The Brown Catman crouches over the rune and works the stones with careful claws. A hidden catch clicks. The wall shudders, then grinds open, spitting cold ash and old iron breath.
Beyond it, a narrow corridor drops into the mountain. The thrum below is clearer now, steady and hungry, like many throats breathing through pipes.
The Brown Catman
There. It opens clean now. Keep your feet on the marked stone.
Erma sees it at once, this is no dead passage. It is the road into the Regent's work, the place where his kin are being drawn thin and bled by craft.
The Elder Knight
Then we have the path to him at last.
The Scarred Knight
And the thing that steals from your line.
The ash wind stirs around Erma's claws, carrying the stink of hot stone and old soot from deeper below. The corridor waits, open and listening.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the route into the Regent's works
“I proceed, keeping on the marked path”
SUCCESS (Superb Agility, rolled +1)
Erma steps onto the marked stone and the corridor accepts his weight without complaint. The ash breath stays behind him, thinning at the threshold.
The floor runes pass under his claws in a clean line, one after another, guiding him into the cold dark. The stone mouth ahead remains quiet.
The Brown Catman
Keep to that line. The wrong step wakes the house.
The Elder Knight follows with shield lifted, then the Scarred Knight, both keeping close to Erma's path as the corridor narrows.
A seam of pale light marks the wall behind them, the old slit now left open to the chamber above. Ahead, the passage bends toward deeper heat.
For a moment the way is plain, held, and readable. Then a dull throb shivers through the stone beyond the bend, as if something farther in has noticed their tread.
Quest Complete
Secure the route into the Regent's works