A Second Chance

Prologue: Death and Rebirth

He just stood there, screaming.
The only sound his throat seemed capable of making, could ever make, a cry of anguish. His mind echoed with half-formed thoughts, and the sound of ultimate suffering, as he watched it happening. There before him she lay, her body broken and battered, barely breathing. He ran to her, stumbling over the swiftly cooling, and thus decaying, corpse of the beast of fire and shadow that had done this. He ignored it, barely noticed as he nearly fell tripping over it, what little of his mind that wasn't mad with grief pushing him to go to her, before it was too late. He stumbled over to her, practically collapsed by her prone form. He gently lifted her in his arms.
Please, don't let her die, not like this.
"A-Aleigha, can you hear me?" he choked out, barely keeping himself from sobbing.
"Jurgen..." her voice was quiet, pained, as if each syllable, each breath, was a struggle. Tears streaked down both their faces, "I'm sorry," he said, "please, don't go, I need you. You're all I have left," he said, crying.
"Don't be-" she was interrupted by a horrific sounding coughing fit, "don't be sorry, there's nothing that could've been done. Don't let it end here. Keep going, live, be happy, and remember me," she said, quietly.
"Please, I can't go on without you. I love you." Jurgen cried, desperately.
"I love you too, and that's why I hope you- you can love another," she said, forcing the words out between wracking coughs and sobs.
Jurgen held her in his arms, crying. He leant down and kissed her, one last time. "I love you, Aleigha, and I always will. Tell... tell the others I miss them, and I'm sorry."
She smiled, "I will. I'll miss you, but we'll only be gone a while. I'll see you soon, but not too soon. Now go and live a fulfilling life, that's an order," she said, with a sigh that never ended.

"Goodbye, my sweet..." Jurgen said, before his chest was wracked with sobs. His face screwed up in sheer, soul-shattering sorrow.

As he knelt there, crying, there came a whispering. Then a roaring, as a thin line of flame formed in the air, a tear in reality, widening into a great rent in the fabric of the world, and from this wound stepped a towering beast, like a man, and a dragon, and a bull, wreathed in flames, and Jurgen's sobs of anguish turned to a cry of rage. He lay down the body of his beloved, and stood facing the creature four times his size. The flaming fiend let loose a roar of undiluted bloodlust, and Jurgen answered it with a roar of his own, of righteous fury and endless sorrow. He balled up his fists, and white flames began to lick at them, but the flames did not burn him. From his eyes came a white light, and a red halo formed around his head as he screamed to the heavens, and charged the beast. It returned the challenge with a swing of an arm bigger around than he was, which he leaped over and continued to charge at it, before swinging his bare, flaming fist at the creature.

"She's dead! And you killed her! I'll KILL YOU!" he roared, two voices seeming to come from his mouth as he spoke, "I loved her! I love her still! And it is that love which shall be your doom, vile creature!" he swung a flaming fist, striking the creature in the chest and sending it flying despite its enormous size. "She may be dead, but she's still here. In my heart, and-" he picked up the axe his beloved had wielded in life, "in this! I AM JURGEN, SON OF ERIK, OF THE HOUSE OF RONAAZ! I AM THE LAST OF THE DEATHBRINGERS! I WALK WITH TWO SOULS! ONE FOR LIVING, AND ONE FOR KILLING, AND NOW THEY BOTH CRY OUT FOR VENGEANCE! PRAY TO WHATEVER FALSE GODS YOU MAY WORSHIP THAT YOUR DEATH WILL BE SWIFT, BUT KNOW THAT YOU PRAY IN VAIN!" His entire body lit up on flames, flickering black and white. A suit of plate armor appeared around him, individual parts flickering from bright and smooth to black and jagged. They continued to strobe, black-white-black-white, changing faster than the eye could see until suddenly they stopped, two solid colors, his right side white as the sun, his left side black as the night.
"AXE OF THE SOUL!" he roared, throwing Aleigha's axe, shining with a white light, as the flames licking his body turned gold, "TWO SOULED STRIKE!" he roared, locking his hands together and striking the beast's head with both hands in a single blow. The fiend burned with the same golden flame and screamed as the holy light burned it, before its form crumbled, the ashes flowing back into the flaming chasm from whence it came, which sealed itself with a crash. Aleigha's axe returned to his hand, which he tossed into the air, letting it spin once before catching it.

The flames around Jurgen's body were suddenly extinguished as the ethereal armor vanished, and he collapsed to his knees, the axe still resting in his hand. And that's how they found him, hours later, mourning the passing of Aleigha Hearthfire.