The altar remains bright beneath Thyrddin’s layered seals. His wounded palm pulses whenever a locked channel answers, each beat sending silver light through the ash.
The necromancer’s apprentice crouches near the boundary and brushes loose ash aside. A thin silver line emerges, running away from the altar toward the blackened flats.
the necromancer's apprentice
There. The conduit is not dead. It is carrying a remnant somewhere beyond the sealed working.
Veyra Ash-Tongue remains beyond the silver boundary, cracked bronze robes stirring in the ash-wind. She watches the trail without lowering the vellum in her hand.
Veyra Ash-Tongue
Do not follow it, wizard. The reservoir gathers what it cannot spend, and every step will announce your presence to my master.
the necromancer's apprentice
That warning sounds less like concern than certainty. If the line leads to the gathering place, we may learn how to end the reservoir.
the necromancer's apprentice
If the old design still gathers power, leaving it untouched may be more dangerous than exposing its source.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reveal the source of the conduit remnant
“Thyrddin looks at Veyra "You fear for my safety now? Why should I believe a single word that comes from your mouth?"”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled -2)
Thyrddin
You fear for my safety now? Why should I believe a single word that comes from your mouth?
Veyra’s vellum lowers by a fraction. The silver trail pulses beneath the ash, and Thyrddin’s wounded palm answers with a sharp, bright throb.
Veyra Ash-Tongue
Because I have stood beneath that gathering place. My master does not merely drain power there. He feeds names into the reservoir, and it learns the shape of every oath.
She turns the vellum over, revealing a burned impression matching the mark in Thyrddin’s palm. The sight makes her warning painfully specific, not protective.
Veyra Ash-Tongue
I warn you because your mark has already entered its reckoning. Follow the remnant, and my master will know you are coming. Stay, and the reservoir will continue gathering.
The cost of her admission arrives at once: the vellum’s seal cracks, and a black spark leaps across the boundary into Thyrddin’s wounded hand. The silver trail flares, now unmistakably revealing its destination.
the necromancer's apprentice
She has given us a true reason, at least. The trail leads toward the old ash cathedral, where the reservoir’s first conduit was buried.
Quest Complete
Reveal the source of the conduit remnant