Working Her Magic is one of the quieter side quests in Svartrau City, and it never announces itself with an NPC or a conversation. It starts the moment you get inside a locked building marked on the map as the Curious House, and it ends a few minutes later with a hidden room, a skill manual, and a ring you will not find lying around anywhere else in the city.
Quick answer: Climb the scaffolding on the outside of the Curious House in Svartrau City, force the balcony door open, then use Focus in the attic to spot the bookshelf and push it aside. Inspecting the hex on the table inside the hidden room completes the objective.
Curious House location in Svartrau City
Open the Svartrau City map and look for the waypoint labelled Curious House. The building is sealed at street level, so there is no door to talk your way through and no key to hunt down. Everything you need is on the outside wall.
Night makes this considerably easier. Coen’s vampiric traversal is only available after dark, and the route in depends on climbing rather than on any daytime dialogue.
How to get inside the locked attic
Starting the quest: Investigate the attic using Focus
The attic looks like an ordinary storage space until you switch on Focus. One bookshelf lights up as an interactive object, and that highlight is the whole puzzle. Walk up to it and push it aside.
Moving the bookshelf reveals a sealed room behind it and adds Working Her Magic to your journal with the objective “Investigate the attic using Focus”. If the shelf does not highlight, you are standing too far from it — step closer and re-enter Focus rather than looking for a second trigger elsewhere in the room.
Hidden room loot and rewards
Clear the room before you touch anything on the table, because the investigation is what closes out the quest. Focus works inside the hidden room too and will mark the containers and readable items for you.
| Item | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Ring of Yrakhiri Regeneration | Chest inside the hidden room |
| Burning Blood Manual (Burning Blood, Part 2) | Awarded on completing the investigation |
| Note for the Neighbour | Readable note in the hidden room |
| Denarius (26) | Loose currency in the hidden room |
| Mortal’s Bone Brew (1) | Hidden room loot |
| Strong Spirits (2) | Hidden room loot |
The Burning Blood Manual is the second part of the Burning Blood skill, a combat ability that staggers enemies and sets them alight. The manual page carries a line attributed to Eleazar of Kussnacht.
It is difficult to manipulate someone’s blood by uttering magical phrases…
Inspecting the hex to complete Working Her Magic
The final action is the table in the middle of the hidden room. Approach the hex laid out on it and use the Inspect prompt.
You will know it worked immediately. The objective clears, the Burning Blood Manual drops into your inventory, and the XP payout is large enough to push most players straight into a level-up screen — in the run this walkthrough follows, Coen hit Level 29 the moment the hex was inspected.
If the objective is still sitting in your journal, the usual cause is that you looted the room but never used the Inspect prompt on the hex itself. Chests, notes and currency do not advance the quest — only the table does.
The whole detour takes a couple of minutes, which makes it one of the cheapest ways to pick up a skill manual and an accessory while you are already working through Svartrau City’s other objectives. If you are tracking something else in the area, the Curious House sits close enough that it is worth clearing on the way past rather than saving for a return trip.
