The tunnel narrows to the iron-bound door, damp stone sweating around its frame. A heartbeat thuds through the floorboards, slow and real, and the lattice projection flares bright across the threshold.
Bren
It is right there. If we open this, we cut into the keeper-site itself.
Mara
And if we do not, the lattice keeps hiding the body that holds it together.
Vetta
The seam is narrow now. This is the cleanest point left to open.
Kynes
The heartbeat matches the projection.
The door trembles once, as if something beyond it shifts under strain. The pale seam on the lattice stretches toward the iron bands, showing exactly where the body-bound network anchors into the wall.
Bren raises her blade, Mara lifts a hand over the projected lines, and Vetta steadies the dark twine at Kynes’s side. Beyond the door, the keeper waits, and the lattice is ready to be cut open.
✓ Quest Accepted
Open the iron-bound door
“I look at the crow and mentally tell it to go cause havoc with it's kin, then I open the door" open says me!"”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -3)
Kynes fixes the crow with a silent command, and the bird jerks upright on his staff. Its shadow splits, then darts toward the nearest watcher line with a sharp, raking cry.
The violet hum in the guards’ armor stutters. One helm turns, then another, as the flock outside the door erupts into confusion and wingbeats.
Kynes
The heartbeat is still there.
Kynes sets his shoulder and pushes the iron-bound door open.
Cold air rolls out from the gap, carrying old dust, bloodless stone, and a pulse that feels too close to living flesh.
Bren
It opens. Kynes, inside with you.
Mara
There, beyond the seam, the keeper-site is exposed.
Vetta
The network has felt that.
The dark twine in Vetta’s hand twitches against the threshold, and the pale mark on the far wall flashes once like an eye opening.
Quest Complete
Open the iron-bound door