I move toward the docks, threading between stalls and leaning into the blur of sailors, fishmongers, and laborers. The salt air clings to my clothes; gulls wheel and bicker above crates. Wharf Street opens onto the ragged wooden piers where skiffs sway against algae-darkened posts, and the southeast pier—Bramwell's direction—lounges further down, half in shadow beneath an awning.
I plant myself against a stack of salted rope and let the bustle of the pier wash over me—the cries of hawkers, the slap of water against hull, the clank of rigging.
What I pick up:
- Three figures, cloaked in dark oilcloth, moving with a purposeful, careful gait near the southeast pier. They avoid direct eye contact and keep close to the shadows beneath an awning.- One of the cloaks bears a faint, embroidered sigil at the hem — a simple crescent crossed by a thin line. Bramwell's description of hurried, foreign coin and hurried manners fits them.
- A small skiff is moored a short distance from where they stand; its bow is marked with rusted iron markings, the same pattern Bramwell mentioned sailors muttered about.
- The cloaked group speaks little; when they whisper it's low, clipped, and in a dialect I don't immediately recognize. One of them occasionally touches the inner fold of his cloak as if checking something concealed.
- Nearby, a pair of dockhands glance towards the trio now and then with curiosity but keep their distance — clearly aware, but not willing to confront them.
I lean further into the stack of rope, feigning disinterest, and strain to catch scraps of their conversation. The dockhands nearby give them a wide berth—something about these men prickles the skin. The dialect is coarse, guttural, unfamiliar, but shards of sense leak through: "...marker moved... below the bell... tide turns..."
I decide to get closer. I straighten from the rope, adopting the careless swagger of a lounger with nothing better to do, and drift toward the cloaked figures near the southeast pier. My eyes are half-lidded, my posture loose, as if I'm merely enjoying the breeze off the water. Inside, my senses are taut.
I edge closer, letting the sway of the pier and the murmur of voices mask my approach. The sky is a wash of gray; the smell of fish and tar fills my nose. I slow my breathing, trying to make every movement look effortless and bored.
But as I close the distance, a clumsy creak from a loose board betrays me — a small, ordinary sound, and somehow it lands wrong. The nearest cloaked figure snaps his head up. My ears catch only the tail end of a phrase before the group falls silent: "...not here—move."
I freeze, feigning a distracted glance toward a passing gull. One of the dockhands glances over with a curious frown, and the cloaked trio melts back into shadow, pulling their hoods lower. The man who had been touching his cloak steps toward the skiff with careful, sudden speed; the others follow.
I decide to act quickly — to intercept before they can shove off.
The three cloaked figures are mid-stride toward the skiff, hoods low. The nearest gangplank is slick with algae; ropes form a crisscross of obstacles. I'm roughly 25 feet from them with a handful of dockworkers and crates between me and the trio.
I melt from the crowd like oil into shadow, moving low and careful across the slick planks. I manage to slip between crates and ropes and thread ahead of the cloaked trio without drawing notice.
I reach the narrow gangplank to the skiff and plant myself so their path is blocked. The nearest of the three glances up, surprise flashing across his features as he sees me suddenly occupying the only clear route. The other two pause, hoods shadowing their faces; one drops a hand to the inside of his cloak where something could be hidden.
They stop a few paces away, forming a loose triangle with me. The closest man's voice is clipped and careful. "Who are you?" he asks in that same rough dialect, but with a smear of Common beneath it. The air tightens; a couple of dockhands within earshot begin to notice tension rising and shift closer, wary.
I stand my ground on the gangplank, the air thick with suspicion. "I'm just a lone Weaver," I say, pitching my voice low, "looking for information about the Hemalcodex. I know you've been asking questions. I'm willing to trade knowledge for knowledge."
The closest man's eyes narrow. He glances quickly at his two companions, a silent communication passing between them. The hand inside his cloak twitches.
"We know nothing of Weavers or codices," he says, his voice flat. "Step aside."
I carefully disengage, keeping my eyes locked on the trio. "I see," I say, my voice even. "Perhaps I mistook you for someone else. Enjoy your stones."
I step backward, slowly, deliberately, until I'm off the gangplank and back onto the relative safety of the pier. The cloaked figures watch me, suspicion still etched on their faces, but they don't move to pursue.
Once I'm clear, they waste no time. They step onto the skiff, one of them pushing off from the pier with a long oar. The skiff glides away, cutting through the murky water, heading away from the docks and towards the open water beyond Blackfen.
I unfold Bramwell's scrap and study the hurried sketch—the outer wall of Saint Mavra's crypt, a crooked bell tower, a stretch of reed-marked shoreline, and a faint marker indicating "two markers removed." The map is rough but useful; I can try to interpret its landmarks and navigate to the ruins on foot.
The map's rough lines line up with the shoreline and bell tower directions in my head like a half-remembered rhyme. I tuck Bramwell's scrap into the inner pocket of my travel coat where it sits flat against my chest, sling my scholar's pack over one shoulder, and leave the bustling pier behind.
I move out of Blackfen at a brisk pace, boots scuffing the cobbles. The town's fog thins to a mist as I pass the bell tower and follow the shoreline where reeds begin to thicken. I keep to back alleys and the lee of warehouses when convenient, then step onto a narrow track that threads between marsh and scrub. The air grows colder and more metallic here; the world smells of wet earth and old iron. I travel light—dagger at my hip, component pouch secured inside my pack, map in my coat pocket—trying to cover ground before dusk.
Travel time: The ruins are a half-day's journey from Blackfen by foot at the pace I keep. I move swiftly, pausing only briefly to drink and to check the map against the landscape. The path becomes muddier and the reeds taller; gull cry gives way to distant croaks and the low moan of water shifting in unseen channels.
Along the route I notice:
- Scattered footprints that look recent: boots and the occasional bare, splayed print (possible travelers or marsh folk).
- A small cairn of stacked stones at a fork in the trail, roughly the size of a man's head—someone has been marking the way here.
- The bell tower of Blackfen shrinking behind me; ahead, beyond a curve in the reeds, I see the dark silhouette of a ruined wall and toppled stones half-swallowed by marsh—Saint Mavra's outer wall.
As I near the ruins the light shifts toward late afternoon. The ruined outer wall rises in broken lengths, lichen and crystalline growth glinting where moonlight will later strike. Two stone markers near what would have been the crypt's entrance are jagged and toppling—one seems recently disturbed, as Bramwell noted: the ground around it is churned and shows fresh scrape marks.
I press my fingertips to my temples and let the crimson tide within me pulse outward, focusing my senses on the faint echoes of life and the sour tang of spilled blood. I call upon Lifeblood Sense to weave my perception into the lingering threads of vitality that might stain the stones and marsh.
As I circle the toppled markers and disturbed earth with my senses outstretched, the air around me shimmers for a heartbeat, a faint crimson film visible only to my arcane sight. I register several distinct echoes:
- Lingering Vitality: A faint, diffused residue clinging to the disturbed earth near the toppled marker—as if something living had been recently uprooted or spilled. This suggests something organic, not merely displaced stone.
- Echo of Blood: A distinct, coppery tang emanating from a shallow depression in the earth—enough to suggest a deliberate shedding of blood, or a concentrated ritual. The trace is recent: perhaps hours, not days, old.
- Twisted Life Force: The faintest impression of blood magic clinging to the standing stones. It feels corrupt, as if the life force had been briefly twisted or dominated.
The confluence of these traces focuses my attention on an area about ten feet in diameter around the toppled markers, an area just outside what would have been the crypt's main entrance. The traces are faint, but definite, like a recent wound only half-healed.
I move carefully, letting the faint, corrupted sheen my Lifeblood Sense revealed guide my steps. The trail is subtle — more an impression in the air and earth than a visible path — so I proceed slowly, watching for disturbances in reeds, mud, or stone where the taint thickens.
Moving cautiously along the ruined wall's lee, I let the corrupted threads of vitality pull me like a weak current.
What I discover:
- The taint leads in a looping line that first moves away from the toppled markers toward a narrow drainage channel choked with reeds, then curves back inland to a low, ruined outbuilding half-buried in marsh silt — an old sexton's lodge, perhaps, its door long collapsed.
- The magical residue is strongest where the outbuilding's threshold used to be. It feels like someone performed a brief, focused ritual there — the pattern is hurried, raw, and still humming faintly.
- I also sense occasional footsteps overlaid on the magical trail: two sets, one heavier (boots) and one lighter (maybe a cloak or bare feet), heading away from the lodge toward the southeast, though both fade after a short distance as if their passage continued toward water.
- Near the lodge's entrance, among fen-grass and shards of pottery, there's a small, darkened smear the color of old blood and a fragment of foreign cloth caught on a splintered post. The cloth bears the same crescent-and-line sigil I noticed on the cloaks at the docks.
The lodge itself is a half-collapsed space of splintered wood and algae-blackened stone. The threshold yawns open into darkness; inside I can make out overturned crates, a rusted lamp, and a narrow passage that descends slightly toward the earth—maybe a cellar or an old access tunnel toward the crypt.
I moved cautiously and was able to detect all this without alerting anyone. The residue indicates whoever did the ritual left recently, and the cloaked sigil ties the culprits to the men I saw at the docks.
I kneel at the broken threshold and force myself to slow, letting my breathing match the marsh's measured sigh. The lodge smells of wet rot and old iron; the air is clammy against my face. With a careful hand I push aside a sodden plank and slide my dagger into the gap to pry up a corner of the warped floorboard, prying it back enough to peer into the dark cavity beneath.
I push past a toppled crate and my fingers brush a thin strip of paper tucked under a stone. I pocket it quickly: it's a scrap of handwriting, cramped and in a language mixed with common—part ledger, part hurried note. My partial read, aided by the scholar's training I've kept, yields a fragment: "...two markers...south drain...iron coin...dusk...bring—" The rest is smeared where water has bled across it. It feels like the same urgent hand that scrawled the note Bramwell showed me.
I also find a shallow, partially buried iron key half-buried in silt—light, corroded, but still serviceable. Its bit is small and oddly-shaped: something that would fit a chest or a small ironbox rather than a door.
Less useful, but telling: a scuffed pair of boots propped in the corner, one missing its lace and the other threaded with an extra strip of cloth where a sigil once hung. There are also faint soot marks on the floor toward the rear of the lodge as if someone had attempted to burn something in haste.
I kneel at the dark mouth of the passage, feeling the cool air sigh up from below. The threshold is low—more a crawl than a stair—and the smell of damp stone and old incense drifts up. My dagger is at my hip, component pouch and pack secure; the iron key I found sits tucked in my palm where I can reach it. I take a final breath and begin to descend.