I crouch and slip into the low passage, relying on my Blood Spark to light the way. I extend my will, coaxing a cold bead of sanguine light to hover before me—small, steady, and crimson—casting long, leprous shadows on the damp stone.
The light reveals a narrow stair carved roughly into the earth, slick with algae and the faint sheen of old drying blood. The passage descends in a tight spiral for about twenty feet before opening into a low, vaulted chamber. The air here is colder and tastes faintly metallic; every breath leaves a thin curl of fog that evaporates against the stone.
Inside the chamber:
- Three shallow alcoves are set into the far wall. Two hold toppled reliquaries, their carved lids cracked; the third has a small iron box set upon a blood-darkened cloth.
- A semicircle of crude symbols has been drawn on the floor in a dark, sticky substance—runes and sigils that pulse faintly with the same corrupted life-sheen I sensed above. The pattern is recent.
- Scattered about the chamber are bits of broken pottery, a length of frayed rope, and a splintered stool. One wall bears claw marks gouged into the stone, as if something powerful struggled or was bound here.
- The iron box on the cloth is fastened with a small hasp; the bit looks like it might accept the corroded key I found in the lodge.
I notice no bodies at first glance, but the air carries a subtle echo—an impression of hurried feet and low voices that have just faded. The taint of blood magic is stronger here than above; whatever was done in this chamber was centered on this spot.
As I stand at the stairhead with my Blood Spark hovering, I am not completely unseen: faint disturbance in the dust suggests someone might have left minutes ago rather than hours. There is also a narrow corridor branching left from the chamber that slopes further down and away into darkness.
I crouch at the edge of the semicircle, the crimson bead of my Blood Spark guttering softly as I lean closer. The runes are traced in a sticky, tar-dark substance that gleams with a wet, almost fresh sheen. Each symbol is jagged and unfamiliar—part old saint-markings, part something the tongues of the marsh might have stitched together—and when I follow their lines with my fingertips the stone hums faintly beneath my skin.
My knowledge of the Weave teases me with half-truths. I can tell, with some certainty, that the pattern was meant to bind or to call: concentric sigils that focus outward from the iron box's position like spokes on a wheel. The central glyph is a clumsy imitation of an ancient ward; it's been overwritten by a raw, simpler mark made in haste—likely the work of someone who knows ritual forms but lacks refinement. The life-taint threaded through the pattern smells of fear and iron; whoever made it used fresh blood as a catalyst and rushed the shaping, leaving ragged seams where the magic frays.
There are hints I cannot fully read with this glance: a smudge that might once have been a name, a trailing sigil that dissolves into nothing, and a partial repetition of a pattern I recognized earlier atop the toppled marker outside. The weaving here is unbalanced—effective enough to leave a trace and to bend a nearby thread of life, but sloppy where a practiced Weaver would have smoothed and anchored the lines. If I press harder on my Lifeblood Sense or spend more time unraveling the knots, I might map the ritual's exact intent, its age, and whether it binds something sentient or merely consecrates the box.
For now, what I know is this: the runes were meant to hold or direct blood-as-force toward the iron box; the ritual was hurried and crude but recent; and the central sigil has been defaced in a way that suggests the caster either feared interruption or altered the rite midway.
I press my fingertips to the rough stone within the semicircle, feeling the faint pulse of the crude wards beneath. I do not speak aloud; blood-magic is a private language, and the weave answers only to pressure and intent. I focus my Lifeblood Sense inward, letting the crimson tide from my own veins thread into the ritual's ragged seams, probing for a pattern I can follow, a pulse I can mirror.
I breathe slow and steady, palms hovering an inch above the runes as I let my Lifeblood Sense thread out like a cautious probe. The weave answers, not with words, but with a cold, precise image that slides into mind like a shard.
What I learn:
- Purpose of the rite: The pattern was intended as a binding lattice — not to imprison flesh, but to anchor a living memory or a name into the iron box. It's a mnemonic tether: blood used as a key to lock something of vital essence to the box's interior, so that the box can later be opened or activated only by the correct life-signature or ritual counterpoint.
- Nature of the bound thing: The essence bound here is not purely animal; it bears a human contour — a voice, a frightened heartbeat, and the sense of someone whose memory was bled into the object. It feels like a ledger entry given life: a preserved witness or a phrase of power folded into blood.
- Stability and age: The work is raw and recent. The binding is incomplete in places where the caster hurried, leaving frayed tendrils that leak a thin, residual hunger. It holds, but tenuously; the lattice will fray further if disturbed, and that fray could release whatever is anchored or cause a backlash of psychic or necrotic sting.
- Weaknesses and manipulations: Where the caster overwrote the ancient ward with a cruder sigil, the weave's strands cross in a loose knot. If I trace and replicate the knot's pressure pattern with my own Lifeblood Sense, I could reinforce it to stabilize the binding, or deliberately loosen it to free the bound essence. Loosening risks an immediate recoil—an echoed pulse of memory and pain that could deal psychic strain, if it lashes back. Stabilizing would consume a sliver of my own vitality as a catalyst.
- A keyed signature: The binding recognizes life-signatures matching a specific cadence — not just a name, but a pattern of pulses and minor ritual motions. That cadence resembles the sigil on the cloaks and the partial script I found; whoever tied this intended only certain hands to later access the box.
I feel the weave watching, waiting, hungry for completion or release. My touch could smooth the ragged edges and make the lattice permanent; it could also pull the frayed threads apart and let whatever was bound stir free.
I reach toward the weaving and decide to extract a sliver of the bound memory—just enough to study its image and cadence without fully unravelling the lattice. I steady myself and prepare for the risk: the weave is raw and will not part without a cost.
My hands hover just above the ragged weave. I steady my breath, measure the rhythm of the lattice, and let my Lifeblood Sense slide a careful tendril into its seam. The weave resists, but I peel away a thin sliver—no more than a moth's wing of memory—and fold it into the hollow place behind my eyes.
The memory blooms in sudden, awful clarity, as if someone lit a lamp in a sealed room and shoved the scene through a keyhole:
A narrow, salt-streaked cabin aboard a low skiff at night. Rain lashes the rough boards; the lamp guttered on a table spattered with ink and wet pages. Outside, the reed-muffled slap of oars and the distant bell of a harbor punctuate the dark. The world feels small and reeked of brine and iron.
A woman's whisper, thin with fear and edged with urgency. She speaks in Common with a clipped, educated cadence softened by some coastal dialect. Her voice repeats a handful of names and numbers—phrases like "Hemalcodex," "two markers," "iron coin," and a furtive, broken instruction: "Seal it when the tide takes the bell—bind with the cadence, not the name." The cadence she hums under her breath is not a song but a slow, rhythmic tapping—thump, pause, thump—almost like a heartbeat counted in an odd meter.
Beneath her words there is the impression of another figure—older, harsher—clinching a heavy coin between finger and thumb, murmuring a counterchant. This person's voice is gravelly, impatient: "No loose threads. If it wakes, drown it." The tone suggests they fear whatever is bound enough to contemplate its destruction.
I see a flash of a small, leather-bound book with a torn corner—the Hemalcodex. The woman handles it with gloved fingers, pressing its cover to the iron box, murmuring the cadence. She dips a quill into a shallow bowl and lets a bead of blood fall onto a page; the ink darkens with a living shimmer and then slackens, as if something inside it had been captured. She writes a single line that wavers between script and rune—an address, perhaps, or an invocation.
The memory ends on a sharp moment of panic: a sudden slap at the cabin door, hurried whispers in an unfamiliar tongue, the leader ordering a quick break of the ritual. The woman hisses something like, "If they come, you must not speak the name—only the beat." A scuffle, a clink of metal, and the memory folds—abrupt, unfinished—leaving a ringing in my ears like a heartbeat cut short.
The shard leaves behind a faint taste of brine and old iron, and the mental echo of that heartbeat-cadence. There is also a trace-signature of the crescent-and-line sigil, and a sliver of melody—the cadence the woman used—which could act as a key if replicated precisely.
The excerpt feels precious and dangerous. It confirms that the Hemalcodex is indeed tied to the iron box and that the ritual bound a portion of the ledger's essence or a witness to it. It also makes clear the ward uses a rhythm—the "cadence"—as its key rather than a spoken name. Whoever controls that cadence could access or awaken whatever the box holds.
I tuck the sliver of memory away in the recesses of my mind, careful to preserve its rhythm. Its edges are clean—my extraction was precise enough to avoid backlash—and I feel no immediate sting beyond a faint chill. The lattice in the chamber hums faintly, aware of the missing thread but not yet unravelling.
I slide the corroded key between my fingers once, feeling its chill and the tiny ridges that have worn smooth with use. The iron box waits on its blood-dark cloth like a heart in a shallow basin, small and stubborn. I kneel, careful not to disturb the runes more than necessary, and set the key in the hasp. The metal grinds in protest, flakes of rust sighing away; for a moment I half expect the lattice beneath the floor to shiver. Then the bit of the key finds its teeth and, with a soft, reluctant click, the lock gives.
The iron box is unadorned and worn; its contents are not what I expected:
A small, leather-bound ledger: its corners frayed and its spine cracked. It looks like the one the woman in the memory clutched aboard the skiff. When I open it, the pages are filled with a spidery, mercurial script rendered in what appears to be dried blood. The writing is tight, coded and the few illustrations resemble anatomical sketches and profane sigils woven together. A red smear stains one page: a splotch where a single drop fell long ago, its outline still wet.
A small pouch: sewn of oiled silk and fat with a handful of iron coins — the ones Bramwell mentioned when the cloaked men paid in the foreign coins. They are stamped with the same crescent-and-line sigil. These are what the cloaked men wanted.
A shard of crystalline ore: No bigger than my thumb, it pulses with a faint, inner light like trapped lightning. It feels warm and electric, the same electric charge that is on my own blood but brighter.
A silver locket: its surface intricately chased with depictions of twisting vines and weeping faces. It is cold to the touch.
The box itself smells of old parchment, dried blood, and damp earth. The air above it shimmers like heat haze, a faint echo of the chaotic rhythm from the weave.
When I open the box the mnemonic lattice in the chamber responds, not with a violent release but with a subtle sigh. The air grows a degree colder and a dust mote rises from the ledger's open page and drifts into my nostril. If the box holds any further traps or guardians, they do not spring at the first touch.