Night settles beyond the sealed gate, muffling the courtyard bells. Dust hangs over the reading table as Seraphine returns, carrying rolled maps and a fresh lamp.
Seraphine Vale
You found the concordance. Good. Copy the six-aspect warning first, exactly as written; royal archivists trusted omissions more than ink.
Seraphine unrolls a travel map beside the damaged codex. Red thread marks the Crimson Mine to the west, while a white pin marks the distant Ivory Vault in the north.
Seraphine Vale
The Crimson Mine appears in three ledgers, each with a different depth and owner. The Ivory Vault vanished from royal maps after the northern roads froze.
She weighs two parchment scraps against the map, then points to a narrow notation concealed beneath a faded genealogical seal. The ink names a warning, not a route.
Seraphine Vale
Either destination may be genuine. The mine offers records of fire giants; the vault preserves older northern accounts. I can help you judge which trail the crown tried hardest to erase.
The lamp flame steadies between them. Outside, the guards remain beyond the sealed gate while the forbidden section waits in patient silence for Bottu’s choice.
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine which relic trail is genuine
“At this point you can’t help yourself. You ask why she’s so interested in helping you.”
SUCCESS (Fair Reasoning, rolled +2)
Bottu
Why are you so interested in helping me? You risk your position for a stranger chasing relics the crown forbids.
Seraphine studies Bottu over the lamp, one hand resting on the map. For several heartbeats, only the faint hiss of oil and settling dust answers him.
Seraphine Vale
Because I have spent forty years preserving truths while powerful people decided which truths ordinary folk were allowed to survive.
Her fingers tighten against the parchment, careful not to tear it. The guarded chests beyond the gate remain silent, their iron bands catching the lamplight.
Seraphine Vale
The relic records were not erased to protect the kingdom. They were erased to protect the people who profited from controlling them.
Seraphine Vale
I help you because you are willing to look where fear has trained everyone else to look away. And because I may not have another chance.
She turns the map toward Bottu and places her finger between the red thread and the white pin. Her guarded caution has become a plain, deliberate confession.
“You choose the white pin. The tribe and dragon that exiled you, the Frost Maw. We’re somewhere up there too. You could survive the fierce cold. You have since you were a hatchling.”
SUCCESS (Fair Reasoning, rolled +0)
Bottu
I choose the white pin. My tribe and the dragon who exiled me, the Frost Maw, are somewhere up there. I can survive that cold.
Bottu places one claw on the Ivory Vault. The northern mark answers his memory of ice caves, thin air, and snow that can swallow a trail before dawn.
Seraphine Vale
Then the Ivory Vault is your trail. Your knowledge of the northern cold confirms what the royal records only imply.
Seraphine follows the white thread across the map and finds the old approach: north from Histol, beyond the last maintained road, toward a glacier-carved vault.
The judgment costs several minutes of cross-checking. By the time the route is certain, the lamp has burned low, and the map still leaves the final northern landmarks unnamed.
Seraphine Vale
I will mark the frozen road and the last royal waystation. Beyond it, trust your hatchery-born knowledge more than any crown survey.
The white pin remains fixed beneath Bottu’s claw: the Ivory Vault, chosen and identified as the next destination while the forbidden map waits to be folded.
Secure Seraphine's cooperation in protecting the relic knowledge
Quest Complete
Determine which relic trail is genuine
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Fair→Good