Cold night air knifes in as Buer, Alaric, and Kaelith spill from the drainage pipe into a maze of leaning shacks. Alaric steps into their path, pale and rigid, his hand out for the promised trinket.
Alaric Vane
Enough. The relic. You said you had it.
Buer answers by producing a small iron key, blackened with age and wrapped in red thread. It is no bauble. The shape is old, ceremonial, and wrong.
Kaelith
That is no prison token. I know that cut of iron.
Kaelith’s glow sharpens as she leans closer. The key bears a hidden sigil, a binding mark used for summonings, the kind that opens doors no living hand should touch.
Alaric Vane
What is that?
Buer’s prize is the anchor for a darker bargain, a thing meant to call something vast and hungry to heel. Alaric reaches for it anyway, because whatever he fears, his family still matters more.
Get Alaric to accept the true nature of the key