After unsealing the tomb door, enter the grave of Aaro.
There you’ll find it: The corpse of Aaro, with the Blade of the Haunted, ready to be taken away!
Pick it up, then defeat its sleeping “guardians”.
After that, return home or wherever you want to go from here.
But something’s wrong with that Blade! It has no physical form, but rather seems to be only a “ghostly shadow” of a sword, useless in combat!
So the question is now: Is this really the legendary “Blade of the Haunted”?
Proceed to the next chapter to learn the truth.
Enter the unsealed tomb door and walk down the turning hallway, descending deep into the underground. You’ll have to face some minor foes, until you reach a large burial-chamber at its bottom.
You’ll notice soon enough that approaching the corpse makes it impossible to leave the chamber again! Is this a trap? So it seems.
Anyway, you have no other choice than to take the Blade, but that will arouse the sleeping guardians (two petrified Liches, only statues at first, but waiting to wake up and kill anybody trying to steal the Blade). You have to defeat them (no alternative here).
After killing the guardians, you’ll have to find a way to activate the moving stairs, which will allow you to leave the chamber again.
During your descent down the turning hallway, you’ll encounter up to 4 ghosts and 2 evil stones, the latter aiming fire and shock bolts at you.
When you have overcome this and arrived at the bottom chamber, you’ll have to jump down a ridge to approach the corpse of Aaro. You’ll then notice that it’s too high to jump up again (only with very high acrobatics and/or mighty spells and potions, you will be able to do it, but most people won’t). There’s a moving stair that looks like a comfortable way to leave, but it’s down, so no way to use it.
Ignore the stairs for now and approach the corpse of Aaro (enjoy the breathing sound, it will cease very soon!)
At first, you should pick up the three little potion flagons lying next to the goblet at the corpse’s right hand. They’re essential for the quest! You need at least one of them, so if you don’t take it now, you’ll have to return later. They are “Dried Essences”, so they aren’t of any use yet. That’s why they’re listed under the “Misc Items” tab in your inventory, and not in the ingredients/potions tab.
Now it’s time to take the “Blade of the Haunted” from the corpse!
After a journal message telling you that the Blade is strangely “ghost-like”, the “breathing sound” will stop and the two “guardian statues” at the far end of the hall will come to live by transforming into real Liches. They’ll instantly attack you. There’s no other way than to defeat them (unless you aren’t able to jump up the ridge thanks to very high acrobatics, as mentioned above).
After killing the guardians, loot them to find two more Key Stones (yellow and red), similar to the one you’ve placed onto the pedestal at the tomb entrance in chapter 6.
Place the Key Stones onto their appropriate pedestals/holders (those flanking the foot of the deactivated stairs) in the same was as you did it at the tomb entrance. This will activate the stairs and thus allow you to leave.
If you’re quick enough, you might manage to snatch one (or even both!) Key Stones and then run up the stairs before it has been lowered (once again this requires decent acrobatics/speed).
Return back to the tomb entrance. Here you can decide whether also to take Manchises’ Key Stone with you (which will seal the door again).
Note that you can now sell any of the Key Stones for a good price, but before doing this, make sure that you have taken everything relevant from the tomb with you! If you have missed something (e.g. the Dried Essences), and you sell the Key Stone of Manchises’, you will never be able to complete the quest!
So now you surely want to know what to do next, and what to make out of that strange ghostly (and absolutely useless) sword!
Time to proceed to the next chapter.
