Round 1

As Jeane Cromwell stepped onto the ash-choked road, her sorcerer's robes whispering with each gust of wind, the storm-dark sky pressed down like a tombstone lid, and she felt the old city's bones creaking beneath them—the sense of something waking that shouldn't be disturbed. Her voice was sharp, commanding, barely concealing her own flicker of unease as she turned to Silra: "This place stinks of rot and secrets." The rusted key half-buried in a shallow trench lay nearby, its metal dulled by years of neglect.

Silra crouched beside Jeane, ash sifting through her fingers like funeral dust. Her voice was dry as old parchment, "Listen," she said, "this reconstruction project smells fouler than a troll's armpit." Gravedigger Renn, clutching his stomach, looked about ready to collapse, and Silra's gaze flicked toward the nervous man, her expression a mixture of amusement and wariness. The wind rustled through the skeletal remains of the abandoned church beyond the bend, casting long, wavering shadows on the cracked cobbles, as if the very city itself was watching them with cold, dead eyes.