The doors of Blackwall Keep close behind you with a heavy thud of timber and iron. Smoke hangs in the air inside the tower, mingling with the copper scent of blood and wet leather. The defenders look exhausted—faces pale from battle and sleepless hours spent waiting for the next assault.

Outside, the last shapes of the lizardfolk warband vanish into the gray gloom of the Mistmarsh. Their retreat is not a rout. It is disciplined… deliberate.

They will return.

A wounded soldier grips the battlements and watches the dark water beyond the hill.

“They didn’t flee,” he mutters. “They pulled back.”

The truth emerges slowly among the shaken survivors.

Earlier this morning, before dawn fully broke, the marsh erupted with scaled warriors. The keep held—barely—but the fighting was brutal. In the chaos of the assault, a number of soldiers were dragged away alive, carried into the mist by the retreating lizardfolk.

Among the missing is the one person Allustan came here to find.

Marzena.

The battle-mage of the Free City.

No body was found among the fallen.

One of the guards swears he saw her still fighting near the outer palisade before the lizardfolk pulled back toward the marsh.

Now the keep’s commander stands before you, his armor dented and blood-stained, and says the words no one wants to hear:

“If they took prisoners… they didn’t do it for mercy.”

Beyond the hill, the Mistmarsh spreads into darkness.

And somewhere within it, the captured soldiers—and Marzena—are being carried deeper into the swamp.

Participants will reach level 6 upon the successful completion of this adventure