Adventure of Tancred du Forgietan 2

The hearth still burns weakly in the ruined great hall. Its glow touches the writing case, black vellum, and silver key arranged upon the steward’s desk, while mist presses faintly through the broken gate.

The young bard has stayed behind as promised, her cloak drying beside the fire. She now stands near Tancred, studying the broken ancestral blade with wary fascination.

She glances toward the gate, then back to Tancred’s scarred chest and rusting armor. No prowling shape crosses the mist, and the silence grants her courage enough to ask.

Her fingers close around the silver charm, but she does not retreat. The question hangs between them beside the open case, its incomplete warning and Batory seal awaiting explanation.

Tancred opens the leatherbound journal beside the case. The serviceable parchment accepts the charcoal cleanly, and Archivist of Ruin guides his hand toward a sober record rather than a noble legend.

He writes of his birth beneath an ominous star, his inheritance of these lands, and his vows to the Order of Kelemvor. Hard-Won Insight keeps each turning point in its proper order.

Haunted memories break across the page as burning halls and familiar dead faces, but Forbidden Knowledge separates witnessed truth from the cruel distortions of death. The account continues: lordship, duty, and the first undead assault.

The charcoal records Trosylvia’s fall and the host’s destruction, naming Natasha Batory as the vampiress who led the horde. Tancred describes the offered Red Ascension, and his refusal before the ancestral blade.

He writes of the wounds that ended his life, then turns the page and reveals them to the bard: the scarred chest, the broken blade, and the body that woke without breath or heartbeat.

The completed account lies open between them, carrying his life from birth to awakening and the uncertainty of how long the keep held him. The bard reads it in full, her fear tempered by solemn understanding.

Tancred turns to a fresh journal page and writes his resolve: he will seek more concerning Edric, trusting the surviving library records to reveal the buried heir’s place in family history.

Archivist of Ruin guides the entry into a precise catalogue of names, dates, and sealed shelves. The leatherbound journal’s ordered pages keep scattered recollections from becoming another uncertain legend.

Curiosity pulls Tancred toward familiar genealogies first, tempting him to force Edric into a remembered branch. He resists that easy answer and searches the records for omissions, marginalia, and altered seals.

Forbidden Knowledge recognizes the buried heir’s concealment as deliberate occult redaction. Beneath a water-stained inventory, Tancred finds a library reference copied in a cipher used for dangerous bloodlines.

The reference identifies Edric as a firstborn du Morvannoux son, born before Tancred, whose existence was removed from public family records after a forbidden inheritance rite. The note directs him to the sealed succession register.

The finding rests clearly in the journal: Edric was Tancred’s elder brother and the hidden firstborn heir, removed from the succession records after the rite. The ruined library has yielded its truth.

The journal slips from Tancred’s hand and strikes the floor. Haunted memory surges through him, filling the hearthlit hall with accusing faces and the silent shape of a brother erased from every remembered page.

He catches at his torn throat with one hand. Forbidden Knowledge cuts through the distortion, recognizing the old inheritance rite’s occult imprint, while Hard-Won Insight holds the scattered truth in its proper order.

The words emerge half garbled, half rasping, dragged across a throat long unused. They are faint, yet undeniably spoken, and the silence afterward seems to recognize them.

The young bard kneels and retrieves the fallen journal without opening it. She sets it beside him, her fear quieted by the rough proof that the dead man’s voice can still carry truth.

Tancred walks through the ruined gate and faces the mist, one hand still pressed to his throat. Behind him, the young bard watches from the firelit threshold.

His voice travels farther than his ruined throat should allow. Haunted faces rise within the mist, but Hard-Won Insight separates remembered terror from the answering presence.

Whispers of the Dead gather around the call, not as a chorus but as a current, drawing Tancred’s attention beyond the eastern road toward a hollow beneath the keep’s outer slope.

The voice fades, yet its direction remains certain in the mist. Hard-Won Insight fixes the location, while Whispers of the Dead confirm Edric is below the slope, not within the ruined hall.

The young bard steps nearer the gate, clutching her silver charm. She has heard only the reply’s final echo, but Tancred now knows where his hidden brother waits.