The chamber below falls silent as Elias leads Imogen and Kaelus back through the passage. Faint laughter follows Kaelus, braided with rain and distant bell tones.
They emerge into the burial hollow. Elian’s shade remains beside the opened niche, framed by five silver staples and the testimony glowing through the mortar.
Elian Voss
The memory has returned, but testimony is not memory. It must be acknowledged before the denial is undone.
Kaelus
I acknowledge you, Elian Voss. Your name was taken, your witness buried, and Mara’s laughter was forced through me.
The laughter within Kaelus quiets to a warm echo. The black filament at his wrist dissolves, while the pale letters in the mortar deepen into a complete record.
Elias
The archive will preserve this now, unless the chapel itself rejects it. Elian, what remains denied?
Elian Voss
The vow’s purpose. I was made witness to a sacrifice, but the name of what was offered was never written. That absence still feeds the thing below.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what was offered in the original sacrifice
“I examine the complete testimony for clues to the unnamed sacrifice.”
SUCCESS (Great Investigation, rolled +1)
Imogen studies the complete testimony from the first carved line to the final mark. The mortar preserves omissions as carefully as words, and the missing sacrifice leaves a distinct hollow in the record.
Imogen
The sacrifice was not a person. The testimony avoids an object, a name, and a purpose.
Her examination reveals repeated phrases beneath the older denial: breath given, threshold opened, witness appointed. A final impression survives where the sacrificed thing’s name was scraped away.
Elias
There. The grammar changes around the absence. Whatever was offered had breath, but it was not one of the witnesses.
Elian Voss
They brought it beneath the tower before dawn. It was wrapped in wax, bound with roots, and promised to the dark water.
The testimony sharpens under Imogen’s scrutiny. The sacrifice was a living child taken from a grave, offered to make Veyrath witness to a bargain of protection.
Kaelus
The bundle. It was never merely a vessel. It was the sacrificed child, and the vow gave Veyrath authority over every name that followed.
Quest Complete
Learn what was offered in the original sacrifice