The Firebrand, Mert’s rescue and the first Manumit meeting

Follow Vlad’s flour clue to the mill

The Firebrand becomes available after Smoke and Ashes. Search Vlad’s hut: inspect the flour sack in the back room, examine the mark on the sack, then tilt it to reveal the silver arrowheads hidden in the flour before following the lead to the mill.

In daytime, helping Renna with the cart gives you a way through the mill encounter without attacking its soldiers. Killing them can affect Renna and Mert’s later outcome, so use the cart conversation if you want the peaceful approach.

Reach Mert before the visit deadline

When the objective changes to going to Stoneward Post, the recorded deadline is 64 time segments: four days. Reach and speak to Mert before it expires. That visit is the deadline-sensitive step; freeing him afterward is a separate optional quest.

During daytime entry, choose to enlist and object that a soldier needs a weapon when the guard asks you to hand yours over. This documented dialogue lets you enter armed.

Get past Overseer Friedo without paying

1. Find the angry woman outside Friedo’s building and learn about her problem.
2. Speak to Yenno near the entrance.
3. Use the option to threaten reporting him to the commander and learn about the arrangement.
4. Return to Friedo and use the dialogue about his deal with Yenno and Cerbus.
5. Go to the cells. Tell the guard that Mert is going to be sick to begin the conversation.

Published walkthroughs give different bribe amounts, so this route uses the information branch instead. Speaking with Mert costs two segments and finishes The Firebrand, while opening Shadows in the Woods and the optional rescue.

Take the key and escort Mert through the back exit

1. Return to Friedo’s office and sneak while he faces away. Take the Prison Keyring from the shelves on the right side behind him.
2. Use it to open Mert’s cell. Check the three-segment rescue prompt and prepare for the nearby guards to become hostile.
3. Escort Mert toward the northern alcove with two locked doors. The same key opens this back route out of the prison.
4. Clear the enemies that stop the escort, then take Mert through the back exit and finish his conversation outside.

The journal can still point toward the main gate, but the documented northern exit completes the rescue. If visiting at night, heal before the final conversation: PC Gamer recommends staying above one health segment because this is a hunger moment. Its author describes the forced-feeding result as a concern, not a tested universal outcome.

If Mert died before you arrived

The investigation can continue even if you missed the visit deadline. Find Mert’s body behind the tower and the ring in the sack inside the nearby tent. The ring is the catalyst for speaking to his spirit with Compel Soul in daytime.

This recovers the lead toward Shadows in the Woods. It does not revive Mert or give you the successful prisoner-rescue outcome.

Continue to the first Manumit meeting

1. Follow Shadows in the Woods to the bridge south of Stoneward Post, near Small Bridge shrine.
2. Continue southeast to the three-way crossroads and the fallen hut where Sara is tied to a tree.
3. Once the rescue objective starts, act within its separate 32-segment, two-day window. Tell the guards she is your sister, then choose the answer offering coins and pay 100 Denarius; alternatively, defeat the two guards.
4. Follow Sara and the signal into the meeting. The trap and Crake’s interrogation lead to the next meeting objective in Svartrau.

This brings you to the first Manumit encounter. Later access to the faction’s main hideout and its eventual choices belongs to subsequent quests.

Related guides

• Quest directory
• Mert, Renna and Crake
• Combat and survival