Wind screams through the high-mountain pass, driving needles of snow between black cairns. Cye arrives beneath a sky bruised with stormlight, the village of slate roofs barely visible below.
An elderly woman stands atop the largest cairn, a lean mountain villager wrapped in layered gray wool and blue fur. White braids whip around her weathered face, and a bronze eye-shaped clasp holds her cloak.
She clamps a yellowed parchment against the gale. Its ink crawls like living veins, erasing one trail and redrawing another toward a distant, unseen dragon's hoard.
the village elder
The cairn yielded this at dawn, and the map has not kept one path for longer than a breath.
Beneath the snowfield, long buried shapes shift in slow procession. Frost cracks over their unseen outlines, while the parchment's crimson route fades toward blankness.
the village elder
You there, traveler. Stop the shifting path before it vanishes, or the hoard and everything guarding it will be lost beneath the mountain.
The elder thrusts the map forward, her gloved hands trembling from cold or urgency. Around the cairn, the buried movement stills, awaiting what Cye will do.
✓ Quest Accepted
Fix the route to the dragon's hoard
“I take the map from the villge elder and examine it”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled -2)
Cye takes the parchment from the elder and bends over it beneath the cairn's sheltering stones. The ink writhes beneath his careful gaze.
A gust tears through the gap, numbing his left fingers before he can shield the map. The parchment remains firm in his grasp, but his fingertips ache sharply.
Cye
The red trail is following something beneath the snow.
As the lines settle, Cye sees the route's pattern: it does not lead toward the village, but circles three black cairns before descending beneath the eastern ridge.
the village elder
You read it, then. Tell me what the mountain is hiding.
The buried procession shifts again, answering the map's revealed path with a deep, muffled groan. One crimson mark flares beside the eastern cairn, then holds.
+ New Item Acquired
parchment map
“I look the direction of where the crimson mark would be”
Cye turns toward the eastern cairn, following the crimson flare's direction across the wind-scoured snowfield. His gaze finds a narrow break between leaning slabs of black stone.
Beyond it, the route descends along the ridge's shadow, where blue ice gleams beneath thin snow and the mountain falls away into a mist-filled ravine.
the village elder
There. The eastern descent. I have searched that slope every winter, but the mountain never showed me an opening.
The parchment answers the sightline. Its red trail lengthens toward the break, steady now, while the other ink-lines fade into dull brown.
the village elder
The path has chosen him. The old warnings were not about the village after all.
Far below the ridge, something vast shifts beneath the snow, not toward Cye but along the hidden descent. The cairns remain still, their dark stones rimmed with frost.
the village elder
The hoard lies beneath that ridge, if the map speaks true. At least now, its road is visible.
“I thank the elder and start heading towards the eastern cairn”
Cye
Thank you. I will follow the path to the eastern cairn.
the village elder
Go carefully, traveler. The mountain has opened only for you.
Cye steps away from the sheltering stones and crosses the wind-scoured snowfield. His small, slim figure moves lightly over the crusted drifts.
Snow streams around his boots as he advances toward the eastern cairn. The black stones grow clearer, their frost-bright edges marking the narrow descent beyond.
the village elder
Keep the parchment level. Its red trail is steady now, and it may guide you beneath the ridge.
Cye reaches the eastern cairn. Between its leaning slabs, blue ice gleams under a thin veil of snow, and the crimson route continues downward into the mist.
Quest Complete
Fix the route to the dragon's hoard