Xaurier lays his hand on the altar stone, and the chapel answers at once. The cracked bell above does not swing, it counts. Dust shakes loose in hard, steady beats, each toll pounding through the floor like a hidden heartbeat.
The Inquisitor
So that was the warning. Not a death knell, a signal.
The stone shudders under Xaurier’s palm. The old seam along its edge widens with a grinding groan, and the altar begins to slide aside, dragging centuries of grit with it.
Elias the Miller
That trail... it leads down there. He was taken below.
A dark stair yawns open beneath the altar, lined with damp stone and the same careful markings as the caretaker’s trail. The air rising from it is cold, ash thin, and faintly human.
The Inquisitor
Then this is where the boy went. We go now, before the bell finishes its count.
At the foot of the first step lies a child's charm, half buried in soot. The missing boy is not a rumor anymore. He is here, below the chapel, exactly where the trail promised.
“I grab the charm sand follow the trail”
SUCCESS (Great Agility, rolled +0)
Xaurier snatches the charm from the stair lip and ash smears across his fingers. The trail below is clear enough to follow, but the bell hardens into a faster count, dust pattering on his shoulders like thrown grit.
Xaurier
The marks continue down the steps.
He takes the first steps down, staff in hand, the charm clenched in his other fist. The stair exhales cold, stale air, and the chapel above begins to feel far away.
The Inquisitor
Keep moving. If anything stirs below, I want it facing me, not the boy.
Elias hesitates at the threshold, then follows, his breath thin in the dark. Behind them, the altar opening sheds a pale wedge of light across the marks in the stone.
Elias the Miller
That charm was his. I would know it anywhere.
A dull thud rolls up from deeper below, answered by a brief shiver in the stair wall. Dust falls into Xaurier’s hair, and somewhere ahead, something metal-like gives a soft, patient creak.
“I Investigate the marking heading deeper below”
SUCCESS (Good Perception, rolled +2)
Xaurier lowers his gaze to the stair. The ash marks are not random, they repeat in a deliberate rhythm, each scuff turning toward a chipped rune on the wall.
Xaurier
The trail is meant to be read.
He traces the pattern with the end of his staff. The next landing bears a second mark, then a third, each one guiding him deeper rather than warning him off.
The Inquisitor
What do you see?
Below, a draft drags across the stair and carries the faint smell of damp earth. Somewhere under the bell, a soft scrape answers, like something shifting in its sleep.
Xaurier finds the end of the visible trail at a narrow arch cut into the wall, half-hidden by falling dust. The blackened token hangs from a nail beside it, placed there on purpose.
Elias the Miller
That means the old caretaker meant for someone to come this way.
The passage beyond the arch opens into darker stone, and from below comes a second sound, a thin, human breath cut off too quickly to be sure.