Round 4 Transcript

Jeane Cromwell surveyed the ruins with the cold precision of a butcher appraising meat. The storm overhead churned like a cauldron, and she felt its power—not as threat, but as resource. Her gaze swept over Gravedigger Renn's huddled form, noting his fear not with pity, but calculation. "Enough skulking," she said, her voice cutting through the wind. "Sister Hale—secure our approach." She turned to Silra without waiting for acknowledgment. "You. Search inside first. Ensure no immediate threats linger beyond dust and memory."

Silra nodded once, crisply, and moved toward the church's yawning doorway with a fluid grace that belied her tiredness. Jeane watched her go before returning her attention to Gravedigger Renn. "You have one chance," she said, producing the rusted key from a dead magistrate—a trinket of dubious power but symbolic weight. "Tell me everything you know about what lies beneath this city—truthfully—and perhaps we'll let you keep that withered hide of yours intact."

Silra circled Gravedigger Renn slowly, her boot heels clicking rhythmically in the ash-choked street. She kept her movements loose, casual—just another weary traveler stretching her legs after a long march—but every step measured an angle, calculated a blind spot. "Tell me," she said, voice conversational but sharp as a knife's edge, "what exactly is under this city that makes you shake like a child in a crypt? Because I've faced down things that'd make your hair curl, and even I don't quake unless there's a damn good reason."

She crouched beside him, close enough to smell the sweat mingling with graveyard dust on his skin. Her hand hovered near her blade—ready but not drawn—but she kept her expression neutral, almost bored. "And if you're lying? Well, let's just say I've got a talent for finding leverage in unexpected places." She wasn't threatening him; this was simply statement of fact, delivered with the easy confidence of someone who'd made good on that promise before. Her eyes darted to Jeane—cold and commanding—and back to Renn. Something wasn't adding up here. Fear was one thing, but this man's terror smelled like something older, deeper than simple ghosts or bad memories. And whatever it was, she intended to pry it loose before they blundered into whatever lay waiting in that abandoned church.