Hello, I'm new to the game and building my first character.

I did the quest where I got the golden claw and the dragon tablets. In the last room of that quest, I read some glyphs on the wall that put a dragon shout in my spellbook. It looked pretty weak and said that all it did was push stuff back and out of my way, but I expected that for the first one. However, there was no tip provided about pushing z to cast it. I didn't think much about it at the time, because I didn't see any good use for it anyway.

Then I did the quest where I killed my first dragon with the help of the Jarl's righthand woman and three or four guards. When it died, it started to explode, and she yelled "everybody, get back!", so I ran back toward the tower. The dragon exploded, and I and everybody else was on fire.

Then the dialogue revealed all the stuff about dragon shouting and being dragon born. It said that I had absorbed the dragon's soul.

However, the character screen clearly says "Dragon Souls: 0". And there was no new shout other than the one I already had, although now I got a tip screen that said to press z to cast it.

Is this how it's supposed to work? The quest chain appears to be intact - I got the thunder sounds and the mission to go find the dwarves to learn more about dragon shouting.

But it worries me that that counter reads "0".

Can anyone put my mind at ease?

You ran too far away to gain the soul. Simple as that.

The dragons don't explode, they just burn up, and the soul is transferred to you, range permitting obviously. You will get a message says "Dragon soul gained" or something like that.

The first shout You got in bleak falls barrow isn't usable without a dragon soul, so when you killed that first dragon at the guard tower you absorbed the soul and the game automatically applied it to your first shout (unrelenting force) therefore you have 0 souls left Over because the soul went into your first shout makIng it now usable.

Get it?

^This. The first shout was unusable until you killed the first dragon. In future you will have to manually ulock shouts withthe souls, but the first one happens automatically.

Ah, thank you Nydes and Aphaea! That answers my question!

I have to add that the Greybeards aren't dwarves, because otherwise that will bug me forever, sorry to sound like a dike,

The ones you get from the main quest are all unlocked automatically for you, except the ones from word walls.

After you gain more, you will have to mouse over the shout and press a button to unlock it (can't remember which key), and confirm the decision.

If you try to select a shout that isn't unlocked, it will give you a misleading message about you not having any souls to unlock the shout. I remember thinking I was bugged or something till I realized I just had to mouse over and press the button to spend the soul, not click on it first.

On PC, the "unlock" key for shouts in the magic interface is the letter R. I do not know if this is true on consoles.

On my 360 system it says X button to unlock souls though Im not on default controls so it may be different.

Lol thought the same thing.

'X' is used to unlock shouts with Drgon Souls on Xbox, default controls or not.

And Balgarath, after you kill a dragon, it will say in big white letters at the top of the screen "Dragon Soul Absorbed" if everything went correctly.