The Blood of Dawnwalker: How to Search the Tower in Who Pulls the Strings

Aurelius’s Tower in The Silts is the only place the “Search the tower” objective can be finished, and it is short enough to clear in a single climb. The tower has three levels, two guarded checkpoints, and one item that actually matters to the quest.

Quick answer: Climb to the top floor of Aurelius’s Tower, kill Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy, then interact with Silas’s Book on the desk beside her. The objective flips to “Show Morat the book” the moment the cutscene plays.

Who Pulls the Strings: Quest details and time cost

Marat at the Manumit Hideout hands you this one after What Moves the Dead wraps up, and he has already told Coen where the tower stands. The quest is missable and can fail outright, so do not leave it sitting once you have started it.

Detail	Value
Region	The Silts
Quest giver	Marat, at the Manumit Hideout
Time of day	Day or night, both work
Total time cost	5 time units
“Search the tower” cost	3 time units
“Show Morat the book” cost	2 time units
Reward	1000 XP and the Life Lock Witchcraft ability
Missable	Yes

Note: The quest carries two failure endings. One triggers if you fall out with the manumits, the other if you never confront Aurelius in his tower before the clock runs out.

Getting inside Aurelius’s Tower

Travel to Aurelius’s Tower in The Silts. An Unblinking Guardian waits outside the base of the tower and blocks your approach, so clear it before anything else.

Circle around the outside of the tower and look up for a second-floor window. The front door is not your way in — you climb the exterior wall and drop through that opening.

Once inside, sweep the ground floor. There is a table worth looting here, and the interior staircase in this room starts the climb.

Coen moves through a torchlit stone interior with the quest tracker showing the search objective — The quest tracker keeps “Search the tower” pinned while you work through the tower’s lower level. Image: Rebel Wolves

Clearing the second floor guards

Follow the interior stairs up, then step outside onto the wooden exterior staircase that runs along the tower wall. That is the route to the middle floor.

Two soldiers are waiting the moment you enter the second floor. Neither is a boss, but they will pressure you together, so pull them into the open space rather than fighting in the stairwell.

After the fight, loot both bodies and the chests on this floor. Consumables and crafting pickups turn up here, including Moldovan Red Wine and Aetheric Attunement, and the next set of exterior stairs sits just past the room.

Looting the defeated soldiers on the middle floor before heading up the outer stairs. Shown at 01:20 in PazarGamingGuides’s video. Image: Rebel Wolves

Beating Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy

The top floor holds the only real fight in the tower. Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy gets her own boss bar, and she has to go down before the objective will move on. Coen hits harder with claws at night, so if you are struggling on a higher difficulty, arriving after dark is the easier version of this fight.

Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy boss bar on screen as Coen closes in on the highlighted target — Svetlana, The Dark Prodigy guards the top floor of the tower. Image: Rebel Wolves

Her body carries the Vault Key along with a spread of items, so loot her before you move on. Toggling your active abilities mid-fight is worth doing here if you have not settled on a loadout, since the tower is enclosed and leaves little room to reposition.

On-screen prompt showing the Z button bound to toggle active abilities during combat — The toggle active abilities prompt lets you swap your loadout before committing to the boss. Image: Rebel Wolves

Silas’s Book location and how the objective completes

Silas’s Book is the thing the objective is actually asking for. It sits on the desk on the top floor, in the same room where you fought Svetlana. Walk up to it and interact with the book itself — picking it up as loot is not the same as reading it.

Open rune-covered book on screen with the F key prompt over the central sigil — Interacting with the open rune-marked pages of Silas’s Book on the top-floor desk. Image: Rebel Wolves

A short cutscene plays, Coen reads the hex that weakens the gargoyles at Greifberg Castle, and the tracker updates to “Show Morat the book.” That tracker change is your confirmation the tower is done.

Before you leave, use the Vault Key on the locked chest behind the metal gate on the top floor. Inside is the Life Lock Manual, which triggers the NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED prompt for Life Lock. You still have to learn the hex from your ability screen for it to be usable.

If the objective will not clear after taking the book

Some players hit a display bug where the journal keeps pointing at the tower even after Silas’s Book has been read, with the “Show Morat the book” step already greyed out. It appears to be tied to looting the book and reading it before passing through the final door on the top floor.

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The fix is to ignore the journal. Head back to Marat at the Manumit Hideout and talk to him — the dialogue that closes the quest is still there, so there is no need to replay the tower. If Marat is not in his room at the hideout, leave, fast travel somewhere else, then return and check again.

Handing the book over costs another 2 time units and pays out 1000 XP once Marat has heard about the hex. Keep talking to him afterwards and ask how the manumits’ preparations are going, then ask what else he wanted to discuss to open Distant Shadows, which carries on Crake’s romance line.