Three weeks have passed since the dais fell. In Tartarus, the gatehouse stands under a ceiling of drifting dust and faint, dim pulses in the stone. Ares is here with Thanatos when a mortal arrives at the threshold, wrapped in travel grime and priestly severity.
Iphitus
I seek the one who rules below. My people have begun to pray to a thing in the earth’s dark, and death will not come to them.
Iphitus raises a sealed scroll, the wax stamped with a symbol Ares does not know. Thanatos stays rigid beside him, hand on his blade, reading the mortal’s fear as carefully as his words.
Thanatos
You come to Tartarus with a strange seal and a stranger tale. Speak plainly, priest. Who sent you?
Iphitus
No king sent me. My city is starving for burial rites, and the temples are emptying into that worship. I come because I have nowhere else to go.
The mortal holds his ground, but his knuckles whiten around the scroll. The gatehouse feels narrower with every heartbeat, as if the old prison is listening for what he says next.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what the priest's sealed scroll says
✓ Quest Accepted
Find what escaped the fissures in Tartarus
“I scan the floor for any lingering traces of the violet light or signs of an escapee.”
FAILURE (Fair Perception, rolled -2)
Ares drops to one knee and studies the cracked stone at the threshold. The violet glow is gone, but the floor still holds a faint, sickly stain in the dust, like a footprint that forgot its color.
Ares
The stain runs toward the gate.
He follows the mark with his eyes, but the sifting dust has blurred the trail into broken smears. Whatever moved here was light on its feet, or dragged itself just enough to leave almost nothing behind.
Thanatos
You see something.
Thanatos leans closer, tension still tight in his posture, and points to a thin groove scored into the stone beside the stain. It is not a boot print, but a sliding scrape, as if something was hauled through the fissure and out into the dark.
Iphitus
That is what the prayers are waking. Not the gods. Something beneath them.
The priest’s hand tightens on the sealed scroll. The wax seal catches the dim light, and the stamp seems to echo the groove in the floor, matching it like a warning. Iphitus lifts the scroll slightly, as if the answer might already be inside.
“I show Thanatos the scrape in the stone”
FAILURE (Fair Perception, rolled -3)
Ares shifts the point of the scrape with two fingers and angles it toward Thanatos, but the dim light catches on dust instead of detail. The groove reads as a pale blur, its edges already swallowed by the sifting grit.
Ares
The mark is too worn to trace cleanly.
Thanatos
Hold it steady. No, lower. I only need the line of it.
Ares adjusts, but the floor gives no new truth. The stain smears under his touch, and the scrape folds into the same broken pattern of dust and stone, harder to read than before.
Iphitus
It is not a wound in the rock. It is a drag mark... something came through here, and it did not come alone.
Iphitus lifts the sealed scroll higher, and the wax stamp seems to tremble in the same faint violet pulse under the floor. The priest’s face tightens as he stares past the gate, toward the dark below.
Iphitus
Not the gods. Not your war. Something beneath the fissures answered the prayers, and it is climbing up into the city.
“I question Iphitus about the violet pulse”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +1)
Ares
What does the pulse mean, priest?
Iphitus
It is a warning, or a call. My people kneel before it because they think it answers prayer.
Iphitus lowers the scroll a fraction, and the violet glow thins across the wax seal like breath under skin. The guards keep still, listening.
Iphitus
They stopped dying in my city. Then the graves stayed full and the prayers changed. They began chanting for what comes through cracks in the world.
Thanatos
That is no god's hymn.
Iphitus
I came for help because the old rites fail. Whatever answered beneath the fissures is not one of yours, and it hungers.
The priest’s knuckles whiten around the sealed scroll, and the faint stain in the dust seems to point toward the dark below the gatehouse threshold. Thanatos watches him in rigid silence.
Iphitus
If you want the truth sealed inside this scroll, you will have to break the mark and read it here.
“I bring Iphitus' concerns directly to Hades and defer to his judgment on the matter.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -1)
Ares takes the scroll from Iphitus and turns at once toward the dark arch, carrying the priest’s words to Hades without delay. Thanatos holds back, watching the seal with a tired, steady stare.
Hades
Speak plainly, Ares. What trouble reaches us from Corinth?
Ares
The priest says his people are praying to something in the fissures, and the scroll will tell the rest. I leave the judgment to you.
Hades takes the sealed scroll in one hand. The violet pulse under the wax answers his touch, sharp and cold, while the guards look from the seal to the shadowed floor.
Thanatos
That pulse is not a blessing. It is recognition.
Iphitus
Then read it, lord of the dead. My city is already kneeling to it.
Hades breaks the mark and opens the scroll. The faint glow spills across his fingers, and his expression hardens as he reads the first lines.
Hades
This is no cult of the gods. It names a thing that climbed from the fissures, and it was left hungry.
Quest Complete
Learn what the priest's sealed scroll says
New Gift: Divine Insight
+ New Item Acquired
Opened sealed scroll