A/N Please note that this is my very first fanfic, and that i, while fluent in english, do still have a bit of difficulty with some words! I was also using a pretty bad program for the first two chapters! Onwards and upwards!

The Beginning of a New Era

Chapter 1

(Prologue)

Gjalder looked around the house - manor, really - that he had built with his own two hands. "Well," he thought, "that and copious amounts of magic and use of the Thu'um."

Even after all this time, the power of the Voice still fascinated him, such ancient power, tied to the soul. To dragons. To him. Oh, he had come a long way, a very long way indeed, since the time he had been but another starry-eyed adventurer, looking for a way to make a living, using nothing but his mind and his skills in battle.

It felt like it had been so long, yet it could hardly be more than twenty years, since he finished what he thought of as his last "Great Adventure". Granted, it had been a magnificent one, defeating the First Dragonborn at the Summit of Apocrypha, finally facing off against someone he truly thought of as an equal. It had been the hardest fight of his life, and easily one of the most enjoyable. Not even what those who called themselves his "kins-men", called the "Final Battle, Worthy of Song, of Honor, and of Shors Glory", in Sovngarde came close. After all, Alduin was simply following the directions of their Father. Why should he take pleasure, or worse yet, claim glory, for murdering his brother? Yet it was a task that had to be done.

He had been in a dark place afterwards, with so many congratulating him on slaying the World-Eater, all of Skyrim celebrating his actions. His despicable actions. He hadn't known what to do with himself afterwards, until he decided to walk the Seven Thousand Steps again, to speak with the greatest teacher he had ever met.

The ancient Dovah, Paarthurnax.

As he made his way to the top of the sacred mountain, and finally saw his old master, he realised, with a wry smile, that it was exactly one year ago he had defeated his brother, and returned his soul to their father.

He needed Paarthurnax' helped, badly. He hoped the old one would put him on the path of healing, even if he could not make things better that instant.

He had not expected the Dov to be as melancholic about the day as he was, after all, Paarthurnax had betrayed Alduin millenia ago, to mortals how to wield the Thu'um, and then later, in the Way of the Voice.

But it made sense, he supposed. After all, Gjalder truly hated Alduin for what he had done, and had never met his brother but for in the moments where they tried - vehemently - to kill each other. Paarthurnax, on the other hand, had known him since well before Atmora froze over.

In the end, Gjalder stayed at the peak of the Throat of the World for a year, simply discussing philosphy with the old being, before he decided to make his way back down to what he called "The Lowlands".

Once he returned however, he found that vampires had begun attacking settlements and towns, even Hold capitals at night, and the pace of their attacks was increasing rapidly.

Gjalder would not stand for this. He would not let the world he had killed his brother for perish, not to some bloodsucking scum. He vowed, then and there, at the foot of the great mountain, that the orchestrator of the attacks would fall, and that whoever it was, would feel terror at the name of Gjalder Rage-Eye before it was done.

And so Gjalder set out, on his next great adventure, finding the woman who would quickly go on to become his greatest friend, and closest confidante, Serana, and together they put a stop to her fathers insane plan to extinguish the sun, and plunge the world into everlasting night.

After this, Serana, while saddened by the loss of her father, was not as hurt, not as broken as Gjalder had been, the previous year. She decided to leave her friends side, for a while, to wander the world beyond Skyrim, to see what had changed in the thousands of years she had slumbered away.

Gjalder chose this time, to start studying the deeper nature of Magicks, and of Shouts in particular, going so far as to start creating his own Shouts, something that had only been accomplished by two other mortals before him, an ancient Tongue, who created the Dragonrend Shout, to weaken Alduin, and the First Dragonborn, Miraak.

For two years Gjalder traveled the peaks, valleys and forests of Skyrim and High Rock, until one day he was accosted by a pair of strangers in strange clothing, with masks that looked to be carved from bone in the likeliness of the Dragon Priests of old, calling him a false Dragonborn, and trying to murder him for their master.

The rest, as it is said, is history.

Gjalder had used the last twenty years to plunge ever deeper into the secrets of the Arcane, both of Aetherius, the Aedra and the Magne-Ge, and of Oblivion, the infinite reaches and the sixteen Princes that ruled the Greater Planes.

It had come to the point, where Gjalder could physically enter Oblivion, something no mortal before him had done without the aid, accidental or otherwise, of a Daedric Prince.

It was whilst beyond the Liminal Barriers that protected Mundus from the Immaterial, that he suddenly felt a tugging upon his soul, something that had never happened before, and was in an instant pulled away from his path in the Void-That-Lies-Between, to some strange, swirling vortex of green.

The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him, was a strange looking creature, with large eyes, and long, pointed ears. Yet it looked like no Mer he had ever seen before.