The Burly Gate-keeper jams his shoulder into the iron gate and thrusts the red wax fragment high, shouting for the church warrant while the bars shake loud enough to drown the tavern hum.
Burly Gate-keeper
No warrant, no search. Show it, Inquisitor, or take your priests back to their own doors.
The High Inquisitor
You obstruct holy inquiry, gate-keeper. Stand aside, or answer for aiding a fugitive.
He does not stand aside. Instead, he opens his fist just enough to flash the wax, forcing every nearby guard to stare at the seal instead of the old wall beyond the storage room.
Walksfar Seesmuch slips into the edge of the corridor, her cape brushing stone as the argument swells at the gate and the passage toward the old wall falls briefly clear.
The Gray-Mantled Stranger
Now. While they are looking at the gate.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the buried chapel
✓ Quest Accepted
Deflect suspicion from herself onto the Inquisitor
“I slip into the shadows of the corridor and head toward the old wall.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Stealth, rolled -3)
Walksfar Seesmuch melts from the doorway into the corridor’s dark seam, her cape swallowing the last edge of torchlight as the gate-keeper keeps the Inquisitor fixed on the iron bars.
The old wall passage opens ahead, narrow and dust-thick, and she slips into it without a footfall loud enough to turn heads.
The Gray-Mantled Stranger
Keep their eyes on the gate. I will follow the noise, not the girl.
Behind her, the gate-keeper’s defiance draws another burst of argument, loud enough to cover the whisper of stone against cloth.
Walksfar reaches the bend by the old wall, where the air turns cold and the corridor loses the tavern’s warmth and chatter.
She finds a narrow arch cut into the wall’s base, half-hidden by rubble and soot, its dark mouth waiting under the old masonry.
The High Inquisitor
Gate-keeper, if you mean to be blind, I will search where you cannot hide behind your bars.
“I slip through the old wall arch”
SUCCESS (Legendary Stealth, rolled +1)
Walksfar Seesmuch slides through the arch and into the hidden seam of the wall, her shoulders turning just enough to fit the narrow stone. Dust brushes her cloak, then falls away behind her without a sound.
The passage swallows her at once, a thin vein of cold dark beneath the old masonry. The corridor outside stays loud, but the noise is suddenly distant, as if it belongs to another world.
Walksfar Seesmuch
The arch is deeper than it looks.
Her fingertips find rough chisel marks in the wall, older than the soot, older than the gate. One curve of stone opens into another chamber-sized void ahead.
The Gray-Mantled Stranger
Good. Keep moving. If they look here, let them find only stone.
Walksfar clears the arch and reaches the buried chapel threshold, where stale incense and wet earth cling to the air. A broken prayer-bench lies half-buried in rubble, and a pale seam of light slips through cracks in the far wall.
Behind her, the corridor voice of the High Inquisitor sharpens, still occupied by the gate. Ahead, the hidden chapel waits open and silent, as if it has been expecting her.
Quest Complete
Reach the buried chapel
New Gift: Chapel-Bound Intuition