Several quiet days pass beneath the hospice bells. Silas serves the dying under witness, while Brother Brother Caldus and the gray-tabarded warden keep the lawful schedule without incident.
One night, the blue prayer-bell above Silas’s cot falls utterly silent. Lamplight bends toward the barred door as a colossal elder deity fills the narrow darkness, clad in layered black-and-bone plate armor.
Brother Caldus
Warden, the bell has stopped. Do you feel that presence?
gray-tabarded warden
I feel the chamber change, Brother Caldus. I can see no intruder, but something sacred stands beyond the bars.
The Death God’s weathered armor bears ancient etched markings, and its immense shadow reaches across the floor without fully touching it. Outside, Brother Caldus lowers his voice.
The Death God
Silas Mori, servant who carries names beyond forgetting, your confinement has not hidden you from my sight.
The apparition turns its skull-like countenance toward him. The barred door remains closed, yet the chamber feels opened onto a vast and silent threshold, awaiting Silas’s response.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what the Death God demands
“I kneel before the Death God and ask what service he demands of his most loyal disciple.”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled -1)
Silas kneels before the colossal apparition, careful beneath his healed ribs. The barred chamber opens into silent vastness, while Brother Caldus and the gray-tabarded warden remain beyond the door.
Silas Mori
Reaping Angel, I kneel before you. What service do you demand of your most loyal disciple?
The Death God
Rise only if you must, Silas Mori. I demand no blade from you, nor disobedience to the laws that presently hold you.
The Death God extends one armored hand. A pale image forms above its palm: a sealed hospice bell wrapped in black thread, its silence deepening through the unseen corridors.
The Death God
Before the next dusk, find the living soul who has been marked for death without knowing it. Speak their name, witness their truth, and prevent no rightful passage.
The Death God
The mark lies within this hospice, and the law must remain your companion. Serve without judging by the sword. If the soul chooses passage, guide it. If it lives, preserve the choice.
The vision collapses into a single black thread around the blue prayer-bell. Its silence ends, replaced by one clear note, while Caldus reaches for the ledger outside.
Safeguard the marked soul’s rightful choice between passage and life
Quest Complete
Learn what the Death God demands