“The Shrouded Vale”
Episode 7: Dust and Symbols
March 28, 2025
Crouching low, breath ragged, pain lancing through his shoulder, Tavi Falconheart places a steadying hand on the floor.
The stone is cold and gritty beneath his fingers. Blood drips in slow rhythm onto the dusty grooves. He blinks hard, trying to stay focused, but the wound in his arm throbs like a drumbeat in his bones.
Carefully, he brushes aside the fine layer of dirt covering the circular pressure plates. Dust floats in the faint light, revealing what had been hidden beneath the surface.
Each plate is etched with a symbol—no two alike. But there’s a pattern. A structure. Half of the symbols echo one another. The others are marked with tallies, forming a sense of progression.
Numbers? A sequence, perhaps?
He doesn’t know what the symbols mean, but something about them pulls at the edge of memory. He’s seen markings like this before—in the ruined stone tablets beneath Elderrest. Old druidic. Lost even to scholars. Not quite a language. More like… intention made visible.
He exhales slowly, tense, letting the dust settle as he surveys the floor. There’s a message here—he can feel it. But pain clouds his focus, and the ceiling groans again, sliding lower with grinding stone.
Whatever these symbols mean, he won’t survive long without acting fast.