Me and Hermaeus Mora

I never intended to wander that far from the road.

The morning had begun like any other in the northern wilds — a pale sun struggling through a sky the color of tarnished steel, the wind carrying the scent of pine and distant snow. I’d set out from Dawnstar with nothing more ambitious in mind than a simple delivery job. A sealed letter, a few coins promised on arrival, and the vague hope that the walk would clear my head. I’d been restless for weeks, haunted by dreams I couldn’t explain: pages fluttering in a wind that didn’t blow, ink spreading like veins across parchment, a voice speaking in syllables that felt older than the world.

I told myself it was nothing. Just the mind playing tricks. Just exhaustion.

But the dreams had followed me into waking.

And on that morning, as I walked the narrow trail that wound between frost‑bitten cliffs, I felt something tug at me — not physically, but with a strange insistence, like a thought that wasn’t mine. A whisper beneath my own heartbeat. A suggestion.

Left.

I stopped. The trail continued straight ahead, safe and familiar. But to the left, a narrow break in the rocks led into a dense fog that clung unnaturally low to the ground. I shouldn’t have gone in. Every instinct told me so. But the whisper pressed again, soft as a breath against my ear.

Left.

I stepped off the path.

The fog swallowed me whole.

It wasn’t ordinary mist. It felt thick, almost tactile, brushing against my skin like strands of silk. The world beyond it faded — the wind, the distant gulls, even the crunch of snow beneath my boots. All sound dimmed until only my breathing remained, loud and strangely hollow.

I walked deeper.

The fog shifted around me, swirling in patterns that made no sense. At times it seemed to form shapes — curling tendrils, spirals, symbols I almost recognized from my dreams. I blinked, and they dissolved. My heartbeat quickened, but I couldn’t turn back. Something pulled me forward with the inevitability of gravity.

Minutes passed. Or hours. Time felt thin here, stretched like parchment left too long in the sun.

Then the ground changed.

My boots no longer crunched on snow. Instead, they sank slightly into something soft — damp earth, rich and dark. The air grew warmer, heavy with the scent of moss and old books. The fog thinned, revealing towering shapes around me. Trees, but not like any I’d seen in Skyrim. Their trunks twisted in impossible spirals, bark etched with lines that resembled writing. Their branches reached upward like ink strokes frozen mid‑gesture.

A forest. A forest that shouldn’t exist.

I turned in a slow circle, trying to steady my breathing. “Where… am I?”

The whisper answered.

Closer.

I froze. The voice wasn’t external. It resonated inside my skull, vibrating through bone and thought. It wasn’t male or female — it was something else entirely, something vast and layered, like a chorus speaking in perfect unison.

I swallowed hard. “Who’s there?”

The forest responded with silence.

I took a step forward, then another. The trees seemed to lean subtly toward me, as if listening. The air hummed faintly, a low vibration that made the hairs on my arms rise. I felt watched — not by eyes, but by awareness itself.

The whisper came again, clearer this time.

You seek knowledge.

“I don’t—” I stopped. The denial felt hollow. “I didn’t come here seeking anything.”

All who walk the hidden paths seek something.

My pulse hammered. I tried to steady myself, gripping the strap of my satchel. “If this is magic, I want no part of it.”

A sound rippled through the forest — not laughter, but something like it. A shifting of leaves, a rustle of pages.

Magic is a word mortals use when they cannot name the truth.

I took a step back. The trees behind me shifted, their branches knitting together, blocking the way I’d come. Panic flared in my chest.

“Let me out.”

Forward.

The command pressed against my mind with irresistible force. Not painful, but absolute. My feet moved before I consciously decided to walk. The forest parted ahead of me, revealing a narrow path lined with stones carved in spirals. The symbols glowed faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.

I followed.

The deeper I went, the more the world changed. The trees grew taller, their bark darkening to near‑black. The air thickened with the scent of ink and damp parchment. Strange lights flickered between the branches — not fireflies, but floating motes of green luminescence that drifted like drifting thoughts.

The whisper guided me.

Closer. You stand on the threshold.

“Threshold of what?”

Revelation.

The path ended abruptly at a clearing. In the center stood a pool of still, black water, perfectly circular, its surface reflecting nothing — not the trees, not the sky, not even me. It was as if it absorbed all light, all meaning.

I approached cautiously.

The whisper deepened, becoming a resonance that filled my entire skull.

Look.

I knelt at the edge of the pool. The water was impossibly dark, yet I felt it watching me. My reflection did not appear. Instead, faint shapes moved beneath the surface — tendrils, eyes, pages turning in a current that didn’t exist.

My breath caught.

“I… I know this place.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I’ve seen it. In my dreams.”

Dreams are the first door.

The water rippled.

Something rose from its depths.

Not a creature. Not exactly. More like a mass of shifting ink, tendrils unfurling like quills dipped in shadow. Eyes opened across its surface — dozens, then hundreds, each one a different shape, size, and color. They blinked in perfect unison, focusing on me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

I stumbled backward, falling onto the mossy ground.

The voice filled the clearing, no longer a whisper but a vast, echoing presence that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“MORTAL.”

The word struck like a physical force, vibrating through my bones. I clutched my head, teeth gritted.

The mass of eyes and tendrils rose higher, towering above me. Pages of black parchment unfurled from its form, covered in shifting runes that rearranged themselves as I watched.

I knew the name before it was spoken.

Hermaeus Mora.

The Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Memory. The One Who Knows. The Tide of Fate. The Abyssal Scholar.

I had never believed the stories. Not truly. Not until now.

I forced myself to speak, though my voice trembled. “Why… why am I here?”

The eyes blinked slowly, like a thousand shutters closing and opening.

“YOU WALKED THE PATH OF YOUR OWN WILL.”

“I didn’t choose this.”

“ALL CHOICES ARE ROOTED IN CURIOSITY. EVEN FEAR IS A FORM OF SEEKING.”

The tendrils shifted, curling around the edges of the pool without touching the ground. The pages fluttered, though there was no wind.

“YOU HAVE FELT MY CALL. IN DREAMS. IN THOUGHTS NOT YOUR OWN. YOU ARE DRAWN TO THE UNKNOWN.”

I shook my head. “I’m not a scholar. I’m not a mage. I’m nobody.”

The forest rustled with a sound like turning pages.

“NO ONE IS ‘NOBODY.’ EVERY MIND IS A LIBRARY. SOME ARE MERELY UNREAD.”

I swallowed hard, trying to steady my breathing. “If you brought me here… what do you want from me?”

The eyes narrowed — not in anger, but in something like interest.

“YOU STAND AT THE BEGINNING OF A THREAD. A POSSIBILITY. A QUESTION YET UNASKED.”

A tendril extended toward me, stopping inches from my chest. I felt its presence like a cold wind, brushing against my thoughts.

“I OFFER KNOWLEDGE. INSIGHT. POWER TO SEE BEYOND THE VEIL OF MORTAL LIMITATION.”

My heart pounded. “And what do you want in return?”

The tendril curled slightly, like a quill poised above parchment.

“UNDERSTANDING. CURIOSITY. A MIND WILLING TO OPEN.”

I hesitated. Every story I’d ever heard about Daedric Princes screamed at me to run. To refuse. To resist. But the forest had no exit. The fog had no path back. And deep inside, beneath the fear, something else stirred — a quiet, persistent hunger.

A desire to know.

To understand the dreams that had haunted me. The symbols that felt familiar. The whisper that felt like destiny.

Hermaeus Mora sensed it.

“YOU ARE NOT HERE BY ACCIDENT. YOU ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU ARE READY.”

“I’m not,” I whispered.

“YOU ARE.”

The tendril touched my forehead.

A shock of cold shot through me, followed by a flood of images — pages turning, stars collapsing, ink spreading across the sky, memories that weren’t mine, knowledge too vast to comprehend. I gasped, clutching my head as the visions poured through me.

Then, just as suddenly, they stopped.

I collapsed to my knees, trembling.

Hermaeus Mora’s voice softened, though it remained vast and echoing.

“THIS IS BUT A FRACTION OF WHAT COULD BE YOURS.”

I forced myself to look up. “Why me?”

The eyes blinked in slow, deliberate unison.

“BECAUSE YOU LISTENED.”

The clearing fell silent.

I didn’t know what to say. My mind felt stretched, expanded, yet fragile. I sensed that if I asked the wrong question, the forest itself might unravel.

Hermaeus Mora lowered slightly, his mass of eyes hovering closer.

“RETURN TO YOUR WORLD. THE THREAD IS SET. YOU WILL FEEL MY CALL AGAIN.”

The fog thickened around the clearing, swirling like ink in water.

“AND WHEN YOU ARE READY… YOU WILL SEEK ME.”

The world dissolved.

I felt myself falling, weightless, through darkness and whispering pages. The voice echoed one last time, fading like a dream.

“KNOWLEDGE AWAITS, SEEKER.”

Then—

I hit the ground.

Snow. Cold. The familiar scent of pine. I gasped, scrambling upright. I was back on the trail, the fog gone as if it had never existed. The sky was unchanged. The world was normal.

But I wasn’t.

Something inside me had shifted. A door had opened.

And I knew — with a certainty that chilled me — that this was only the beginning.