Won a past escape room yourself? Enter your finishing time to claim the gold & wisdom (XP) you earned — it carries straight into your adventurer.
Long ago — in years it is wiser not to name — it was a crime worth death to keep the holy books, and the people who studied them were hunted from one land to the next. A circle of sages fled to the one place no mob would follow: the drowned heart of the marsh. There they built a hidden house of study and lived out their lives guarding their learning, their scrolls, and one another. Then the bog swallowed the house whole, and kept its secrets. That was lifetimes ago.
Now the village by the reeds is losing people. They wander out toward the old sunken house after dark and never come back — and the few who have glimpsed what waits out there will not say a word. Something below is awake, and grieving, and reaching for the living. No one alive remembers the whole of what happened down there. That is the trouble: to set it right, you will have to go down and learn it yourself.
The last elder who still remembers any of this takes your hands at nightfall and says:
“You know your letters, child, and you do not yet fear the dark. I am too old to make the climb, and no one else can read what is written down there. Go down — find what went wrong, and set it to rest — before it empties this whole village into its grave. Whatever you uncover, read it well: lives hang on your getting it right. Do this, and the purse the village has set aside is yours: one hundred gold on the day you climb back into the light.”
No one can tell you exactly what is down there, or how to end it — that knowledge sank with the house. You will have to find it the way the sages left it: written into the walls, sealed behind their riddles, and kept by whoever still lingers below. Read everything. Ask everyone you meet. Nothing down there is ever just decoration.
Go down, learn what went wrong, and set it to rest. Then climb back toward the light.
Your light burns while you linger. Prying, taking, dawdling — each eats the flame. Pressing on costs nothing.
Below, the clay sleeps. Greed wakes it; mercy lets it lie. Wake it fully and it rises.
The elder holds your sleeve a moment longer, and drops his voice:
“Hear the rest. Your torch is your life down there — let it burn low and the dark comes in, and the dark is not empty. The clay sleeps, but greed wakes it, and all it has buried wakes with it. Beasts have denned in the ruin; the reeds above hide men who would finish you for less than you carry. Take only what you need. Linger nowhere.” He looks you over once. “Tell me — are you provisioned for it?”
The elder waits on your answer. type what you say
The village is poor, but it will not send you into the dark empty-handed. A purse has been pressed into your hands — spend it well. Down there, coin buys nothing; only what you carry will.
Paste the code from a past run to carry over the coin and wisdom (XP) you earned that time.
The elder marks your years in his book, that the village know whom it sent into the dark. How old are you? enter your age