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Chapter II: The White Flame

The story goes on from where Oswin left it: with the cold white ember you carried home at the end of The Cold Light, and the question of who lit it. Chapter II is a chain of five steps for one character, or one character and their group. The Journal (J) shows the chapter as its own card, with what to do now, and Track puts it on the tracker under the map.

How to start it

• Finish The Cold Light first: help three towns (the innkeepers' chains), then Oswin sends you to meet the cold light in the far regions, and you bring its ember back to him.
• Then talk to Oswin at the Warden House in Aldhearth again. His menu has a new line, Chapter II: The White Flame, and a mark over his head when he has something for you.
• The chapter sends you out into the far regions (three towns out from Aldhearth or farther, level 32 and up) and to one of the hunting grounds (its Grown are level 42 and up), and ends in a fight for you and your group of up to five. Level 45 or so is comfortable; the fight scales to the group.
• The chapter's things (the ember, the letters, the seal, the page) stay in your bag: they cannot be dropped, sold, listed, traded, banked, put in a chest or mailed, and an outlaw's death does not spill them. The story does not hang on them either: what you did counts, so a letter or a seal that is somehow gone is no dead end.
• At the end: gold, experience, a unique ring (Ysolde's Warmth: it heals you a little faster, carries a little more life, and sheds light) and the title Flamebearer.

The rest of this page tells the story. Read it after, or read it now, as you like.

Spoilers: the five steps

1. The ember and the archive. Oswin unwraps the ember and sends you to Maren, the Wanderer who runs the Trade Post outside Aldhearth's gate. She is at the post some of the time and out past the fence the rest of it; the minimap marks her while you carry the ember, and she heads home when someone waits for her at the post. Talk to her (click her, or Talk in her menu). Years ago she said nobody had ever found a page in Queen Ysolde's own hand. She had. Held to the ember, its ink frosts over at one line: the flame that forgets. The page is yours.
2. Three letters. Hollow-sworn couriers walk the far regions (three towns out or farther, as the Pale Herald did) for whoever is on this step. One finds you in each region you walk; put it down and it leaves a Frost-sealed letter. You need one from each of three different regions (east and west both count). Read them from your bag, like lost pages. A courier walks for you and your group: it is your quarry, so nobody else can hurt it or win anything from it (no letter, no loot, no gold, no experience), and it leaves everybody else alone.
3. The door. The letters name the Second Crown's Steward. Aldith, Warden of the Binding, stands at the Rime Hollow camp (the map, M, under hunting grounds, or the road gate in Coldhaven or Quillreach; its Grown are level 42 to 58). Bring her the three letters. She takes the ones you carry and drives her sword into the snow: a sword is a door if you hold it long enough. (Three regions walked is three letters: if one of them is gone from your bag she opens the door all the same.) Right click her (on a phone, tap her) and choose Go through the door. Your group comes with you, up to five, if they stand by her (not one in a duel: they finish it first); anyone in your group can go through later while the hall is open: they right click her (on a phone, tap her) and choose Go through the door too.
4. The Cold Hall. A hall of the old kingdom under the ice, lit by a white fire that gives no warmth: an antechamber, a pillared nave with a side chamber to either hand (a chest in each), and the great hall with the white flame in its middle and the dais at the far end. The Hollow-sworn hold it: the tundra's skeletons and orcs, woken by the White Flame as its own. Razor ice underfoot in strips: jump it. At the far end waits the Steward of the Second Crown. He fights like a rift's master (cones, rings under your feet, the ground heaving around him: step out, or jump); at two thirds of his life he calls the Hollow-sworn to the hall, and at a third he raises his Seal: he is faster and harder, and shielded until the shield is broken. When he falls, the white fire goes out, the Steward's Seal is yours and the way out opens past the dais. The Seal goes to everyone who went through the door while on this step, even one who stepped out before he fell (or logged off: it finds them at their next login); a group member who is not on the chapter gets his loot and experience but no Seal. The door you came in by leaves at any time, and Aldith's door takes you back into the same hall while it stands (twenty minutes from the start, or two and a half after the Steward falls, for the loot): one door, one hall, and it is the Steward's death that turns the key. Five can be inside at a time. The Steward counts as a boss for the bounties and the achievements, but the hall is no rift: nothing here counts for the Rift Ladder or the rift bounties (it does count for your bestiary).
5. The Seal to Oswin. The seal leaves a ring of frost on the ledger (if it is gone, the word of what you saw will do: the story is what you did). The white lights are White Flames: cold copies of Ysolde's First Flame, lit on purpose by the Second Crown, the heirs of Aurel who would rather rule the Wane than chain it. A White Flame wakes the fallen too, but as its own: the Hollow-sworn. The Pale Herald was their herald. And the first White Flame burns in the Unlit Reach, kept by the Pale Queen. Chapter II is complete: gold, a good deal of experience, Ysolde's Warmth and the title Flamebearer. The Watch is putting a company together for the Unlit Reach: that is the raid (see Events), an epilogue for whoever is ready, never required.

What the letters say

Three letters and a page, read from the bag:

• The first, from the Steward to his Herald: walk the far roads and be seen; when they kill you, the White Flame that made you will make you again, and you will remember nothing.
• The second, a ledger kept at the White Flame: forty-one woken this month, none remembered their names. The old flames take a little gold each time; theirs takes the name.
• The third, in the Pale Queen's own hand: she lit her fire from Ysolde's. It gives no warmth and it keeps everything. Let them in one at a time.
• The flame that forgets, Ysolde's page: she saw a second way out of the grey once, a light that does not warm. If it is ever lit again, do not stand in it. Do not carry it.