The Blood of Dawnwalker: Under Watchful Eyes Quest Guide

Under Watchful Eyes drops you into Stoneward Post at a low level, with your gear possibly confiscated and every guard in the camp ready to swarm the moment Mert’s cell opens. The objective text tells you to walk him out through the main gate, which sounds like a long fight. It isn’t, if you know about the side door.

Quick answer: Steal the Prison Keychain from the table in the upstairs room while the captain has his back turned, unlock Mert’s cell, then use that same key on the locked door in the lit alcove on the north side of the overseer’s tower. It leads to a second locked door and out past the walls, which completes the escort without the main gate fight.

Under Watchful Eyes: Quest start, objectives, and reward

This is a sub-quest of The Firebrand. It begins on its own the moment you finish that mission by speaking to Mert down in the dungeon, and it only appears if Mert survives The Firebrand. Everything takes place inside Stoneward Post in the Briar Sloughs.

Detail	Value
Location	Briar Sloughs / Stoneward Post
Quest giver	Mert
Requirement	Mert must survive The Firebrand
Objectives	Get the key to Mert’s cell; free Mert; escort Mert through the Stoneward Post’s main gate
Time cost	3 time segments
Fail state	None
Reward	250 XP

Under Watchful Eyes quest tracker on screen while Coen escorts Mert through Stoneward Post — The active tracker for Under Watchful Eyes, showing the escort objective at Stoneward Post. Image: Rebel Wolves

Get the Prison Keychain and free Mert

Leave Mert’s cell area and climb the stairs. If you came straight from your conversation with him, Rayko the Incorruptible is facing away from the room’s rear table, which is where the Prison Keychain sits.

Take the Prison Keychain. The Steal prompt turns red when someone can see you, so wait for it to go back to normal before grabbing it. If stealth goes wrong, the guard downstairs also drops the keychain when killed.

Sort out your weapon before you unlock anything. If you entered through the front and surrendered your gear, there is a Weathered Longsword in the back right corner of the downstairs room. Stealing it makes the guard hostile, so open your inventory and equip it immediately, before combat properly starts. Vampire claws are competitive with early swords, so unarmed is a real option too.

Unlock Mert’s cell. The guard stationed with him draws his sword the instant the door opens, so there is no quiet version of this during the day. At night you can use Focus Mode and Voracious Bite to remove him first.

Clear the tower. Expect Rayko upstairs plus a group of roughly three guards and a dog forcing their way in shortly after. There’s no way around them, so fight it out and make a quicksave once the room is quiet. You can also open the neighboring cell to free the woman inside; it changes nothing either way.

Objective text telling the player to escort Mert through the Stoneward Post's main gate — With Mert freed, the tracker switches to the escort objective through the main gate. Image: Rebel Wolves

Fastest exit: the locked door on the north side of the tower

The objective wording is misleading. You do not have to use the main gate at all, and the quest still registers as complete if you don’t.

Exit the tower with Mert behind you and do not walk forward into the main camp. Turn and follow the outside of the prison tower around to its north side.

Look for the lit alcove. The door there uses the same Prison Keychain that opened Mert’s cell, so you already have what you need.

Go through and open the second door on the other side, which also uses the prison key. It puts you outside the walls and ends the escort, skipping the camp guards and the boss entirely.

Tip: this rear door doubles as an entrance. Once it’s unlocked, you can come back into Stoneward Post later without handing over your weapons at the front gate, though that means at least two trips since you need the keychain first.

Main gate route: two wooden gates and Ceribus, the Scornful

If you want the loot and the XP from the garrison, take the long way. It’s a real difficulty spike at this point in the game, so quicksave between encounters.

Head up the stairs and out through the door, then move east into the camp and open the first wooden gate. Four guards attack at once here. Dodge the unblockable attacks and use directional parries to pick them off one at a time rather than trading with the group.

Coen approaching a wooden gate inside Stoneward Post with the escort objective active — One of the two wooden gates you have to open along the main gate route. Image: Rebel Wolves

There’s a lone guard in the southern part of this area. Use Voracious Bite on him to top your health back up before moving on, then loot the bodies and the camp.

Head north and open the second wooden gate. Ceribus, the Scornful waits on the other side with about three more guards. Keep the boss as your focus and parry his swings; the regular guards attack in between and are straightforward to block with the directional system.

Boss health bar for the Scornful visible as Coen fights two armored soldiers — The boss health bar appears once Ceribus, the Scornful joins the fight past the second gate. Image: Rebel Wolves

Loot Ceribus’s body, then move northwest and leave through the main gate on the east side to trigger the transition.

Ceribus, the Scornful loot

Item	Amount
Denarius	130
One-and-a-Half Mead	1
Minor Fortitude Paste	2
Brencis’s Elite Soldier’s Fibula	1
Ring of Purging (amulet)	1
Wicked Falchion	1
Adrenaline Rush Manual	1

Confirming the quest is complete and the final Mert conversation

Crossing the boundary outside the post plays a short loading screen, and you’ll see the QUEST ENDED banner for Under Watchful Eyes along with the 250 XP payout. That banner is your confirmation; the journal entry closes at the same time.

QUEST ENDED banner for Under Watchful Eyes with the XP reward displayed — The QUEST ENDED screen awarding 250 XP once Mert is safely outside. Image: Rebel Wolves

Before you talk to Mert on the other side, check your hunger. Feed on animals nearby if Coen is running low, otherwise he can drink from Mert automatically during the conversation. Assuming hunger is under control, pick The almshouse in Svartrau to send him somewhere safe.

Note: if you also freed Mert’s wife back at the mill, both of them turn up again later in Svartrau.

The choice really comes down to what you need. The side door is the clean, low-risk finish for an underleveled Coen, while the main gate route pays out a falchion, an amulet, an ability manual and a pile of Denarius for the trouble. Either way, the quest closes the same and Mert walks out alive.