The first thing I notice is the sound.
Or rather, the lack of it.
It happens so subtly I almost miss it, like the world deciding to inhale and then forgetting how to exhale. The temple is still full of people, still full of shifting boots and creaking leather and the soft murmur of prayer—but it all feels… farther away. Like someone draped a thick fur blanket over reality.
My parents kneel on either side of me.
My father's hand rests on my shoulder, steady and warm. My mother's fingers are laced together so tightly her knuckles are pale. The priests stand ahead of us, their voices calm and practiced, weaving the old words like they've done a thousand times.
"Stendarr, shield us…"
"Kynareth, guide us…"
"Dibella, bless us…"
Their murmurs roll through the temple in soft waves.
And then the door slams open.
Not from someone entering.
From something arriving.
A gust of air bursts into the room like the breath of Kyne herself has decided we've been too comfortable. It sweeps across the floor, snapping banners, ruffling furs, whipping candle flames sideways hard enough that wax spits and splatters.
People gasp. Heads turn. A few hands go to sword hilts out of habit before they remember where they are.
A temple.
You don't draw steel in a temple unless you want bad luck to stick to you for the rest of your life.
The gust doesn't smell like winter.
It smells like high mountain air and storm pressure and something else I can't name.
The kind of scent you get right before lightning hits close enough to make your teeth ache.
Every hair on my head rises.
And then… the air thickens.
I can see it with the Eyes of Magnus.
Not just magicka drifting like dust in sunlight—this is different. This is structured. Layered. Belief made heavy, pulled into shape by a force that doesn't need to ask permission.
The candles on the altars all at once flare higher.
Not just a little.
They jump.
A foot of flame becomes two, then three, then towering spears of fire so tall they lick the air above the statues. Shadows snap and lurch across the walls as if something enormous just walked behind us.
The crowd's murmuring dies, replaced by stunned silence and the sharp sound of breath being pulled in.
Even my father goes still.
Even my mother, who has seen more strange things than she admits, freezes like she's afraid moving will break the moment.
The priests' voices rise.
Not because they choose to.
Because something pulls them up.
Their prayers grow louder and faster, words tumbling out in a rhythm that isn't quite right. The cadence shifts, becomes almost frantic, almost… possessed. It reminds me of the churchgoers from my old world, speaking in tongues, eyes rolled back, bodies trembling with something they swear is holy.
Only here?
It actually is.
Their eyes glaze. Their hands shake. One priest's voice cracks as he speaks a phrase I know isn't in any common prayer I've ever heard.
The air hums.
A low note, like a giant bell being struck underwater.
Then the statues begin to glow.
One by one.
Slowly at first, a soft radiance blooming from stone like sunlight emerging through fog.
The altar of Mara warms with a gentle gold.
Stendarr's grows silver-white, stern and steady.
Kynareth's takes on the pale green of fresh leaves—impossible in Winterhold, which makes the effect even more beautiful.
Dibella's flares pink and rosy, the kind of color that makes people's cheeks flush without knowing why.
Zenithar's glows like coinfire and forge light.
Arkay's carries the clean, quiet weight of graves and candles and endings.
Julianos' burns with a scholarly blue-white that makes my eyes ache to look at too long.
Akatosh's—of course—glows like dawn and old clockwork and inevitability.
Eight altars. Eight radiances.
The crowd shifts, awe bubbling into whispers.
"By the Divines…"
"Is this… is this real?"
"I've never seen anything like—"
My father's grip tightens on my shoulder. Not painfully. Protectively.
My mother leans toward me, her voice trembling. "Magni…"
And then something happens that shouldn't happen.
The neglected corner.
The dusty statue nobody stands near.
The one the Empire pretends doesn't matter anymore.
Talos.
The hero-god. The Ninth. The one "banned" by treaty ink and Elven arrogance.
His statue has been half-shadowed and ignored for years. No fresh candles. No offerings. No priest assigned to it. Just stone and stubborn memory.
But as the eight altars blaze—
Talos begins to glow too.
At first it's faint, like a coal refusing to die.
Then it strengthens.
A hard, defiant radiance, not soft like Mara or beautiful like Dibella, but bold and iron and unmistakably human in the way it pushes forward as if daring anyone to deny it.
A hush falls so deep it feels like the whole temple has stopped breathing.
People stare at the Talos statue as if it just stood up and spoke.
One of the merchants makes a strangled sound. A clan head crosses himself so fast his fingers blur.
A guard whispers, "That's… not supposed to…"
And then the light accelerates.
All nine statues glow brighter, and brighter, and brighter.
The air becomes heavy with it. The temple's stone walls seem too small to hold what's building here, like reality is cramming itself into a container that was never meant to fit this much power.
I can feel it pressing against my skin.
Against my soul.
The Gatekeeper stirs in my mind, not speaking, but alert—like a system detecting an incoming surge and bracing its shields.
I want to be excited.
I am excited.
But the part of me that used to be a soldier in another life recognizes one thing clearly:
This is too much.
This is way too much.
Then the beams fire.
Nine lances of light erupt from the statues like goddamn kamehamehas from Dragon Ball Z, crossing the space in an instant.
And they hit me.
All at once.
The world turns white.
Not "bright."
Not "glowy."
White like someone poured the concept of the sun into my eyes.
For a heartbeat, I can't hear. I can't see. I can't feel my body at all—only the sensation of divine energy slamming into me from every direction like I'm a tiny boat caught in the center of nine converging waves.
The crowd screams.
My mother screams louder than anyone.
"MAGNI!"
My father's voice roars, furious and terrified. "GET HIM BACK—!"
The priests' voices become a single unified chant, unintelligible, thunderous, shaking the air like the temple itself is praying through them.
I feel… everything.
Not the blessings themselves—those are complicated, layered, and I can't parse them yet, like trying to understand a book by swallowing it whole—
—but I feel the weight of them.
Eight divines and a forgotten ninth, pouring power into a three-year-old body that already contains three divine blessings, a dragon soul, and the Gatekeeper Crystal stitched into the blueprint of my being.
I feel high as a kite.
I feel like I'm overdosing on god-energy.
My stomach lurches. My bones feel like they're trying to vibrate out of my skin. My heartbeat becomes a drum in my ears, fast and loud and wrong.
I have a sudden, horrifying thought:
Hindsight is 2020. Maybe getting blessed by nine divines is too much for one body to handle.
For the first time since arriving in this world, genuine fear slices through me.
Not "this is dangerous" fear.
This might kill me fear.
My body strains.
I can feel it in the deep places, where my soul anchors into flesh. Like the blessings are trying to carve channels bigger than my body currently owns. Like my very existence is being stretched into a shape it wasn't born for.
My teeth clench.
My hands curl into fists.
I want to scream.
I want to beg them to stop.
I want to laugh because of course my life is like this.
And then… my hair starts to change.
I feel it before I see it. A strange tingling across my scalp. Warmth spreading like ink through water.
The gold strands I was born with begin to bleach.
Not slowly.
All at once.
Gold becomes pale.
Pale becomes silver.
Silver becomes white.
White like fresh snow under starlight.
My mother's sob catches, turning into a strangled gasp.
My father's breath stutters.
Someone whispers, "His hair…"
And my eyes—
My eyes were already solid blue orbs.
Now they glow.
Not a reflection.
Not candlelight.
They emit light.
Blue, bright, intense enough that I can see the faint halos it casts on the floor in front of me. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind Dibella's altar—meant for worshipers to admire their own beauty—and for a split second I don't recognize the child staring back.
White hair. Glowing eyes. A tiny body lit from within like a lantern.
Insert Image of Magni Titanborns new look
Marked.
Not lightly.
Not subtly.
The beam's pressure climbs one final time, and for a terrifying moment I feel like I'm going to split.
Then, abruptly, the surge slows.
The beams soften.
The roar of energy begins to taper.
The priests' chanting breaks into ragged breaths like men waking from a trance.
The candle flames shrink back down, though they remain taller than normal, as if they're reluctant to admit the miracle is ending.
The divine light slowly retracts into the statues.
One by one the glow dims.
Eight altars fade to stillness.
Talos lingers a moment longer—stubborn, bright, almost smug—then he too quiets, settling back into dusty stone as if nothing happened.
I sway on my knees.
My mother grabs me instantly, pulling me against her chest so hard it hurts. Her heart is pounding like a war drum.
My father is on the other side, one hand gripping my arm, the other hovering like he wants to check every bone for fractures but doesn't know how to do that without shaking me.
"Magni," he says, voice rough. "Magni—are you—"
I blink.
I'm… alive.
My body feels like I ran for ten miles uphill carrying a sack of rocks, but I'm alive.
Inside, the Gatekeeper is strangely quiet, as if listening to something deeper than my thoughts.
Then, very carefully, he speaks.
«Your internal structure has changed.»
That's not comforting.
Outside, the entire temple is staring at me.
Not polite staring.
Not curious staring.
The kind of staring you give a thing that doesn't fit into your understanding of the world.
The kind of staring that turns into rumors.
Stories.
Fear.
Reverence.
And trouble.
I look down at my small hands, still faintly glowing at the edges, and I think—dazed, half-panicked, half-awed—
Maybe this is the Divines marking me so loudly that even the Daedra have to pay attention. Like a collar for a dog showing others who the owner is.
Maybe it's a warning.
He's ours. Don't touch him.
That would be nice in theory but it would most likely make the Daedra want me more dammit
But if it did work it would make up for the whole "forcefully rewiring my body" thing.
Let's go with that.
My mother is still shaking, whispering prayers into my hair.
My father looks like he wants to shout at someone—at the priests, at the statues, at the sky—but he can't exactly threaten the Divines.
The first whisper breaks the silence, a tremor of words sliding through the temple like a snake through grass.
"Blessed…"
Another follows.
"Nine beams…"
"Even Talos…"
Then a third, sharp and fearful:
"The Thalmor can never hear about this."
That one hits harder than any beam.
Because it's true.
The Empire might ignore quiet Talos worship.
But this?
This was not quiet.
This was a miracle with witnesses.
A miracle that just lit up a banned god in the center of a Thalmor-controlled world.
And I'm the glowing evidence.
I lift my head slowly.
My blue light spills across the faces of Winterhold's "important people"—clan heads, merchants, business owners, shield-thanes, priests. I see awe. I see fear. I see calculation.
I see the moment an entire room realizes a child might become a weapon.
Or a symbol.
Or a target.
My father's voice is low, urgent, meant only for my mother and me.
"We leave," he says. "Now."
My mother nods, clutching me tighter.
The priests look shell-shocked. One of them tries to speak, but no sound comes out, like his tongue hasn't caught up with what he just witnessed.
As my parents carry me toward the door, the murmurs swell behind us.
By the time we step out into the biting Winterhold air, the whispers have already begun turning into something else.
Something with teeth.
And as the cold wind hits my glowing eyes, I realize with a sinking feeling:
I am not just "the Jarl's strange child" anymore.
I am going to be famous.
...
So here we are end of day 1 guys. Welcome to my new novel Skyrim: Make Winterhold Great Again. I hope all of you got the joke with the title. I present to you my lovely readers a 15 chapter mass release as a celebration for the start of my new book and as a gift to you. I hope you enjoyed them. That totals to 1 prologue and then 14 more chapters not including the glossary or the illustration gallery. Getting all 15 chapters ready and edited took waaay more time than I expected but here we are at the finish line, or is it the starting line? Anyways tell me what you guys think of what I have written up until now, that way I have some idea of what changes I need to make going forward. Last thing to note is that the illustration gallery and glossary chapters are still construction sites. Toodaloo guys and see you tomorrow at my next chapter release!