Aurelius’s Tower is one of the few places in The Blood of Dawnwalker where the quest marker drops you at a building and then stops helping. The “Search the tower” step of Who Pulls the Strings gives you a vertical dungeon, two combat encounters, and one specific object you have to interact with before Coen will admit he found anything.
Quick answer: Climb to the top floor of Aurelius’s Tower, kill Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy, then inspect Silas’s Book on the desk in her room. The objective immediately changes to “Show Marat the book.”
Where Aurelius’s Tower is and how to get inside
Who Pulls the Strings begins at the Manumit Hideout with Marat, and it opens up once you finish What Moves the Dead. Marat has already told Coen where the mage Aurelius keeps the book, so the tower is marked for you in The Silts. The quest works during the day or at night, and the whole thing costs five time segments off the 30-day clock.
A single enemy, the Unblinking Guardian, waits outside. Kill it first, because you cannot get in through the front while it is alive and hunting you. Then walk around the base of the tower and look up for a second-floor window. Climb the exterior wall and go in through that window.
Note: the quest is missable and it has two failure endings, one of which is simply never confronting Aurelius in his tower. If the coronation deadline runs out first, the manumit path closes for good.
Search the tower: Floor-by-floor route
The “Search the tower” objective costs three time segments on its own. The layout is simple once you know that the tower makes you step outside twice, onto exterior wooden stairs, to reach the next level.
Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy boss fight and the Vault Key
Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy holds the top floor and she is the only named enemy in the tower. Beating her is what unlocks the rest of the room, so there is no way to grab the book and slip out early.
Loot her remains once she goes down. The important drop is the Vault Key, and she also carries rarer pickups such as the Cycle of Ruin Manual, an Aetheric Attunement, Dust of Anachore, and a Golden Cross. Do not walk past the body, because the key opens the locked chest in the same area.
Silas’s Book and the Life Lock hex
Silas’s Book sits on the desk in Svetlana’s room. Interact with it, watch the short cutscene, and the journal updates on the spot. This is the only interaction that counts as “searching” the tower, so if nothing has changed, you have not touched the desk yet.
Behind the gate on the same floor there is a locked chest. Use the Vault Key on it to pull out the Life Lock Manual, which is what actually puts the Life Lock witchcraft ability in your book. The game confirms it with a “NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: Life Lock” banner. The vault also holds odds and ends like a Globe of Utha’s Light, a Venom Claws Ampoule, and a Potent Viaticus Attunement.
Coen explains the point of all this back at the hideout. The book contains a hex that weakens the gargoyles guarding Greifberg Castle, which is why Marat wanted it in the first place.
How to confirm the objective actually completed
Three things should happen more or less at once after you read the book on the desk. The tracked objective flips from “Search the tower” to “Show Marat the book,” the journal picks up the separate step about learning the Life Lock hex from Silas’s notes, and Silas’s Book appears in your inventory.
| Objective | Time cost |
|---|---|
| Go to Aurelius’s Tower | — |
| Find a way to enter the tower | — |
| Search the tower | 3 segments |
| Show Marat the book | 2 segments |
| Ask Marat how preparations are going | — |
| Acquire Life Lock hex from Silas’s book and learn it | — |
If the journal says you still need the book
There is a known display bug on this quest. If you loot everything on the top floor, including the book, and read it before going through the final door, the journal can end up showing a greyed-out “show the book to Marat” line as though you already handed it over, while the tower objective still looks unfinished.
It is cosmetic. Go back to Marat anyway and the dialogue option that ends the quest is still there, so there is no need to reload an old save and redo the tower.
Marat only ever appears in his own room inside the Manumit Hideout. If the room is empty, leave the hideout, fast travel somewhere else, then travel back and check again.
Handing over Silas’s Book wraps the quest with 1,000 XP and the Life Lock witchcraft ability, and it sets up the march on Greifberg Castle. Once that conversation is done, ask Marat what else he wanted to talk about and Distant Shadows starts, which carries on Crake’s romance line.
