The Hall of Welcome holds its breath as the amber light flickers at the threshold. Kynes, Mara, Bren, Walter, and Vetta turn toward the cloaked stranger.
The Stranger
I am no thief. I seek the Domini legacy, and I bring a name with me.
Vetta
Names are cheap at a border. Speak the one you mean, or step back.
The Stranger
The thing stalking Mara leaves a cold seam in its wake. It answers to old binding, not ordinary shadow.
At the mention of binding, the gold vein on the floor brightens and steadies. Mara stiffens, Bren watches the newcomer’s hands, and Walter’s gaze narrows with careful interest.
The Stranger
Let me inside, and I will tell you where its leash begins. Keep me out, and you will hunt blind.
The sanctuary settles into a tense, readable hush, the threshold waiting for Kynes’s answer.
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify the thing stalking Mara
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn where the leash begins
“I gesture for the stranger to step into the light and name the leash's origin.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Persuasion, rolled -2)
Kynes lifts two fingers, a small command instead of a challenge. The stranger shifts forward, hood catching the amber light, and the shadow on their face thins.
The Stranger
Fine. The leash begins at an old vow, spoken under stone and sealed with witness blood.
Mara’s grip tightens on the maps. Bren’s attention stays on the stranger’s hands, but her posture eases by a breath.
The Stranger
It is Domini work, or something built from it. The stalker follows a borrowed binding, not its own hunger.
Kynes
Borrowed binding.
Walter’s gaze drops to the gold script at Kynes’s feet, then back to the threshold, as if comparing old records to a fresh confession.
The Stranger
If you want the starting knot, let me stand in the light and I will name the house that tied it.
The stranger steps fully into the hall, and the sanctuary holds steady around them, waiting for the next name.
Quest Complete
Learn where the leash begins
“Is the stalker bound to House Domini?”
YES (VeryLikely, rolled 65)
The Stranger
It is not just built from the house, it is a direct extension of the Domini blood-debt. The stalker is bound to the very foundation you now claim to master.
Kynes
The archive is not just housing the entity, it is the leash.
The gold script beneath the stranger's boots flares with a sudden, violent violet hue, confirming the connection as the archive itself shudders in recognition of the claim.
“Do you know what it is?”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled -1)
Kynes
Do you know what it is?
The Stranger
I know the shape of its binding. It is an old vow, sealed with witness blood. Domini work.
Vetta
Witness blood. That explains why the archive keeps answering it.
The Stranger
Not a beast, not a simple curse. A leash made to remember a name and obey it.
Mara
So it is tied to the house, not just to me.
The Stranger
If you want the stalker named cleanly, ask me who held the vow when it was first bound.
Walter
Then we are finally speaking about the chain itself, not its shadow.
“I ask who held the vow first”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +0)
Kynes
Who held the vow first?
The Stranger
A Domini witness did. The name was sealed after the oath, so the leash would remember the hand that fed it.
Vetta
A witness-bond, then the archive keeps feeding the memory instead of the body.
The Stranger
If you want the thing named fully, you need the first witness mark. It is buried in the house record.
Mara
Then the stalker is not hunting me by instinct. It is following an inherited command.
Walter
And the command can be read, if the record still admits its own history.
Bren
So tell us where the mark sits, before the truth slips back into the walls.
“I ask where the first witness mark lies”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +0)
Kynes
I ask where the first witness mark lies.
The Hall of Welcome answers at once. The violet line snaps into a straight seam, and a gold thread rises from the threshold, climbing the wall beside the doorway like an obedient vein.
The Stranger
There. Behind the first name cut into the lintel, under the binding clause. It is hidden in plain record.
Vetta leans in and catches the shimmer first. A second mark blooms beside the seam, a tiny witness notch folded into the woodgrain of the arch.
Walter
The archive has been pointing there all along. It only needed the right question.
Mara steps closer to the doorway, eyes fixed on the glowing notch. Bren shifts beside Kynes, ready but calm, while the stranger falls silent and waits for the claim to be made.
The gold thread settles on the hidden mark and holds. The first witness mark is found, and the archive keeps it lit for Kynes to take.
“I ask what the binding clause says”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled -2)
Kynes presses the question into the lit seam. The gold thread tightens, then peels upward from the lintel like a ribbon drawn from a wound in wood.
Letters surface one by one in pale gold, slow and exact. The binding clause is not a curse, but a vow of return, witness-bound to follow the one named in blood.
The Stranger
It names the carrier, and it names the keeper. What is taken must be followed until the debt is answered.
Walter
The wording matches a house record, not a battlefield hex.
Mara goes very still as the last line resolves above the doorway. Bren glances from the clause to Kynes, waiting for him to decide how to use it.
Vetta
There. It says the leash knows Mara by witness, not by blood alone.
The gold text holds steady, fully legible now, as if the archive has finished speaking and expects his next command.
“Is the carrier named in the clause?”
YES (VeryLikely, rolled 29)
The gold script shivers, the light intensifying until a single name burns brighter than the rest, etched into the stone with the weight of a blood-oath.
Kynes
The name is not a stranger's. It is a reflection of the house itself.
The Stranger
You see it now. The debt was never meant to be paid by the archive, but by the one who carries the name.
“I name the jagged gold name”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled +1)
Kynes lifts his staff and names the gold mark exactly as it hangs in the stone. The sound lands like a key turning in a deep lock.
The jagged light steadies, then spills outward in thin lines across the lintel and floor, exposing a hidden chain of witness marks beneath the first name.
The Stranger
There. You have it. The leash is not just named, it is answered.
The archive answers at once, the Hall of Welcome warming as the name resolves into a living record instead of a threat.
Mara
That name is tied to the same old vow.
A second inscription slides free under the first, smaller and older, as if the stone has been waiting to confess the next layer all along.
Vetta
That is the anchor mark. If you read the line beneath it, you can point the binding at its maker.
The hidden line brightens, and the threshold hums with a clear path of command, waiting for Kynes to speak again.
Identify the maker of the anchor mark
Quest Complete
Identify the thing stalking Mara
New Gift: Stalker-Hunter's Intuition