Butch the Wereboar

The spectral sigil in Butch's fist goes still, then blooms with stolen memory. The chamber flashes with the first debt, the first bargain, Sable's mark burning fresh into flesh and shadow.

A sharp knock answers from the stone walls. Then another. The rhythm matches the pulse in the sigil, like something huge on the far side of the moor is knocking back.

The wall beside the basin splits with a wet crack of light. A tall figure slides through, wrapped in old stone dust and black thread, carrying the weight of every unpaid promise in the room.

The memories keep pouring from the sigil, showing the collector standing behind the original pact, not beneath it. The ancient threat is not a beast at all. It is a vault of hunger wearing a collector's shape, and it has finally come to open the rest of its claim.

Butch clenches the pulsing memory shard and lets the sigil take the lead. The chamber fills his head with flashes of a sealed bargain, a hand pressed to stone, a promise named and measured like coin.

The Debt-Collector keeps stepping through the breach, but the stolen memory does not slip away. It settles into Butch's mind in sharp pieces, cool as well water and heavy as iron.

In the flash, Sable's mark appears not as a wound, but as a receipt, tied to the same hidden ledger as the first debt. The black-water basin shivers beneath the truth.

Butch keeps the memory. It stays with him, complete enough to use, as the cracked wall widens and the Collector's shadow falls across the basin.