The stair above erupts with hurried footsteps. A mud-streaked young adult woman stumbles through the doorway, lean beneath a soaked brown courier’s cloak, her cropped black hair plastered to her brow. A broken wayhouse seal hangs from one fist, and a bloodless arrow shaft from the other.
Serah Quill
Orlan. I know that face. Dale, listen to me. Strangers are questioning the wayhouse keeper about every guide who has passed through.
Serah braces herself against the doorframe, breathing hard. Dale has come alone through the hidden service way; Sella remains at the Lanternless Shrine, and no companion followed him beneath Dunmere.
Serah Quill
They carried a copy of your trail marks. The three circles, the clean line through the grit, even the turn toward the service door.
Orlan’s composure breaks. He snatches the route chart from the table, sending clay tablets clattering across the stones, while his gaze fixes on the broken seal.
Orlan Vetch
That is impossible. The marks were never copied beyond the northern boundary.
Serah Quill
Then someone copied them after you opened the road. And they are already asking where Dale went.
✓ Quest Accepted
Search the archive for the road’s mappers
“Did someone inside the network copy the marks?”
NO (Likely, rolled 88)
Orlan stares at the broken seal, then lowers the chart without unfolding it. Serah’s report has struck through his certainty, but not in the way he feared.
Orlan Vetch
No. None of my guides copied those marks. They learned routes, names, and old boundaries, never the opening signs.
Serah Quill
Then the copy was made after the road opened. The strangers did not come through your circle.
The broken seal trembles in Serah’s fist. Its wax bears no three-circle impression, only a jagged split where someone tore it from a wayhouse door.
Orlan Vetch
Someone watched the opening from outside the network. They copied what the passage revealed, then reached the wayhouse before word could return here.
Dale Trackfinder
The copied marks came after the boundary opened, not from the guides who knew it.
For the first time, Orlan looks toward the descending archive rather than the stair behind Serah. The searchers are not his agents, and their questions now point toward an observer beyond his control.
“I ask Orlan which records name the guides who mapped the erased road.”
FAILURE (Fair Persuasion, rolled -2)
Dale Trackfinder
Which records name the guides who mapped the erased road?
Orlan’s hand settles over the folded chart. Serah watches him closely, while the scattered tablets lie undisturbed across the stone table.
Orlan Vetch
The archive names no guides. It names routes, boundary keepers, and payments, but the people who mapped that road used borrowed names.
Serah Quill
You told me the archive held their names. Was that another half-truth?
Orlan Vetch
It holds names attached to the work, not faces you can confront. If I give you the list, you will chase masks while the living guides disappear.
Orlan draws a narrow ledger from beneath the chart and opens it to a page of crossed-out entries. A fresh strip of parchment covers the final column.
Orlan Vetch
That column identifies the last mapmaker. I will not remove it here. Search the archive, and you may find the uncrossed name before someone burns it.
“I search the archive for uncrossed mapmaker names”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled +1)
Dale descends into the archive and searches by route marks, boundary circles, and payment dates. Dust gives way to orderly shelves, revealing which ledgers were disturbed recently.
Dale Trackfinder
The covered column was added after the crossings were recorded.
Behind a loose ledger board, Dale finds the final mapmaker register. He lifts the fresh parchment strip without tearing it and exposes the uncrossed entry beneath.
The name is Maelin Orr, recorded beside the Blackmere Wayhouse and the erased road’s first boundary. A second notation identifies Maelin as living, but traveling under borrowed names.
Serah Quill
Maelin Orr. I have heard that name at Dunmere, always spoken as though it belonged to someone who had already left.
Orlan Vetch
Then the archive has yielded what I withheld. Maelin mapped the road before I ever paid for a guide, and knows where its hidden branch ends.
The register also gives a last verified mark: Maelin Orr passed through Blackmere three weeks ago, carrying the three-circle sign toward the old road’s beginning.
Quest Complete
Search the archive for the road’s mappers
Skill Upgrade: Persuasion Fair→Good