The silver mist thickens along the warded walls, and the dead scholar keeps tracing the same runes in frantic loops, never looking up. The copied script in Harry's spellbook answers with a faint, hungry glow. Kaelith recoils a step, face draining of color.
Kaelith
That is what the crypt does to scholars who press too far. It keeps their hands moving after their minds break.
A second shape tears free of the mist, lean and sharp-eyed, with dust in his hair and a broken seal clasp at his throat. He wears a long-lost scribe's robe, but his posture is all anger and purpose. The dead scholar flinches back from him as if struck.
The Sealed Scribe
Who dares copy the lock? Put down the book, or I carve the lesson into your bones.
Harry Blackstone
The new arrival is not another ghost. He is anchored here somehow, and he knows the script.
The Sealed Scribe raises a rune-etched iron stylus, and the ward-light around the corridor sharpens into a thin, hostile halo. The long-dead scholar keeps tracing, but now his looping hands point toward Harry like a warning and a witness.
The Sealed Scribe
You have already named it in your book. Good. Now choose, keeper, seal it shut, or let it eat your memory too.
✓ Quest Accepted
Understand the Sealed Scribe's identity
✓ Quest Accepted
Stop the script from overwriting Harry's memory
“I seal the book shut and strike the scribe with a fist before he casts a spell at me!”
FAILURE (Mediocre Melee Combat, rolled -1)
Harry snaps the spellbook shut, but the copied script already flares against the cover like a hot seam. He lunges anyway, driving a fist toward the Sealed Scribe’s throat and stylus hand.
The punch skims wide as the ward-light bites at his wrist. The halo in the corridor tightens, and the air itself seems to shove his shoulder off line.
The Sealed Scribe
Too slow. The book is listening now.
His stylus flicks once. Blue runes lash across Harry’s glove, and the light-fissure cracks brighter for a breath.
Kaelith
Harry, do not let it take your name. Break the page, not the spell.
The Dead Scholar keeps tracing in the mist, but his loop falters into a jagged warning, one hand jerking toward the sealed stone as the passage tremors again.
The Sealed Scribe
Choose. Seal the script, or I finish the overwrite here.