The forge’s ruin spits sparks behind them as Poppy, Vael, and the Wounded Smith slip into the trees. Smoke crawls low through the undergrowth. In Poppy’s hands, the stamped paper still feels warm.
She turns it toward the dim light. The seal is not a lord’s mark. It is a sigil, threaded with a faint, stubborn glow.
Poppy
This is not a warrant. It is a beacon.
Vael sees it too. His posture goes rigid, all earlier approval draining into hard alarm as the symbol answers the forge’s dying fire with a colder magic.
Vael
That seal belongs to the hunters’ hand, or the hand that feeds them. Cinder-Caller Veyr was never sending us a message. He was marking us.
The Wounded Smith recoils, breath catching as understanding lands like a blade. Behind them, the woods stay quiet for one terrible heartbeat, then a distant horn sounds from the dark.
✓ Quest Accepted
Discard the hunters’ beacon
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the hunters before they close in
“I crush the glowing seal in my palm to break the beacon's hold.”
SUCCESS (Superb Strength, rolled +0)
Poppy closes her fist around the sigil. The paper crumples, then flares once under her skin like a trapped coal finding air.
The glow snaps out. Warm ash leaks between her fingers, and the horn in the dark dies into a ragged echo.
Vael
Good. That should break the call.
The Wounded Smith
If it was calling them, then they will still be looking for the answer.
Smoke shifts through the trunks. Somewhere beyond the trees, a branch cracks under careful weight.
The smith stares at the ash in Poppy’s palm, then at the blackness beyond Vael’s shoulder, fear turning sharp again.
Vael
They have not stopped. Move, now, or meet them here.
Quest Complete
Discard the hunters’ beacon