The alcove catches the wind and breaks it into a low hiss. Kynes and Bren kneel on bare stone, the messenger's letters spread between them.
Bren traces the spider sigil with one finger, slow and exact. Her shoulders ease as the paper stops fluttering.
Bren
This mark keeps turning up. Someone is moving by habit, not chance.
Kynes
The seal is newer than the road dust on it.
She huffs a small, tired laugh and folds the map scrap half shut, then looks up at Kynes with open curiosity.
Bren
You keep reading these like they speak plain. What else do you see?
The mountain light softens around them. For a moment, the chase feels far away, and the ridge below is only a rumor.
Bren
We can sit here a little longer, if you want. Tell me what troubles you, or just let the wind do the talking.
“Regards to bren's question....do I see anything else on the messages like a secret code?”
EXCEPTIONAL YES (Likely, rolled 6)
Kynes tilts the parchment against the fading light, his eyes narrowing as he shifts his focus from the ink to the negative space between the lines.
Kynes
The spacing is irregular, a deliberate cadence hidden in the syntax.
He traces the margins with a fingertip, revealing a series of microscopic pinpricks that align with the map's spider sigil to form a secondary, ciphered script.
Bren
You found something. Your eyes have that look again, the one that sees through the stone.
“Using the spell understand all languages I attempt to read it”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -2)
Kynes murmurs the spell over the pinpricked margins, and the cipher loosens under his gaze. The marks are not random, they are instructions, folded through the map like a second path.
Words surface in clean meaning. The scrap names a hidden approach, a watch point, and a warning about webs strung where torchlight never reaches.
Kynes
It is written as a route, not a report.
Bren straightens, eyes fixed on Kynes as the translation lands in full. The wind worries the edge of the parchment, but the message holds.
Bren
So the spider mark is not only a sign. It is a guide.
The alcove seems narrower now, the mountain air colder around the new knowledge. Far below, the ruined watchtower waits in silence.
Bren
If this path is real, we move now. Which way does it point?
“We start heading in the direction given”
SUCCESS (Fair Agility, rolled +2)
Kynes folds the parchment once, then again, and slips it close. He turns toward the narrow cut in the rock where the hidden route lies under snow and stone.
He starts forward at a careful pace, staff angled low for balance. The alcove falls behind him as the wind claws at his cloak and fails to find purchase.
Bren moves in beside him, reading the ground ahead. She spots the faintest tread in the drift and points him toward it without breaking stride.
Bren
There. Someone passed this way recently, and not alone.
Kynes follows the mark exactly. The trail bends around a black seam in the stone, and the path opens with the ruined watchtower now visible below in the pale distance.
A strip of spider silk catches on a thorn beside the track, silvered by frost. It is fresh enough to still tremble.
Bren
Then the map was honest. Which of these signs do you want to follow first?
“"let's be on your way to Phandelver Lass"”
SUCCESS (Fair Agility, rolled -1)