Two weeks of hiding have left the old city half-swallowed by moss and silence. Dotti Nightshade stands before a collapsed archway, where her satchel gives off a faint, rhythmic warmth, tugging her toward the dark below.
The document’s glow leaks through the leather, answering some buried memory beneath the stones. Theodore lingers a few steps behind, his attention fixed on the ruin and the hush around it.
Dotti Nightshade
The arch is hiding the entrance.
Wolf King Theodore
This is the place. The sigil remembers more than we do.
A low horn sounds somewhere below the foundations, muffled by earth and stone. Dust sifts from the broken arch, and the hidden opening answers with a thin draft of damp air.
Wolf King Theodore
If the hunters reach this district first, the truth stays buried. Stay close, Dotti Nightshade.
The glow in the satchel brightens, and the line of a concealed stair becomes visible under the rubble, leading down into the city’s old bones.
“I ask Theodore what the sigil remembers”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled +2)
Dotti Nightshade
What does it remember?
Wolf King Theodore
A path beneath the old foundations. And a witness stone that keeps the original bargain from rotting in silence.
Wolf King Theodore
The sigil is not just a mark, Dotti Nightshade. It is a memory tied to blood, oath, and place.
Wolf King Theodore
He studies the glow as if he expects it to answer on its own.
The warmth in Dotti Nightshade's satchel steadies, then pulls once, clearly, toward the stair.
Wolf King Theodore
There. It points below the western root of the city. If we go now, the stone should be there.
“I follow the sigil below the western root”
SUCCESS (Superb Agility, rolled -3)
Dotti Nightshade slips to the western root and takes the stair first, the glow from her satchel thinning into the dark stone below.
The steps bite cold through the ruin, and dust sifts down around her boots as the hidden passage opens wider beneath the city.
Wolf King Theodore
Keep the light close. These foundations remember footsteps.
A cracked wall ahead answers with a shallow hum, and the sigil tugs once more toward a seam of older masonry.
Dotti Nightshade
The stonework is older than the arch above it.
Dotti reaches the base of the stair and finds a narrow passage cut into the foundations, just wide enough for one careful body at a time.
Behind her, rubble shifts with a dry groan, and a fine crack races through the arch overhead, shedding grit onto the landing.
Wolf King Theodore
Go on, Dotti Nightshade. The stone is ahead, and the ruin is waking.
“I ask Theodore to lead the way”
SUCCESS (Good Persuasion, rolled +0)
Dotti Nightshade
Lead the way, Theodore.
Wolf King Theodore
Gladly. Stay close, and watch the seams in the stone.
Theodore steps in front of Dotti, taking the narrow passage first, while the sigil’s glow spills over the older masonry ahead.
His boot scrapes loose grit from the threshold, and a thin shower of dust drops from the arch behind them.
Wolf King Theodore
The passage is a memory, not a road. It will answer only if we move with it.
He pauses just long enough to let the light from Dotti’s satchel find a hairline notch in the wall, then lowers his voice.
Wolf King Theodore
There. The witness stone should be beyond that seam.