Rain hammers the outer yard of Knight's Keep, but it falls warm, copper-scented, and wrong. Mud sucks at Valimire Corneleus's boots as he approaches the gatehouse.
Ahead, a local thug kneels bareheaded in the muck, shoulders bowed, lips moving in a steady chant. He does not look afraid.
The words rasp with the cadence of old Xeranth records, older than the keep's stone. Valimire's sight catches a second shape inside him, thin as smoke and sharp as a knife.
Valimire Corneleus
The body is only a shell.
The spirit turns its borrowed face toward Valimire, and the chant breaks for a breath. The thug's eyes stay fixed, but the gaze behind them changes, alert and measuring.
The Spirit in the Thug
You see me. Good. Then you know this was erased for a reason.
Cold runs through the warm rain. Somewhere inside the keep, a horn starts to sound once, then cuts off.
The Spirit in the Thug
Step closer, Corneleus, or leave me buried. Which do you choose?
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn the identity of the spy the spirit serves
“Can I sense the origin of the horn blast coming from the keep?”
NO (Likely, rolled 83)
Valimire reaches out with his senses, but the source of the horn blast remains shrouded in the keep's thick, unnatural gloom. The sound leaves no trail for his magic to follow.
“I ask the spirit what it wants”
SUCCESS (Fair Persuasion, rolled +0)
Valimire Corneleus
What do you want?
The Spirit in the Thug
To be seen, and to be kept from the knife in your hands. I serve Lord Edrin Vale, the keeper of records in Xeranth. He hid me here to watch who comes asking after the dead.
The thug stiffens as the spirit forces the words through him, breath shaking in the rain. Valimire feels a thin pull from his own magic, a brief drain that leaves his fingertips cold.
The Spirit in the Thug
No more erasure. Not by him, not by you.
The spirit's edge sharpens behind the thug's eyes, but it does not strike. Instead, it waits, exposed now, as if the answer itself has cost it something precious.
Rain ticks on mud and iron, and the keep's gate looms beyond them, silent except for the storm.
Quest Complete
Learn the identity of the spy the spirit serves