Grachus wipes his blade clean at the road edge, but his gaze catches on the cut across his knuckles. The skin is not closing. It bubbles, then hardens into translucent grey crystal, the same tainted sheen that sealed the secret passage.
The Council Elder stops short beside him. His face drains of color as he stares at the wound, then toward the wall repairs and the mortar packed into the village stone.
The Council Elder
No. By the old stones, that is the same mark.
He crouches, scrapes a thumb through the fresh mortar, and recoils as the grain catches the light with that same dead, glassy glimmer. The repair material is wrong. It was never plain lime and sand.
The Council Elder
This village has been fed poison in its walls. The Stranger's people planted it here.
Beyond the road, the battered seam of the wall stands in hard silhouette. The crystal at Grachus's knuckles shines back at it like an answer, and the Elder's hand tightens around a shard of broken mortar.
✓ Quest Accepted
Purge the tainted mortar from the village walls
✓ Quest Accepted
Find the source of the wall corruption
“Gather the villagers with shovels and buckets to clear our the tainted mortar.”
SUCCESS (Fair Willpower, rolled +0)
Grachus turns from the wall and barks for buckets, shovels, and hands. The first villagers answer with fear, then hurry when they see the crystal on his knuckles.
The Council Elder
You heard him. Clear the tainted mortar now, before it spreads any farther.
Men and women spill in from the lane, some gripping tools, others dragging water casks and refuse baskets. The road edge fills with mud, footsteps, and hurried voices.
The Council Elder
Work from the seam outward. Do not touch the grey grain bare-handed.
Grachus drives the first blade of a shovel into the cracked fill, and the cursed mortar breaks loose in glassy chunks. Several villagers scramble to catch the falling debris in buckets.
The Rider
If that stone is in the wall, then the wall itself is the wound.
The exhausted horse stamps at the roadside, snorting at the noise, while the Rider watches with tight eyes from the edge of the crowd. Together, the village begins stripping the taint from its own bones.
