The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Follow the Blood Trail in Where Loyalty Lies

Crake’s first real test in The Blood of Dawnwalker is a missing scout, and the only thing left behind is a smear of blood on a city street. The “Where Loyalty Lies” quest hands you two vague objectives — take a closer look at the blood trace, then follow the blood trail — and no map marker to hold your hand. The whole thing is a Focus Mode tracking sequence that runs from the Neustadt district to a barred door in The Middens.

Quick answer: Inspect the blood pool beside the wooden wagon in Neustadt to find the manumit’s shawl, then turn on Focus Mode and follow the yellow trail north and out of the city gate, past the wrecked cart, and down the stairs into The Middens until it ends at a blood-splattered warehouse door.

Before the blood trace objective appears

“Where Loyalty Lies” only unlocks once your infamy sits at Notorious, the fourth tier on the court’s infamy track. With that done, travel to Svartrau City during the day and walk near the Plaza to trigger the cutscene where Sara asks you to follow her.

After the manumits’ base cutscene, Crake explains the job. Work through his dialogue, head upstairs to leave the building, and the quest journal switches to “Find out what happened to the missing scouts” with a 1 / 2 counter. That is when the blood trace objective goes live.

Objective	Where it resolves
Take a closer look at the blood trace	Wooden wagon in Neustadt, southeast Svartrau City
Follow the blood trail	City streets, out the gate, past a wrecked cart, into The Middens
Find your way inside the warehouse	Locked wooden door at the end of the trail

Where the blood trace is in Neustadt

Open the map and confirm you are standing in Neustadt, the district in the southeast part of Svartrau City. The trace sits on open ground in the street rather than inside a building, near the house with the pink facade.

Svartrau City map with the player marker sitting in the Neustadt district — The map screen with your marker in Neustadt, the district where the blood trace starts. Image: Bandai Namco

Look for a wooden wagon parked in the street. The pool of blood is on the ground next to one of its wheels, and holding the inspect prompt on it turns up a manumit’s shawl. The objective immediately flips to “Follow the blood trail.”

Quest tracker updating to Follow the blood trail after inspecting the pool of blood — Inspecting the pool beside the wagon turns up the manumit’s shawl and updates the objective. Image: Bandai Namco

Follow the blood trail out of Svartrau City

The trail is invisible in normal view. Focus Mode paints it bright yellow, and it stays lit while the ability is active, so keep re-triggering it every time the drops seem to run out.

Activate Focus Mode at the wagon and pick up the yellow droplets heading away from it. The path winds north through the Neustadt streets, so keep the marks in view rather than running toward any fast-travel point.

Focus Mode lighting up a figure and traces in a dark space while tracking the trail — Focus Mode highlights the traces that are otherwise invisible while you track. Image: Bandai Namco

Continue until the marks pass under the stone archway and leave the city walls. Cross through the gate and re-scan on the other side to pick the trail back up on the open road.

Follow the blood trail objective on screen as the player moves through stone ruins outside the city — The tracker stays on “Follow the blood trail” as the route leaves the city walls behind. Image: Bandai Namco

Stop at the wrecked cart lying on the path and inspect it. This is a fixed point on the route, and it confirms you have not drifted onto a different road.

Take the stairs down into The Middens and keep following the winding path through the village. The trail thins out here, so scan often until the marks lead you to a wooden door with blood splattered across it.

Tracking blood marks along a dirt path through the village buildings in The Middens — The final stretch runs down into The Middens and through the village toward the warehouse. Image: Bandai Namco

Confirm you reached the right door

Interact with the bloodied wooden door at the end of the trail. It reads as Locked and refuses to open because it is blocked from the inside, which is the intended outcome — the objective updates to “Find your way inside the warehouse.” If the tracker still says “Follow the blood trail,” you are at the wrong door and need to re-scan for more marks.

To get in, move around to the right side of the warehouse, climb onto the cart parked there, and drop through the gap in the roof. Inside, inspect the bodies and exit through the door to reach a dying man. Talk him through the dialogue, then expect three enemies to jump you; clearing them wraps up “Where Loyalty Lies” and starts What Hunt the Night, which sends you back to Crake.

If the blood trail is not showing up

Focus Mode is not active. The droplets have no highlight in the normal view, so nothing appears on the ground until you trigger it.
You skipped the wagon. The trail does not spawn until you inspect the blood pool and pick up the manumit’s shawl.
You are in the wrong part of the city. The trace is in Neustadt, in the southeast section of Svartrau City, not near the Plaza where Sara meets you.
The active objective changed. Use the change objective input to put “Follow the blood trail” back on the tracker.

The whole tracking sequence is short — a couple of minutes of running if you keep Focus Mode up — and the only real trap is treating the locked warehouse door as a dead end. The door is supposed to stay shut. The roof is the way in.