The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Find Pieter’s Secret Spot in Buried Past

The Buried Past questline in The Blood of Dawnwalker opens with a vague instruction and no hand-holding. A merchant in Maragir, loosened up by a bottle of Slivovitz, tells you that you look exactly like Pieter and points you toward a place your father used to disappear to. The objective updates to “Find Pieter’s secret spot,” and the marker drops you into fog-choked woods with a half-collapsed shack at the end of the trail.

Quick answer: The secret spot is the Ruined Hut, west of St. Tyna’s Grove and south of Pilgrim’s Bridge, between the grove and Svartrau City. Inspect the snares and the tree outside, activate the Ruined Hut shrine, then walk inside to trigger the cutscene with Volk.

Quest Updated: Buried Past notification on screen as Coen heads out toward the marker — The Buried Past objective updates as soon as you leave the merchant and start toward the marker. Image: Rebel Wolves

Ruined Hut location west of St. Tyna’s Grove

Open the map before you set off. The Ruined Hut marker sits west of St. Tyna’s Grove, south of Pilgrim’s Bridge, in the stretch of forest between the grove and Svartrau City. There is no fast travel point at the hut until you reach it, so the approach is a straight run down the forest path from whichever nearby shrine you already have unlocked.

Detail	Value
Quest	Buried Past
Objective	Find Pieter’s secret spot, then Investigate Pieter’s secret spot
Location name	Ruined Hut
Nearest landmarks	West of St. Tyna’s Grove, south of Pilgrim’s Bridge
Quest giver	Merchant in Maragir (give him Slivovitz)
Encounter	Fist fight with Volk

Foggy forest trail leading toward the ruined shack marked on the quest map — The path to the Ruined Hut runs through thick fog west of St. Tyna’s Grove. Image: Rebel Wolves

Investigate Pieter’s secret spot: The clues outside the hut

Reaching the marker flips the objective to “Investigate Pieter’s secret spot.” Two things need your attention before the door, and skipping them can cost you optional content later in the questline.

Walk the fence line outside the shack and inspect the snares. Coen notes that they could be set for game or for people wandering too close, which is your first hint that the hut is occupied and its owner is not friendly.

Inspect the tree standing near the hut. It is part of the same investigation cluster and takes only a moment.

Activate the Ruined Hut shrine sitting beside the building. This unlocks it as a fast travel point, which matters because Buried Past requires roughly four separate visits spread across four in-game days.

Enter the hut. The door is unlocked and stepping inside triggers the cutscene automatically. A voice calls out asking whether Pieter has come back, and the situation deteriorates from there.

Tip: Do not mention the snares to Volk during the first conversation. Leave them unspoken, then travel east of the hut to the question mark on the map, which turns out to be a wolves’ den. Clear it, and on your next visit Coen can tell Volk the wolf problem is already handled, saving you a full time segment.

The Volk fight and how to end it

Volk is blind, old, and entirely convinced you are a thief who came to rob him. He refuses to listen to anything Coen says, dismissing the attempts to talk as a trick to make him drop his guard. The fight is unavoidable and it is a straightforward melee brawl, not a boss encounter with special mechanics.

Volk's health bar appears once the brawl starts. Shown at 01:29 in PazarGamingGuides’s video. Image: Rebel Wolves

Beat him down and he yields on his own. There is no risk of killing him here, and losing the fight simply means trying again.

Volk yielding on the floor of the hut after the fist fight ends — Volk gives up once his health runs out and tells Coen to leave. Image: Rebel Wolves

Dialogue choices that calm Volk down

After the fight, Volk still wants you gone. The conversation only turns when Coen states plainly that he is Pieter’s son. Volk hesitates, admits you sound like “the old fart,” and then recognizes the resemblance in your voice. He is horrified at how close he came to killing you and invites you in, with a warning to wipe your boots.

Follow that by telling him your father has been captured by the vrakhiri. This is the line that explains why Coen showed up instead of Pieter and moves the quest into its first proper visit.

Dialogue wheel showing the option My father's been captured selected while talking to Volk — Pick “My father’s been captured.” to explain why Pieter did not come himself. Image: Rebel Wolves

Note: On every visit to the hut, exhaust all of Volk’s white dialogue options and keep inspecting objects around the place. Those extra lines are what prompt him to open up about Pieter’s past and to ask Coen for help with chores. Rushing the conversation locks you out of the optional objectives.

How to confirm the objective completed

You know the investigation is done when the cutscene fires and Volk walks you into the hut. At that point the objective clears and the first visit begins, with the meeting itself consuming one hour of the day. From there Volk offers optional tasks such as chopping wood and dealing with the wolves, each costing another hour.

If the cutscene does not trigger, the usual cause is that you have not physically stepped inside the hut. The snares, the tree, and the shrine are all outside the building, and interacting with them alone will not advance the quest. Walk through the doorway and the scene starts on its own.

Buried Past runs across roughly four days, and the Ruined Hut becomes your anchor point for all of it, so unlocking that shrine on the first trip pays off every time you come back. Volk does not take up entire days, just a few time segments per visit, which leaves room to handle other work in Vale Sangora between conversations. Keep an eye on the 13-day timer ticking against Pieter’s rescue while you decide how much of the old man’s chore list is worth your hours.