Fog coils tighter around the oak’s roots. Marcus stands before the hollow trunk, staff in hand, as Brann hovers near the bark with a shaking palm. Inside the dark opening, the bound figure leans forward to listen.
Brann
Say the thing plain, then. If it hunts names, what feeds it? What turns it aside?
The oak answers before the wind does, leaves whispering like dry paper. The trunk flexes once, slow and heavy, as if a great mouth is working behind the wood.
The Oak
Names are spoor. Blood is noise. I swallow what is given, and the hunter loses the trail.
Marcus
Then what has been given here?
The Oak
A keeper’s oath. A hidden one. A body to bait the hound that walks by knowing.
The bound figure turns their face toward the hollow, eyes bright with alarm. Brann’s hand slips from the bark, and the fog around the roots pulls inward, as if the forest is holding its breath.
Brann
If you want the woods spared, Marcus, then hear it now. The tree does not ask for cruelty. It asks for a trade.
✓ Quest Accepted
Understand the creature that hunts names
✓ Quest Accepted
Resolve the oak's hunger
“what trade?”
SUCCESS (Great Reasoning, rolled -2)
Marcus lets the question hang, and the oak answers with a slow shiver through root and bark. The hollow widens by a finger’s breadth, breathing out old leaf-must and wet soil.
The Oak
A trade is the shape of mercy here. Give me a name to swallow, and the hunter follows the false path.
Brann
Not a name taken from the living, then. A name laid down. A burden, remembered and released.
The bound figure lifts their chin, rope creaking at wrist and ribs, and the oak’s bark gives a faint answering tremor at the sound of their breath.
The Bound Figure
So that is the bargain. The forest keeps its secret, and someone else carries the hunt.
Brann
I have carried it already. Too long. If you need the mechanism plain, Marcus, the oak drinks the offered name and lets the trail go cold.
From somewhere deeper in the mist, a branch snaps without wind. All three faces turn that way at once, as the clearing seems to listen back.
Quest Complete
Understand the creature that hunts names