The Blood of Dawnwalker: Where Old Devils Lie Full Quest Walkthrough
Every objective in Anca's Font of Life hunt, from Enolf's riddles to the painted runes that open the sealed door.
Every objective in Anca’s Font of Life hunt, from Enolf’s riddles to the painted runes that open the sealed door.
by Sehaj Padda
Where Old Devils Lie is the Anca side quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker that finally puts a location to the Font of Life. It starts as a map riddle at a tavern table and ends with Coen shirtless in a buried temple, covered in wet pigment, watching a stone door grind open. Nothing here is hidden behind a skill check, but two things trip people up: the noon timing on the start, and the Focus Mode sweep in the final chamber.
Quick answer: Wait one full in-game day after Between the Words, speak to Anca at the Crossroads Inn before noon, tie Enolf’s clues to the isolated mountain shrine and the lake, follow the streams upriver into the ruins, squeeze in through the right-side gap, then use Focus Mode on the stone mortar, the broken pot and the murals so Anca can paint the runes on Coen.
Where Old Devils Lie quest requirements and rewards
Detail
Value
Quest giver
Anca
Starting location
Crossroads Inn, southeast of St. Tyna’s Grove in Vale Sangora
Requirement
Complete Between the Words, then let one full in-game day pass
Availability
Daytime start; you must reach Anca before noon
Time cost
Roughly 5 time segments across the whole quest
Reward
150 XP
Leads into
Stronger Than Achilles, which begins the moment the door shuts
Anca’s questline runs Echoes of Silenced Bells, then Between the Words, then this. Most Precious Thing sits in the middle as an optional detour and does not gate anything here.
Note: the quest can be lost to the story clock. If you burn through the 30 days and go after Brencis, Where Old Devils Lie closes out unfinished.
Head to the Crossroads Inn and talk to Anca once she has finished organising her notes. Pick the line about going to search for the Font of Life to formally open the quest.
Sit through her explanation of the Impluvium Vitae, the Font of Life, and the writings she pulled from the convent books. The clues come from Enolf, a wandering mystic, and they read as deliberate nonsense until you put them on the map.
Open the map puzzle and answer the first clue, “Lord’s symbol close to old devils, no soul to comfort me.” That points to a religious marker with nobody around it, so choose the isolated shrine up in the mountains rather than anything near a settlement.
The map puzzle where you match Enolf’s clue to the shrine away from any settlement. Image: Bandai Namco
Work through the second clue, the “tormented visage etched onto clouds.” Coen and Anca land on a reflection, which means a body of water, and that answer sets up the lake you visit next.
Talk to Anca again to set out. If the conversation has pushed you past midday, she will refuse to leave, and the objective changes to returning to her before noon on another day. Sleep, do something cheap with your time, and come back in the morning.
Follow Anca north out of the inn and up into the wilderness. Wolves ambush you partway along the climb, and Anca fights alongside you, so there is no escort babysitting to worry about.
The Follow Anca objective as the pair climb the mountain path toward the overlook. Image: Bandai Namco
Keep going uphill until you reach the overlook. The cutscene confirms the water below is Enolf’s lake, and the conversation decodes the “ribbons of false sky” as the streams feeding into it.
Head northeast and follow the water upriver past the waterfalls. Three streams branch off the lake, and the journal openly frames this as trial and error, but the correct one leads to a stone passage and a cave.
Push through the cave, killing the Undead Dogs waiting inside, and come out on the far side. The temple complex is built straight into the cliff face across the misty valley.
The journal entry for the passage running through the ruins. Image: Bandai Namco
Drop down into the valley and clear the undead dogs prowling the approach. The main entrance is collapsed, so the objective becomes finding another way in.
Inspect the points marked around the exterior and work along the right-hand side of the structure, behind the statue. A fallen column gets you up to a narrow crevice in the rock.
Squeeze through the gap. Coen and Anca come out in a chamber with a large, still-colourful wall painting, and you need to inspect three separate points on it to move on.
The Enter the ruins objective as Coen closes in on the temple built into the cliff. Image: Bandai Namco
Explore before you commit to the main path. The side chamber off to the northwest holds Ancient Undead and loot, and the murals and statue scattered through the interior are all interactable.
Return to the painting, head east and open the large green door. Clear the enemies beyond it with Anca, then keep east through the next door until you hit the massive sealed one.
Anca may ask you to clear the ruins so she can wait somewhere safe. Do not simply walk off and forget about her here, because leaving her behind in the rubble is one of the ways this quest ends badly.
Opening the sealed door with Focus Mode and the runes
The sealed door has no lever and no key. It reads the body of whoever stands in front of it, which is why the whole chamber is a set of instructions left behind by the people who used to perform the ritual.
Turn on Focus Mode and inspect every highlighted object in the room. The three that matter are the stone mortar with the rune on it, the broken pot of coloured dust, and the wall paintings showing figures marked up for the trial.
Talk to Anca and lay out what you found. Say there was an element of trial to it, then identify the coloured dust as a pigment, and Coen puts the pieces together himself.
The chamber conversation where Coen and Anca piece together the ritual. Image: Bandai Namco
Walk up to the sealed door. The markings glow, the mechanism releases, and the pair step through into the passage beyond.
Anca romance dialogue choices in Where Old Devils Lie
Several conversations along the way feed Anca’s romance route. None of them change the quest outcome, so skip them freely if you are not pursuing her.
Conversation
Choices
At the lake overlook
Yeah, sounds deeply familiar / Something troubling you? / I care about you / Which way do we go? / ‘False sky’ – sounds like another reflection
Uphill past the undead dogs
Nice to see you smile / I’m enjoying your company, too / Yes?
After squeezing into the ruins
You sure are excited to be here / Alright, let’s
Before the sealed door
Chin up. We’ll figure something out
How to confirm the quest completed, and how it can fail
You know it worked when the door slams shut behind you and the journal immediately swaps over to Stronger Than Achilles, with 150 XP banked for Where Old Devils Lie. There is no return trip and no separate hand-in with Anca.
Three things stop that from happening. Feeding on Anca during a blood craving kills her outright. Abandoning her inside the ruins gets her killed by whatever is still crawling around in there. And going to confront Brencis with the quest unfinished closes it permanently.
Everything past the painted door is the Font of Life itself, and that trial is where the Latin line from Enolf’s account, Laves in impluvium vitae et exibis fortior Achille, actually gets tested. Save before you step through if you want the option to walk that back.
