A seam opens behind the sealed tablet with a slow grind, revealing a narrow archive packed with clay scrolls and upright stone tablets. Stale air spills from the darkness within.
The black relic grows warm at Nick’s side. Across the archive, the crown’s eye casts silver light over rows of forbidden names, many chiseled away and rewritten.
Near the back, one clay scroll bears the same three marks that once appeared across Nick’s palm. Its old seal is already cracking, shedding fine grains onto the shelf.
The Relic's Whisper
The archive kept what kings forbade, bearer. Do not open the scroll until you know which name it remembers.
Silver light crawls over the cracked seal, revealing a second impression beneath it: a crown, an eye, and an open hand joined by a thin line.
The passage behind Nick remains open toward the basin and the empty chamber beyond. Above, the bound prisoner remains bound beside the wagons, while the vizier and his halted raiders stay at the tomb entrance.
Within the archive, dust settles around the marked scroll. Its seal cracks another fraction, and something beneath the clay gives a soft, deliberate tap.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine which name the marked scroll remembers
“As i look through each text to see what the text remembers”
SUCCESS (Good Perception, rolled +0)
Nick moves along the archive shelves, reading clay scrolls and upright tablets by the crown’s silver reflection. Each text preserves names beneath layers of royal correction.
The oldest tablets remember the name on the oldest tablet, the willing first bearer, and the scribe named on the tablet, the scribe who witnessed her oath. Later hands chiseled both names away, replacing them with titles.
Nick
The names were erased from the crown’s history, but the archive kept them.
A third tablet records the later ruler named on the tablet, a later ruler who claimed the crown and ordered the name on the oldest tablet’s name struck from every public stone. His own inscription was carved over older testimony.
The marked scroll remembers all three names, but its cracked seal holds the fullest account: the name on the marked scroll entered willingly, the scribe named on the marked scroll recorded the oath, and the later ruler named on the marked scroll twisted witness into kingship.
The Relic's Whisper
Ilyra was the first name. Qorun preserved it. Varesh buried it beneath a throne’s lie.
The scroll’s deliberate tapping stops. Its cracked seal now displays the three remembered names in a single line, giving Nick the archive’s answer without opening the clay.
Quest Complete
Determine which name the marked scroll remembers