The floorboards bend with a slow, hungry groan. Shadows stretch from the corners toward Wicy’s open sketchbook, reaching for the copied symbols like fingers.
Shadow
There. The marks below. The seal listens through them.
The Tavern Keeper rushes in, skidding to a stop beside the table. Wicy’s shard and charm give off a tight, faint shimmer, and the room’s light seems to thin around them.
The Tavern Keeper
Keep that thing still. Whatever you’ve stirred, it’s pulling on my floor.
Wicy
The symbols are a doorway, not just a record.
Shadow presses upward beneath the boards, making the table tremble. The shard answers with a controlled pulse, as if waiting for Wicy to choose between closing the breach or letting the hidden power speak.
Sable
Wicy, look at the pattern again. If the shard is a beacon, you can turn it away from the seal.
✓ Quest Accepted
Suppress the shard’s beaconing
“I look under the table and greet shadow. I calm the shard and allow shadow to speak to me directly.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Wicy dips her gaze under the table and softens her breath. The shard’s tight shimmer eases, its pulse settling from a warning into a listening rhythm.
Wicy
Hello, Shadow. I am listening.
The boards stop bucking so hard. Instead, the darkness gathers into a clearer shape beneath the floor, no longer just pressure, but a presence that can answer.
Shadow
At last. The marks can be heard without the seal roaring over them.
The sketchbook pages flutter once, then lie still. The shimmer at Wicy’s hands narrows to a controlled glint, small enough to keep the room from noticing.
Sable
Good. Hold it there, Wicy. Let the voice come through before you decide what to do with it.
Under the table, Shadow’s outline rises higher, no longer only a stain in the boards. It gathers into something the eye can follow, and the tavern waits on the edge of seeing it.
Quest Complete
Suppress the shard’s beaconing