They met Sergeant Murgaddin the next morning in the common room of the Nentir Inn, where Wisara had laid out bread, cheese and enough hot porridge to satisfy even Dave. The wreckage of the Blue Moon felt far away in the pale autumn sunlight, though Thorn could still see a bruise on Nibbles’ arm.

Murgaddin brought a leather folder and an expression suggesting he’d slept even less than they had.

“Sit,” he said. “Eat if you haven’t. Then listen.”

He spread a rough sketch across the table — not a proper map, but enough to show a track from Fallcrest’s northern edge to a black mark beside a ruined building.

“The Hammers have been using an old manor house,” he said. “Destroyed in the Bloodspear War, like half the places round here. The cellars survived. That’s where they’ve made their nest.”

Thorn studied the sketch. “How many?”

“Enough to be trouble. A handful of thugs, maybe a mage — we’ve had reports of lights down there after dark. Go in, break it up, bring me proof of who’s paying them. I’ve got guards, but none to spare, and the Lord Warden won’t send soldiers chasing rumours.”

“We’re not soldiers,” Thorn said.

“No.” Murgaddin’s moustache twitched. “But you’re the ones who walked into a tavern full of Hammers and came out standing. That counts for something.”

He opened the folder: a small cloth bag that clinked pleasantly, and a stoppered vial glowing faintly in the morning light.

“From the town,” he said. “Coin, and a healing potion from the temple stores — not a fortune, but Fallcrest pays its debts. There’s more where that came from, if you’re useful.”

Nibbles weighed the bag and brightened.

Mara arrived as they finished breakfast, Tobbs at her heels with Loki. He unrolled a larger map — the road towards the distant plateau, marked in blue ink along the river and into the hills.

“For when you’re ready,” he said quietly to Thorn. “The manor first. Then Ethium. Nimozaran still needs those stones.”

“We know,” Thorn said.

“Do you?” Tobbs managed a tired smile. “Good. I’d hate to think I showed you a glowing rock for nothing.”

---

The ruined manor stood less than an hour’s walk from Fallcrest’s northern gate, alone on a rise above fields gone to thistle and long grass. Once it must have been handsome — a grand entrance, empty windows, blackened roof timbers burned away decades ago. The orcs had seen to the upper floors; only the stone shell remained, and whatever lay beneath it.

“Cheerful,” Nibbles said.

“Profitable,” Thorn replied, and led the way in.

The ground floor was a maze of fallen beams, ash and bird droppings. Loki led them to a broken stairwell, where stone steps descended into cold air smelling of earth and mildew. Thorn lit a torch, Derek raised his shield, Dave clutched his spellbook, and Nibbles drew his silver dagger, looking pleased about it.

They went down.

The old manor — where the stone steps led to trouble.

The first cellar chamber might once have been a wine store. Now it was a rough camp — crates dragged in as tables and barricades, muddy footprints everywhere. Three men in patched leather, iron hammer pendants at their throats, looked up as torchlight spilled down the stairs.

One of them reached for a club. He did not reach it in time.

Thorn was already moving, Loki bounding past with a bark that bounced off the low ceiling. Derek blocked the doorway against anyone circling behind. The fight was short and ugly — clubs against axe and hammer, Nibbles appearing where he wasn’t expected, Dave flinching behind Derek until he found he could throw a potato without hitting a friend.

When it was over, three Hammers lay groaning on the floor and the cellar was theirs.

“That went well,” Dave said, sounding surprised.

“Don’t sound so shocked,” Nibbles told him, wiping his dagger on a crate. “We’re professionals now.”

A passage led deeper, the air damper, a faint blue-green glow seeping round a corner. Thorn raised his torch: walls slick with moisture, mushrooms clustered in the cracks, pale caps veined with soft luminescence casting an eerie glow.

“Pretty,” Dave said.

“Poisonous, probably,” Derek said.

“Everything interesting is poisonous,” Nibbles sighed.

Beyond the mushrooms, the passage opened into a larger chamber with a table of maps, coins and a guttering lamp. Four men rose — two Hammers with clubs, a swordsman half-drawing his blade, a broad figure in heavy plate, and a thin man in dark robes who lurched up with a curse and thrust out both hands. A crackle of sickly green energy spat towards Thorn and fizzed harmlessly against his shield.

The mage — Rulden, if the papers on his table were any guide — had not expected company.

He had even less time to complain about it.

Derek met the next bolt on his shield and went for the armoured man, hammer ringing on steel. Thorn closed with the swordsman in a shower of sparks. The two Hammers lunged together, and Nibbles slipped through the gloom, too quick to watch. Dave, remembering the goblin cave, sent a potato into the nearest Hammer’s face with admirable accuracy.

Rulden snarled and reached for a book on the table. Before he could finish whatever he intended, Thorn knocked the stool from under him and pinned his wrist to the stone floor.

“Don’t,” Thorn said.

The mage glared up at him, breathing hard. The fight had ended as quickly as it had begun.

They bound the survivors and searched the chamber. Nibbles found a leather purse of gold and a scroll case beneath the maps; Derek found another healing potion, identical to Murgaddin’s, beside a shortsword shimmering with more than ordinary steel.

And on the table, half-hidden under Rulden’s spellbook, lay an Ethium Stone.

It was smaller than the one Tobbs had shown them, but unmistakable — pale grey, blue-veined, humming with a dormant warmth. Dave stared at it with the expression he usually reserved for spellbooks and dragons.

“That’s what they were guarding,” Derek said quietly.

Rulden said nothing. His eyes flicked towards the stone, then away.

Dave, with Derek keeping watch, opened the mage’s spellbook and began copying. The pages grew less steady towards the back, but one spell caught his eye — a weaving of words and gestures meant to send enemies into unnatural sleep. He copied it twice, mouthing the syllables as he wrote.

“I’ve got it,” he said at last, looking up with soot on his cheek and triumph in his eyes. “Sleep.”

“Useful,” Thorn said.

“Very useful,” Dave agreed.

They took the stone, the gold, the scroll, the potion and the sword. Nibbles wanted to take everything else as well, but Thorn drew the line at the table.

Behind a stack of crates at the far end, they found heavy doors sealed with rusted iron bands.

“Family tomb,” Derek said, reading the carving above the lintel — the name long chipped away. “This house had owners once. Proper ones.”

“With excellent taste in doors,” Nibbles said. “I wonder what’s behind them. Gold, probably.”

Thorn tested the doors; they shuddered but held. Derek and Thorn put their shoulders to the wood while Loki barked encouragement, and the rust gave way with a shriek that echoed down the cellars like something waking.

Beyond lay a low stone room lined with four sarcophagi.

For a moment nothing moved.

Then the lids began to shift.

The family tomb — where the dead objected to visitors.

Skeletons sat up with the dry, horrible sound of bone on stone — four of them, yellowed and ancient. Thorn met the first with his axe. Derek’s hammer cracked another apart. Nibbles danced back swearing. Dave, who had only just learned Sleep, tried it on the third skeleton with no effect whatsoever, which he felt was deeply unfair.

Loki did not care about fairness. He launched himself at the fourth skeleton’s legs and brought it crashing down while Thorn finished the job.

When the bones lay scattered, the tomb went quiet again.

Nibbles searched the sarcophagi as though owed compensation for the fright, and found more coins — old, tarnished, but real — plus jewellery too damaged to wear but worth something to a smith.

“Family curse?” Dave asked, looking at the broken lids.

“Family problem,” Derek said. “Let’s not ask why.”

---

They returned to Fallcrest in the late afternoon with scrapes on their knuckles, mushroom spores on their boots, and Rulden’s correspondence tucked safely in Thorn’s pack.

Murgaddin met them at Knight’s Gate. He read the letter twice without speaking.

Rulden,

The arrangement stands. Prove your worth now.

A courier travels the north road within the next tenday, bearing a map recovered from the outer ruins of Ethium. It must not reach Fallcrest.

Seize it. Kill the courier if needed, but bring the map intact.

Others have begun to take interest in the old places. This cannot be allowed to spread.

Deliver the map to my agent at the river crossing. You will be paid in full upon confirmation.

Do not fail me again.

— Maelis Varn, Third Hand of the Valnaran family

“They missed Mara,” Thorn said. “We got there first.”

“Aye.” Murgaddin’s voice was grim. “And they’d have tried again if you’d left them down there.” He folded the letter. “The Valnarans are one of the four guilds in the Gang of Four — trade racketeers from Sunfall, allied with assassins, old thieves’ guilds and street brutes like the Hammers. Unstable, but it’s held for years. Now someone’s paying them to hunt Ethium.”

“Someone in Sunfall,” Derek said.

“Or further south.” Murgaddin looked towards the distant plateau. “Their reach gets longer every season. You did well today — better than well. Fallcrest owes you more than a potion and a bag of coin, but take these as well.”

He handed over a heavier purse of gold.

That evening they rested at the Nentir Inn. Dave copied the Sleep spell properly into his spellbook. Nibbles polished the magical shortsword and argued with Derek about wasting identify scrolls on mushrooms. Thorn sat by the window with the Ethium Stone wrapped in cloth, feeling its faint warmth through the fabric.

Tobbs came to see them after dark, with Mara and a satchel of road bread, dried meat and a fresh copy of the route north.

“Nimozaran is pleased,” he said. “More than pleased — one stone is a beginning. The manor was only a cell; there will be others.” He hesitated. “They wanted that map for what’s waking on the plateau. You have a stone now, and you know the road. If you’re still willing…”

Dave nodded so hard his horns nearly knocked the lamp.

Nibbles counted the new gold and said, “We’re going.”

Derek closed his prayer book. “Better to go now than wait for the next letter.”

“Then you leave at first light,” Tobbs said, visibly relieved. “Follow the river road until it turns east. The blue mark shows where the old track climbs towards the hills — and the waterfall behind it, the only way up. Make for the ruined tower first. If the stones are waking, that’s where you’ll feel it.” He swallowed. “After that… you’ll be deep in Ethium’s shadow.”

They slept, packed, and were at Wizard’s Gate when the bells rang dawn.

The road east lay ahead — pale and empty, curving between hedgerows towards the river and, beyond that, the plateau where old magic stirred beneath broken stone. Thorn led the way, axe across his back, new shield at his side. Dave clutched his spellbook, now heavier by one spell. Nibbles carried his silver dagger, the magical shortsword, and an identify scroll for something impressive. Loki trotted ahead, nose to the wind, certain whatever came next would be interesting.

Behind them, Fallcrest’s walls grew small in the morning light.

Before them, Ethium waited.