Morning light still filters through the chapel windows, dust drifting over the altar. Father Hallowell keeps the brittle vellum spread open, and now the diagrams stop being merely old. They match the fever, the cough, the wasting swellings Bren has seen on road and in village alike.
Father Hallowell
These leaves are older than the seminary books. They were set aside because they work, and because some feared what would happen if every healer learned them.
Bren studies the inked lines of bone, herb, and bandage. The shapes are exact, practical, meant for hands that must act before prayer is finished.
Bren Riverglade
So this is what was hidden.
Father Hallowell
Your atonement was never only copying. You needed to remember that mercy is not always gentle, and that truth can be preserved in dangerous hands.
He taps one page, where a treatment for burned flesh sits beside a note in a harder hand. The seal of restraint is plain, but so is the promise, if Bren proves worthy to carry it.
Father Hallowell
Take this knowledge to your pilgrimage. When the time comes, you will need more than good intent. You will need skill, and the courage to use it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn the practical healing methods in the vellum
✓ Quest Accepted
Prove worthy to carry the forbidden healing knowledge
“"Father, these techniques could take many weeks to learn, and the Seminary Master bid me to travel the North road on pilgrimage. What are the most important techniques to learn for my journey?"”
SUCCESS (Superb Theology, rolled -1)
Bren Riverglade
Father, if these methods take weeks, which parts matter most for the road ahead?
Father Hallowell
Begin with what stops loss, then what clears fever, then what steadies a wound. Clean hands, clean cloth, clean water, and the judgment to use each in time.
He turns the vellum slightly, tracing three diagrams with one weathered fingertip. The prayer strip lies beside the page like a witness, not a charm, and Bren sees how the order of care is built into the text itself.
Father Hallowell
The seminary teaches reverence first. This teaches triage. It asks you to choose what can be saved before you choose what is pure.
Bren Riverglade
So the lesson is not hidden in a secret remedy. It is hidden in the courage to rank need before custom.
Father Hallowell
Exactly. Learn the cleansing, the binding, the cooling draught, and the signs that tell you when a limb or lung is beyond easy mending. The rest can come after the road.
Bren studies the pages as if they were a map, and the chapel falls quiet around the lesson. Father Hallowell watches him with patient approval, then rests his hand on the vellum, waiting for Bren to take the burden of that knowledge openly.
Quest Complete
Learn the practical healing methods in the vellum
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Father Hallowell does not pull away. Instead, he folds the vellum toward Bren, making the invitation plain. The chapel stays hushed, but from the open door drifts the faint scrape of a cart wheel on the street below, a reminder that the world goes on outside these walls.
Father Hallowell
Take it into your hands, then. If you carry the mercy, you must also carry the blame when others call it improper.
The offer lands with more weight than the pages themselves. Bren can see, at last, that this is not only a lesson for the road, it is a choice about what kind of healer he will become under oath and scrutiny.
Father Hallowell
The Seminary will not approve of every line you learn here. I did not show you this to flatter your studies, I showed you because someone will need it before your training is done.
As Bren reaches for the manuscript, a second bundle shifts beneath the prayer strip, something sealed in oiled cloth and hidden until now. Father Hallowell’s thumb stays on it a moment too long, as if he has decided the hiding is over.
Father Hallowell
There is another page, not for copying, only for understanding. It names the cost of ignoring a fever until custom is satisfied.
“I take the forbidden page into my hands.”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +1)
Bren takes the page from Father Hallowell’s hands, careful but firm. The oiled cloth gives under his fingers, then settles as the sheet rests in his grasp at last.
Father Hallowell
Good. Hold it as you would hold a wound, with steadiness, and with respect for what it reveals.
Bren Riverglade
The margin notes are written for quick judgment, not study by lamplight.
The sealed packet loosens beside the first page, and the prayer strip slips aside enough to show more cramped lines beneath. Father Hallowell watches Bren’s hands, not the door.
Father Hallowell
This is not for the seminary shelves. It is for the bedside, when ceremony must yield to breathing flesh.
Outside, the cart wheel fades into the street noise. Inside, the chapel feels smaller, as if the altar itself is waiting for Bren’s answer.
Quest Complete
Prove worthy to carry the forbidden healing knowledge
Skill Upgrade: Theology Superb→Legendary
+ New Item Acquired
forbidden page