At dawn, Celia, Maurice, Elianor, and Veyra leave the village by the old road toward Duchesses Garden. The villagers remain behind, rebuilding beneath the new watch.
Veyra walks between Maurice’s watchful stride and Elianor’s quiet company. No chain binds her, but the arrangement makes her place clear: companion, witness, and still a danger they are learning to trust.
Celia Graves
Veyra, tell me about your family, your home, and the life you lived before the curse claimed you.
Veyra Sorn
I had a mother and two brothers in a riverside town. Our house was small, our work ordinary, and I thought ordinary days were something the world owed us.
The road climbs through yellowing grass. Veyra keeps her gaze on the distant hills, speaking carefully of market mornings, a vanished father, and the home she left long before the village attack.
Veyra Sorn
The night I was taken, I was walking home alone. Something followed me from the river road. I remember a hand, a cold whisper, and then years that do not belong to me.
Veyra’s mouth tightens. Beneath her tongue, a dark scar briefly pulses like a buried ember, then fades. Elianor notices, and Maurice’s hand settles near his weapon as the road falls quiet.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn the truth about Veyra's pulsing scar
✓ Quest Accepted
Determine what follows Veyra from the pulsing scar
“I examine the scar with Plague Lore without touching it.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -2)
Celia studies the scar beneath Veyra’s tongue without touching her. Plague Lore separates old vampiric residue from the mark’s deeper pattern, while Plagueheart Vision reveals a thin black thread rooted in the scar and leading nowhere beyond Veyra’s flesh.
The Cursed hook beneath Celia’s skin twists against the reading, smearing the first impressions into false shapes. Her Arcana cuts through the distortion, and the pattern resolves: the scar is a sealed command-mark, dormant, with no active summons or will behind it.
Veyra Sorn
It is not waking, is it? I can feel your attention there, but nothing is pulling me away.
The examination succeeds, but the magic exacts a price. A black sigil briefly burns across Celia’s palm, mirroring the mark beneath Veyra’s tongue before sinking into her skin as a cold, stinging ache.
Elianor Vale
The scar is a lock, not a wound. Whatever made it left the door shut, but Celia’s reading has stirred its shape.
Maurice Headsman
Then we watch it without opening it. If that mark changes, Veyra tells us at once.
Veyra Sorn
I will. And now I know the difference between the scar’s silence and the hunger that used to command me.
Quest Complete
Learn the truth about Veyra's pulsing scar
Quest Complete
Determine what follows Veyra from the pulsing scar