The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Repair the Small Bridge Destroyed Shrine

The Small Bridge shrine in the southern part of Briar Sloughs starts out broken, which means it shows up gray on the map and does nothing for you. A small group of Brencis’s soldiers is responsible, and the piece you need to fix it is on one of their bodies.

Quick answer: Kill the three soldiers standing around the shrine, loot the Small Bridge Shrine’s Heart from the last one you take down, then interact with the shrine and place the heart to restore it.

Small Bridge shrine location and activity details

The shrine sits on a dirt path in the south of Briar Sloughs, below the soldier outpost where Mert is held. On the map it appears as a “Destroyed Shrines: Small Bridge” activity icon rather than a normal blue fast travel marker.

Detail	Value
Region	Briar Sloughs (southern area)
Activity name	Destroyed Shrines: Small Bridge
Objectives	Investigate the shrine; Stop the soldiers
Enemies	Three of Brencis’s soldiers, including an armoured one
Key item	Small Bridge Shrine’s Heart
Extra loot	Note: Brencis’s Orders — False Idols
Result	Working shrine (fast travel, skill purchases, time skip)

Open the map, hover the icon, and you can send the activity straight to your journal so the objectives stay tracked while you walk in.

Map screen showing the Stop the soldiers objective with the Show in Journal option — The map entry lists both objectives and lets you push the activity to the journal. Image: Rebel Wolves

Clear the soldiers guarding the shrine

Follow the dirt path down toward the small stone shrine. Three soldiers are standing around it, and they turn hostile as soon as you get close enough to be seen.

Fight them with your sword in the open ground beside the shrine. Keep moving between targets instead of committing to long combos, because all three will crowd you if you stand still.

Coen swinging his sword at an armoured soldier in a forest clearing near the shrine — Sword combat against the soldiers in the clearing beside the shrine. Image: Rebel Wolves

Lock on to one soldier at a time and finish him before switching. The armoured one takes the longest to bring down, so isolating him after the others are dead keeps the fight manageable.

Two armoured enemies engaged at once, with the right-hand one marked by an orange target — Targeting one enemy at a time keeps the three-on-one fight under control. Image: Rebel Wolves

Finish the last soldier and stay in the area. The fight has to end with all three down before the shrine can be restored.

Melee exchange with the last yellow-armoured soldier guarding the Small Bridge shrine — The armoured soldier is the toughest of the three and the one worth saving for last. Image: Rebel Wolves

Loot the Small Bridge Shrine’s Heart and restore the shrine

Search the bodies. One of the soldiers carries the Small Bridge Shrine’s Heart, the figurine that goes back into the shrine, along with a note titled Brencis’s Orders — False Idols explaining why the shrines are being torn down.

If you cannot spot the loot, hold Focus Mode (L2 on PlayStation, LT on Xbox) and look for the yellow highlights around the shrine and the corpses. Destroyed shrines always keep their figurine nearby, usually on an enemy.

Walk up to the stone shrine and interact with it to place the heart. The activity closes out and the shrine becomes functional immediately.

You know it worked when the activity clears from the journal and the map icon changes from a gray destroyed shrine to a blue, usable one. If the interaction prompt does nothing, you are still missing the heart from the soldiers’ bodies.

What the repaired shrine gives you

Shrines are the fast travel network in the game, and there are 111 of them in total, 94 already standing and 17 that start destroyed. You can only travel from one shrine to another you have already visited, so every repair widens the network you can jump between.

Beyond travel, shrines are also where you spend points on skills and where you skip time when you need day or night for something specific. Fixing the Small Bridge one early pays off because the southern stretch of Briar Sloughs is otherwise a long walk from the rest of the region.

Note: The area just past this shrine is worth a look. Cross the river to the south and follow the trail with Focus Mode to reach an abandoned camp and a Sanzhana, which starts the Pearly and Precious quest and opens her shop.

Once the heart is placed, the shrine stays repaired for the rest of the run, so you can fast travel out and come back to the south of Briar Sloughs whenever the region has something you need.