Bjor backs into the mound, and the child slips after him. The entrance narrows behind them, then falls away into a colder chamber where damp stone drinks the torchless dark.
They emerge at a round sepulchral room, its walls packed with worn carvings of crowns, spears, and antlered beasts. Old dust hangs in the air, stirred by their footsteps.
Somewhere above and behind, the wolves scratch at the threshold stones. Their muffled snarls fade into the wall, distant but not gone.
The Child
He stays close to Bjor, clutching his toy with both hands.
At the room's center lies a cracked stone lid, ringed with faded runes. Water beads along its edge, and a narrow passage slips away beside it into deeper dark.
Bjor Ravenhelm
The side passage is lower than the main chamber.
The Child
Whispering, he points toward the side passage and looks to Bjor for the next move.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the side passage
✓ Quest Accepted
Find a safe way through the burial mound
“I examine the runes on the stone lid for any sign of a hidden mechanism.”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled -2)
Bjor kneels at the cracked lid and runs his fingers over the runes. Dust smears black across his knuckles, and one shallow groove catches at the tip of his nail.
Bjor Ravenhelm
This groove is meant to move.
He presses the marked stone. It yields with a dry click, and hidden seams show themselves along the lid's edge.
The lid shifts, not upward but sideways, dragging grit and a thin line of water across the floor. Cold air spills out from beneath it, carrying a stale, sealed smell.
The child flinches back from the opening, then leans in to stare. The chamber's center is no longer just stone, it is a mouth.
A soft scrape answers from below, followed by a breath of movement in the dark under the slab. Something in the hidden way has shifted.
Bjor's fingertips sting where the old stone rasped them, and the line of escape is now visible, but the passage yawns low and uncertain under the mound.
Quest Complete
Reach the side passage