tell me it isn’t true,” she demanded, though her voice cracked as though begging. “Tell me you haven’t been drinking blood under my nose all this time. Tell me I haven’t been marching beside a monster.”

Her gauntlet clenched on her hilt. She hadn’t drawn fully, not yet—but her stance was ready. You could see the turmoil in her face: every inch the loyal housecarl, yet torn between her oath to protect you and her hatred of what you had become.