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.