The sealed arch remains behind Arya, its final stone flush and silent. The settlement gatekeeper stays at the barred gate with the settlers, while Edric and the restrained rootling follow her into the eastern forest.
The forest tightens around a narrow cut between leaning trunks. Damp leaves brush Arya’s cloak, and fresh soil mounds across the path as though something immense passed beneath only moments ago.
Edric Vale
The ground is disturbed ahead. The Sleeper came this way, or something drove it through the roots.
Beyond the cut, an overgrown shrine rises from the ferns, built of the same dark stone as the buried road. Moss veils broken reliefs of travelers fleeing a city swallowed beneath the earth.
The Small Root-Limbed Creature
The old place remembers the road. It remembers where the living fled when the buried city opened.
One relief remains intact: a hooded traveler points along a carved route disappearing eastward. Beneath it, nearly hidden by mud, fresh root marks cross toward the forgotten settlement.
Edric Vale
A settlement route, abandoned but not erased. If the Sleeper follows it, people may still be living at its end.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the forgotten settlement
“I study the intact relief for clues to the route ahead.”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled -1)
Arya studies the intact relief without touching it. Keen Senses catch shallow tool marks beneath the moss, separating the original route from later cracks and root scars.
The carved road bends east, then descends beneath three cypress-like trees before ending at a ringed mark. Fresh mud fills that final symbol, disturbed from below.
Arya
The route does not end at the forgotten settlement. It enters beneath it.
Her Oath of Vengeance urges her past the relief’s history and toward the buried threat, narrowing her attention to practical signs. The urgency does not obscure the pattern.
Edric Vale
That ring is a warning, not a destination. Whatever lies beneath the settlement, the route was meant to keep it closed.
Arya finds a second clue under the hooded traveler’s hand: a narrow side path marked with crossed lines, leading away from the settlement toward a stone well.
The Small Root-Limbed Creature
The old road remembers two doors. One opened below. One led the living away.