Chapter 1: Friga
Chapter Text
Friga was dead.
It had happened so fast. So, so fast.
The Shatter-Shields, the tight-knit bunch they were, had invited Friga over to cook for them. It was a weekly occurrence, one Friga and her twin, Nilsine, instated when the former still lived at home. She was a dreadful cook, more likely to burn a meal than serve it, but that night, she had made them the most amazing leek soup.
Friga’s chest had swelled with pride while her family tucked into their meal, plentiful praise and utterances of amazement tossed her way as the soup slowly yet surely disappeared from the serving bowl.
“Do you think you can make it again next week?” Nilsine had asked as she walked Friga to Hjerim, the house she owned right next door to the Shatter-Shields’ home.
“Well, I was planning on trying to recreate the Potage le Magnifique,” Friga replied, smiling and rolling her eyes in mock exasperation. “But I suppose I can make the leek soup again if you all really liked it that much.”
“We did. It was delicious.”
“Then I’ll be sure to impress.”
Nilsine smiled as her sister ducked into her home. “See you next week.”
And that was it. Those were the last words Nilsine had ever said to her sister.
The next morning, the family awoke to insistent rapping on the front door. Torbjorn, patriarch of the Shatter-Shield clan, opened the door to see several members of the city guard standing solemnly in the snow.
“M’lord…”
Nilsine’s eyes went cold, a torrent of blood rushing into her ears as one of the guards spoke. Her father merely stood stiffly in the doorway, his face obscured to her. Her mother, Tova, swayed on her feet, her mouth covered with a shaking hand as tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
In no time at all, they gathered at Hjerim. Overturned chairs and shattered dishes and bottles told the tale of a struggle, as did the spatters and streaks of blood trailing crudely towards…
Friga.
Friga lay motionless in an ocean of crimson, her face frozen and jaw agape in a silent scream of terror, her sightless eyes rolled back. Almost as if she were looking up at a bird. Her skin was pallid, white as freshly fallen snow. Her clothes, nothing more than bloodied tatters and scraps of fabric, clung loosely to her body, studded with fresh knife wounds and jagged cuts.
A ragged, bloody burrow in her abdomen revealed near-emptiness. Liver, stomach, intestines, even her heart, were all missing. Much of her ribcage, about half, had simply vanished. Parts of her ribs tapered off towards the end of the bone as if they had been cut.
Nilsine shook as she fell to her knees. A tidal wave of grief surged up to claim her, dragging her into the ink-black depths below.
Friga was dead.
Chapter 2: Nilsine
Chapter Text
Nilsine was dead.
Not even two months had passed since Friga was murdered. Now, the Shatter-Shields had lost another daughter.
Perhaps, in a manner of speaking, they had lost another shortly after Friga, but much before Nilsine. In the throes of grief, the Shatter-Shields were visited by an old and dear friend, Muiri.
Muiri was a Breton originally from The Reach, a bright young thing who had moved to Windhelm with her parents during her eighth winter. A fishing accident cost her father his life, and shortly after, her mother was taken by Rockjoint.
The Shatter-Shields knew they couldn’t replace Muiri’s parents. Despite their best efforts and gentlest care, they knew. Yet after the initial sadness had passed, Muiri seemed happy enough. At times, she didn’t seem to remember her parents and even outright refused to acknowledge their existence, something that greatly concerned Tova. Nevertheless, Muiri thrived alongside the Shatter-Shields.
The twins adored Muiri and her company. They spent hours upon hours playing with dolls, braiding hair, and picking baskets of snowberries together on the outskirts of the city. Muiri truly was a third daughter to them, even if not by blood. It was only natural that when she had gotten word of Friga’s murder that she traveled to Windhelm to grieve with the family.
Imagine their surprise when Torbjorn stumbled upon Muiri’s new lover hauling their family heirloom, the warhammer Aegisbane, out the door as an assemblage of dubious men absconded with sacks of other valuables one night.
No matter how much Muiri begged, and reasoned, and cried, and swore up and down that she had been framed, the Shatter-Shields’ minds were made up. She and her lover were thieves. They had been robbed blind in a vulnerable time and it was entirely Muiri’s fault.
Over the weeks that had passed, the hot embers of rage in Tova’s mind cooled into a deep, hollow sadness that permeated her very core.
The loss of Friga had been hard enough on its own. Muiri’s betrayal brought on a slew of new feelings to contend with, but the death of her daughter always aggrieved her the most.
Tova mourned Friga greatly. She cried over her every day. Then every other day. Then every three or four days. Then every week.
Then not at all.
Tova still found herself adrift, rocking steadily in murky waves of sadness. With time and tears, however, she had learned to navigate from the choppy waters of anguish into gentler ones.
Until tragedy struck once more, and a guard approached her one evening while her husband was on a trip to Whiterun.
Nilsine, whilst visiting Friga’s urn in the Hall of the Dead, had died.
Though the guard hadn’t elaborated further at that point, the first word that raced into Tova’s mind before the tears had even started to prick at her eyes was ‘suicide’.
It was a logical assumption. Friga was Nilsine’s twin. The two had shared a womb, had been born together, and had grown into young women together. The two had known each other longer than anyone else on Nirn. Friga may have been Tova’s daughter, her little girl, but Nilsine shared a much different bond with her sister, a bond that no one, not even their own parents, could truly understand.
So it must have been suicide. It had to have been.
But it wasn’t. Not unless Nilsine had somehow cut off her own head.
The guards flanking the Hall of the Dead implored Tova not to look at the body. It wasn’t fit for viewing, they had said. But Tova had to see it. She had to.
And when she reached the alcove they had chosen for Friga’s urn, there was Nilsine.
What was left of her, at least.
A ragged, broken howl of agony tore through Tova, nails clawing harshly into her own head.
Friga, Nilsine, both gone. Her babies. Her sweet, beautiful little girls. She was now the mother of two dead women.
As the guards moved to shield her from the sight and gently drag her away from Nilsine’s body, Tova found little power within her to resist their efforts and let herself be pulled away.
She also found her mind going back to that one, single word that had popped into her head, almost like a silent, unhinged chant.
Suicide.
Suicide.
Suicide.
Nilsine was dead.
Chapter 3: Tova
Chapter Text
Tova was dead.
Torbjorn received correspondence from Hillevi Cruel-Sea, matron of Clan Cruel-Sea and one of the Shatter-Shields’ closest friends, while he visited Whiterun. He had been treating with a contact in the hopes he would help expand his shipping company outside Windhelm when he received the letter.
Though Torbjorn prided himself on his ability to remain calm in the face of the unexpected, his heartbeat raced as he frantically reread the words of Hillevi’s letter.
Nilsine was gone. Yet another one of his little girls, dead. And Tova was in a state of shock, refusing to eat or leave the house.
Hillevi never included the words explicitly, but Torbjorn knew from the urgent language used in her letter that she was imploring him to return to Windhelm as soon as possible.
Business expansion be damned, he needed to get home to his wife, and that was exactly what he planned to do.
Torbjorn spurred his horse at the stables of Whiterun and rode as fast as he could through the dark of night and bite of wintry snow as his horse’s hoofbeats on Eastmarch terrain reached his ears. Hitching his horse outside the city, he burst through the gate and rushed home, his pounding heart heavy with grief.
As he stepped into the house—the house his little girls grew up in—he took in the surroundings. The dining table, untouched, looked as if it hadn’t seen use in days. The fire remained unlit and dark.
But all of that faded into the background when he smelled something he couldn’t quite place. It was metallic and sour, sharply stinging his olfactory senses. It almost smelled like—
Blood.
Torbjorn bounded up the stairs three at a time and whirled around the corner into the master bedroom. There, a knife protruding from her heart, lay Tova, pale as a sheet and soaked in slick, crimson blood.
He sank to his knees, staring incredulously at his wife—the woman he pledged to love for the rest of his days, the woman he fathered two beautiful daughters with—and the knife embedded in her chest.
Beside her was a neatly-folded slip of paper, completely untouched by the torrent of blood that had gushed from his wife’s body.
First Friga, now Nilsine? How can I bear the loss of a second daughter, when I’m barely over the death of a first?
I simply cannot find any reason to continue living. My two little girls are gone. The lights of my life have been extinguished. My only hope now is to be reunited with them in the halls of Sovngarde—if the eternals can suffer the company of one who has taken her own life. If not, then wherever my soul may end up—in Oblivion, or elsewhere—has to be better than this terrible existence.
Farewell. Remember me fondly, and often.
Tova Shatter-Shield
Torbjorn reread the letter. He read it over, and over, and over until he couldn’t stand to look anymore. He squeezed his bloodshot eyes shut, clutching the letter to his heart as the tears came free.
Tova was dead.