The Shadowed Watcher stumbles, and their heel clips a loose stone near the gate. It skitters, then vanishes into the lane. Baseva keeps her shield between them and Namal as lantern light shivers over the wet wall.
The Shadowed Watcher
Too slow. There are three more like me, and one of them is already inside.
The Miller goes pale. Namal presses back toward Baseva, eyes fixed on the dark mouth of the alley. A second smear of mud marks the inside of the gate post, fresh and sharp in the light.
Baseva
Who opened the village?
The Miller
Not me. I swear it. I saw a cloaked shape near the storehouse before dusk, then nothing.
The Watcher laughs once, wet and strained, then bares their teeth at the alley shadows. A thin whistle answers from somewhere beyond the lane, faint as a knife slipping free of a sheath.
The Shadowed Watcher
You are guarding the wrong gate, paladin. The Baron was never the prize. He was the key.
The alley at the far end of the lane stirs, and a second figure shifts in the dark behind stacked carts, cutting off the only clear path out.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose the second attacker