A/N: I couldn't find a way to fit this into Companionship, but I just love Beirir too much to let his backstory go unheard.

27 Second Seed, 4E 193

He hasn't bothered to cover his face. He wants his prey to know fear, to see the face of the one who will end his life tonight.

He walks through the village quietly, finally coming to the farm of Ergnir. The moons are high in the sky, and the lights within the house have been dark for quite a while.

Spying a guard in the distance, he slips behind the home, melting into the shadows. If there is one thing he is good at, it is disappearing, and in Falkreath, disappearing is ludicrously simple.

Carefully he slides through the foliage to the back door of the home. He pulls a lockpick silently from his footwrap, deftly maneuvering it in the lock. It is only a matter of moments before the door swings inward; he thanks the Divines that the hinges don't squeak, as most doors in Falkreath are so wont to do.

Ergnir shivers as a cold breeze sweeps across his bedroom. The cold rarely bothers him; after all, he is a Nord, a hardy son of Skyrim. But there is something menacing on the wind—something ominous. He opens his eyes and gives a yelp.

Standing over his bed is a tall young man with a shaggy mop of auburn hair, wearing simple beggar's woolens. He can't make out the lad's face, though; the young man stands before the window, the light of the moons at his back, a forbidding silhouette.

The young man holds a dagger in one hand and a leather-bound journal, its pages yellowing with age, in the other.

A rush of horror courses through Ergnir's veins as he understands.

"No," he says. "No, please…"

The young man tilts his head for a moment as though considering Ergnir's plea before squatting down next to the bed, his face mere inches from the farmer's.

"Is that what she said, too?" he inquires in a soft, soothing whisper. "Did she beg? Did she whimper? Was she scared?"

Ergnir shakes his head. "I don't…I don't know what you're talking about!" he gasps, terrified.

"Oh, really? Well then, it seems as though someone has tried to frame you, Ergnir. You see, I found a rather incriminating journal in your end table," he whispers, his words dripping with poison. He flips open the journal and reads aloud, his voice softly caressing each word.

Another dream of her tonight, but the bitch lies with a different hound.

She has given him a son. He has her eyes…or so I am told. A boy that should have been ours. Our happiness. Our life. But he stole her. Took her from me.

Her betrayal grows with her swollen stomach. A second child she is to give him. Another stolen from me. She should have been mine, but she scorned me. We could have been happy…but now no one can be happy.

Her eighth month wanes. I will send her to Sovngarde, and I will join her there. If we could not be together in life, we shall be together in death.

The babe was born. A girl. Our daughter.
She slept in her room, alone. Tired. He took the girl, my daughter, and the boy, my son, to his brother's, and was gone.
When she looked at me, I saw fear. I saw hatred. I felt…anger. She goes to Sovngarde, but I shall not join her. Her hatred has cost us everything.
We could have been happy, Brylina. But now I can be satisfied. I bathed my blade in your blood, and now you will never know the happiness of what you had. The happiness of what we could have been…

The young man's voice remains remarkably level as he reads. When he snaps the thin book shut, Ergnir, shaking in terror, sees the blade that the young man holds. It is the one that was bound in wool with the journal.

"Fine craftsmanship," the young man murmurs. "Did Lod make it for you? Did he know what it was going into the world to do?"

Ergnir feels the cold tip of the blade against his throat, pricking the delicate skin harshly. He struggles for words, but none come.

"Is this the blade that tasted Brylina's blood?"

An edge creeps into the young man's voice. Ergnir's mouth hangs open as he tries to form words, struggling in vain against the panic that has closed its talons upon his heart.

The cold steel of the blade bites into his throat, and Ergnir finds himself gazing into Brylina's eyes once more.

"Give my regards to my mother," the young man snarls.

As Ergnir writhes in pain, blood running from the gaping wound in his neck, the young man sits down on the edge of his bed, flipping the journal open to an empty page. He smiles sweetly at Ergnir, dipping the tip of the dagger in his blood. The last thing Ergnir hears before the world goes dark is the scratching of the dagger upon the aged paper of his journal.

The young man lifts the dagger tip from the journal, wiping the blade clean on Ergnir's sheets. Then he stands, closing the book, and slips back into the night.

He revisits this journal, his souvenir, when they find the body the next day; he revisits it later, in dark nights, to run his fingers over the dried blood inscribed upon the page. The message he had written that night. The message that made him feel close to her once more, though he had lost her so long ago.

Justice for you, dear Mother.