Beyond the deeper arch, the gallery opens into a vaulted chamber of black shelves and green fire. Fresh footprints cross the dust toward a chained stone table.
Maerith, slender and sharp-featured, stands beside the table, an adult elf woman with ash-brown skin, tightly braided silver-black hair, and a torn slate robe marked by old warding scars. Two robed agents flank her, lean adult men in dark magistrate colors, each carrying a hooked blade.
Maerith
Stop there. The records are real, but they will not leave this vault while Caelvar’s seal commands the stone.
Ordan stiffens behind Verner, recognizing the layered seals. Sella shifts nearer to Ilyra, while Ilyra’s hand closes around the hilt beneath her cloak.
Ordan
Those tablets contain the final orders. Caelvar’s agents altered every witness statement after Valkir died.
Maerith
The Ashen Thorn was never merely his sword. Caelvar gave Thorn Valkir’s movements, studied his dance, and promised him pardon for the killing.
The hooked blades rise as green fire gutters. Behind Maerith, a sealed tablet bears Valkir’s name beside the thorn-and-eye mark, while footsteps gather beyond the arch.
− Story Quest Removed
Find Maerith
“*Verner actives his Blade song, the ancient and magical martial art, taught to him by the great duelist, Valkir, and enters combat at last!*”
SUCCESS (Good Magic, rolled -1)
Verner draws the silver-hilted rapier. Its first note is barely audible, then the blade sings through the vaulted chamber as ancient magic aligns breath, footwork, and spell.
He enters the space between Maerith and the two agents in a flowing turn. Green fire bends across his red cloak while his sword traces luminous arcs.
Maerith
Valkir taught you well. Hold them here, and I will break Caelvar’s seal.
The agents strike together, but Verner’s Blade Song reads their rhythm. He slips past one hooked blade, catches the other against his guard, and sends both weapons skittering across the stone.
Maerith presses her palm to the chained table. The magistrate’s seal fractures into harmless ash, releasing the tablets and Valkir’s final order into Ordan’s waiting hands.
Ordan
The record is complete. Caelvar’s orders, Thorn’s pardon, and every altered testimony will stand before Waterdeep.
The agents surrender beneath the silent rapier. With Maerith recovered and the evidence preserved, Caelvar’s hidden power ends in the vault, and Valkir’s death is finally answered.
The hooked blades clattered across the stone. Silence followed, broken only by the soft crack of Caelvar’s seal.
Maerith
There. Let the truth speak louder than any throne.
Ordan
Final orders, the pardon, and the false testimony. Valkir was murdered by command, not chance.
First Hooked-Blade Agent
We surrender.
Verner
Then stand witness. Valkir’s name will not be buried with the guilty.
Sella
At last, the dead have their answer.
The records passed into honest hands, and Caelvar’s seal became the mark of his own ruin. Valkir’s murder was named for what it was, while the Ashen Thorn’s complicity and pardon lay exposed before judgment. In the vaulted chamber, Verner lowered his blade, and the long night of silence ended.