Behind the mineral pillars, a narrow fissure exhales cold air. A middle-aged man in torn brown quarry leathers stumbles through, lean and dust-covered, with blood darkening his chest.
Iven Marr
Iven Marr. I came through the eastern hills days ago. Please, remove it before it reaches my heart.
He pulls his collar aside, revealing a black inscription cut beneath the collarbone. The letters pulse faintly, though his skin around them remains warm.
Brother Caldus
That is the same naming-work we cleansed beneath the shrine, but fresh. It has found another road into the living.
Brother Caldus braces himself against a ruined pillar, one hand guarding his bound ribs. Across the hollow, the sealed black door answers with a muted pulse.
Iven Marr
I heard voices beneath the hills. They spoke names I knew, then carved mine into me. I fled when the door began to open.
Maurice, Elianor, and Tomas remain behind Celia among the pillars, watching the fissure and the sealed door. The inscription beats once more beneath Iven’s collarbone.
✓ Quest Accepted
Cure Iven Marr
“I study the inscription with my undead sensing to determine the nature of the inscription.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Undead Sensing, rolled +2)
Celia raises her sanctified staff and fixes her undead sensing upon the inscription. The chamber’s warmth dims, leaving the mark as a black road beneath Iven’s skin.
The letters are not wounds or a curse rooted in flesh. They are a living-way sigil, impressed from outside and anchored to the sealed door’s eastern pulse.
Celia Graves
The inscription is a tether, not a possession. It guides the buried will toward Iven and uses his living breath as its road.
Celia traces the unseen connection farther. The sigil carries a name-pattern into the hills, but it cannot command Iven while the tether remains severed from his heart.
Iven Marr
Then it has not claimed me? Tell me true. I can bear pain, but I will not become another mouth for that thing.
Brother Caldus
It is the naming-work, refined. The door marked him as a guide, not a servant. That distinction may be why he survived.
The inscription’s pattern resolves into three functions: summon, orient, and draw breath toward the eastern source. Its command remains dormant, but its path is unmistakable.
“I sever the tether before it reaches Iven’s heart”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled +0)
Celia plants her sanctified staff between Iven and the sealed door. Pale force follows the black road beneath his skin, reaching the tether before it can descend toward his heart.
The tether snaps cleanly. The inscription lifts from Iven’s flesh as a thread of shadow, recoils toward the eastern pulse, and scatters into weightless ash.
Iven Marr
It is gone. My breath is mine again.
The black letters fade without breaking skin. Iven’s warmth steadies, while the sealed door loses its answering rhythm and settles into silent stone.
Brother Caldus
You severed the road before it reached his heart. The naming-work cannot use him as a guide now.
A faint eastern pulse remains beyond the door, no longer touching Iven. The chamber’s dust falls still, and the freed man lowers his collar over an unmarked chest.
Iven Marr
Whatever waits beyond that stone has lost my name. I can tell you where the voices began.
Quest Complete
Cure Iven Marr
New Gift: Cleansing Touch