The Blood of Dawnwalker: Into the Den and the Secret Cache Marked With X

Into the Den is a small hidden quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker that starts with a corpse in a bear’s den and ends with a stash buried under a flat stone at an abandoned logging site. There is no NPC involved and no dialogue to navigate. You read a letter, walk west, and pull loot out of a hole in the ground.

Quick answer: Loot the body in the bear’s den west of the Northern Foothills Shrine, read the Tattered Letter, then go to the westernmost hut inside the marked quest circle and interact with the flat stones under the painted X to open the cache.

Before you start: the 1 Time Segment cost

Opening the cache is not free. Interacting with the stones pushes the clock forward by one hour, which is one Time Segment. That matters during the Prologue, because the Mass acts as a hard cutoff.

If you trigger the dig with only one segment left, the quest can register as finished while the Prologue moves on before you actually pick up the items. Leave yourself at least two Time Segments before the Mass, or skip Into the Den entirely for now. The quest stays available after the Prologue ends, and nothing about it expires.

Detail	Value
Region	Vale Sangora
Time cost	1 Time Segment (1 hour)
Starting point	Corpse inside the bear’s den
Cache location	Western hut at the old logging site
Quest XP	100 XP
Safe window	2+ Time Segments before the Mass

Finding the body in the bear’s den

Head west from the Northern Foothills Shrine until you run into a bear. The den itself is flagged with a quest marker on the map, and the beast is guarding it. Kill it before you try to explore the cave.

Go inside the cave and look for the corpse on the ground. Fireflies hover over the right one, and if you are still struggling to spot it, switch on Focus Mode. The correct body glows yellow or gold.

Coen searching the dark interior of the bear den with the quest objective tracked on the right — Inside the den, with the “Investigate the body” objective still active. Image: Rebel Wolves

Loot the body. Alongside odds and ends like Tall Boots, Denarius, a Canteen of Elderflower Juice and Linseed Oil, you pick up the Tattered Letter, which is the item the whole quest hangs on.

Read the letter from your inventory. It mentions a clearing, a hut, and useful items stashed underneath a flat stone marked with an “X”, signed off by someone going by the initial D. Reading it flips the objective to “Find a secret cache marked with X“.

The Tattered Letter open on screen, showing the clue about a flat stone marked with an X — The Tattered Letter describes a cache hidden beneath a flat stone marked with an X. Image: Rebel Wolves

Where the secret cache marked with X is

Open the map. A quest circle now sits west of the den, over an old logging site. The game does not pin the exact stone, only the general search area, so the letter’s wording is doing the real work here.

Map screen showing the quest search area west of the bear den over the old logging site — The updated objective points to a search circle covering the logging site west of the den. Image: Rebel Wolves

Travel to the logging site and walk to the western end of the marked area. There are several small wooden huts here, and only the western one holds the stash.

Look for a large X painted on the hut wall with flat stones sitting directly beneath it. Focus Mode makes the spot easier to pick out if the lighting is poor. Coen will remark that the stone marked with a cross must be the one from the letter.

Interact with the stones to uncover the cache. Time jumps forward one hour at this point, so make sure you are not right up against the Mass before you press the button.

What the cache contains and why the letter matters most

The stash is a manumit cache, which Coen notes when he sees the mix of weapons, silver and provisions inside. Completing Into the Den awards 100 XP on top of whatever you carry out.

Reward	Use
Artisan’s Tunic	Early-game armor you will outgrow quickly
Rebel’s Falchion	Early-game sword, likewise a stopgap
Letter with a Tip	Unlocks a dialogue option with the Silver Trader in Svartrau City
Food and small items	Bread, carrot, turnip and similar consumables
Quest XP	100 XP

Loot window from the cache with the Artisan's Tunic selected and its stats shown — The cache loot window, with the Artisan’s Tunic highlighted alongside the rest of the stash. Image: Rebel Wolves

The Letter with a Tip is the piece worth going out of your way for. It is a short note about someone hunting for a silver fence, with a lead pointing at the Neustadt district, and it opens an extra line of dialogue with the Silver Trader in Svartrau City. That lets Coen push the trader into dealing in silver without first grinding Infamy up to the level the conversation would normally demand, which is useful if you are sitting on silver goods from other caches.

The tunic and falchion are fine for the opening hours, but neither is a reason on its own to spend a Time Segment during the Prologue.

How to confirm the quest is finished

Once you take the items, a QUEST ENDED banner appears with Into the Den named on it, and the journal entry closes out. Coen’s closing thought about a manumit cache is the other tell that the correct stash was opened rather than a random container.

If the quest ended but your inventory is empty of the tunic, falchion and Letter with a Tip, the hour spent digging almost certainly rolled you past the Mass before the loot window opened. Reload an earlier save with more Time Segments in hand, or leave the den and the logging site alone until the Prologue is behind you and the clock stops squeezing you.

Note: the letter’s clue is the only guidance you get for the stone’s position. If you sweep the eastern huts first and come up empty, you have not broken anything, you are simply in the wrong hut. Keep working west inside the circle.