Before Cain can leave the clearing, a mud-streaked middle-aged man emerges between the trees. He is gaunt and hollow-eyed, wearing a torn brown coat; a broken keeper's seal hangs at his throat.
Jonas Vale
I served the order's outer watch. My name is Jonas Vale. I came because the standing stone has begun calling every surviving witness.
The exorcist keeps the diary close while the pale woman remains beside the stone, her wet hair motionless in the windless dark. Neither woman approaches Jonas.
Jonas Vale
I thought the calls were dreams. Then the seal broke, and every voice beneath the earth began asking where the witnesses had gone.
The broken seal taps against his chest. For one breath, his jaw slackens and his voice deepens into a layered murmur assembled from distant throats.
Jonas Vale
Cain.
Jonas Vale
The mark that refused the dark. The witness that cannot be erased. It has found you again.
✓ Quest Accepted
Keep Cain's mark concealed from Jonas Vale
“Keep Cain's mark concealed from Jonas Vale”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +4)
Cain lowers his hand and lets the old pressure pass beneath the mark. The cold radiance withdraws from his skin, leaving only weathered flesh beneath his sleeve.
Jonas Vale searches Cain's face, then his covered wrist. Whatever Nethra taught him to recognize finds no purchase; the mark is absent from his sight and from the air around them.
Jonas Vale
You are not showing it to me.
The accusation carries no certainty. Jonas's broken seal stops tapping, its metal turning dull and inert against his chest, as though Cain's concealment has silenced its answering signal.
The Exorcist
Then Nethra cannot use his seal to read you. That gives us a way beneath the stone.
Beside the standing stone, Mara Venn turns her mud-streaked face toward a narrow seam hidden among the roots. It was there before, but the darkness concealed its outline.
Mara Venn
The lower passage is open. The first keeper's warning was meant for you, Cain, not for the order.
Quest Complete
Keep Cain's mark concealed from Jonas Vale
Attribute Upgrade: Willpower Great→Superb
