The silver seam bursts apart in a spray of cold motes. They drift through the passage like dying stars, and in their light, shapes press up from the walls, faces and hands half-buried in stone.
Bjor and the child halt mid-step. The child stares at the nearest silhouette, his mouth parting as the first thread of sorrow breaks across his face.
The Child
They are not guarding the vow. They are inside it.
The walls tremble. Dozens of voices answer at once, worn thin by age but fierce with need, demanding the heir look, listen, and name what was paid.
The Tunnel-Warden
Hear them, lad. This is the other half of the bargain. They are the ones the mound kept.
The Child
I did not know... I did not know it meant this.
The motes settle along the stone figures, and the passage becomes a ledger of trapped lives. Bjor sees it at once, the ancient vow is not only a seal, it is a sentence, and the boy stands at its heart.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what was paid to keep the mound
“I speak to the trapped dead”
SUCCESS (Superb Persuasion, rolled +2)
Bjor lowers his hand from the wall and steps closer to the nearest trapped face, careful, reverent. The passage hushes around him, the strange sounds in its depths sinking under the weight of waiting ears.
Bjor Ravenhelm
You are seen. I hear you.
The Child
They are people. Not carvings, not warnings. People.
The Tunnel-Warden
Aye. Speak plain, bard. They have been starved of witness longer than you can count.
Wallbound Ancestor
The stair below is not empty. It keeps the oath's remainder, the bound dark, the hunger that follows vows.
Wallbound Ancestor
What was paid was kin, years, voices, and the right to leave. We stood in for the living, and the mound took our days.
The Child
Then I am keeper of a prison, not a grave. I will not turn from it.
The nearest stone face softens by a breath, as if the answer itself loosens old grief. The silver motes dim, but do not die, and the way ahead still waits in silence.
Quest Complete
Learn what was paid to keep the mound
Quest Complete
Learn what waits beyond the sealed stair
Attribute Upgrade: Agility Good→Great