Walkthrough for the quest The Whispering Hillock in the game Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This page covers all main objectives, key steps, or helpful tips to guide you through the quest smoothly. Whenever possible, the guide points out locations for key items and details interactions with NPCs, among other tips. To ensure maximum clarity, in-game screenshots are included for easy-to-follow visual guidance.
Quest Group: Secondary Quests
Suggested level: 5
Location: Velen
This quest will appear in your journal when you travel near the Ancient Oak. You need to complete this quest to get information about Ciri from the crones in the Ladies of the Wood main quest. Your choice here will have a major impact on the Bloody Baron's family, fate of Downwarren's villagers, and the orphans in Crookback Bog.
Something about life in dreary backwoods settlements leads their inhabitants to hide the truth with misleading names. This takes the form of both hyperbole - a clump of bare trees called "Dragon Spike Forest" or a hole in the ground two paces deep named "The Chasm of Eternity" - and understatement - a horrid massacre calmly referred to as "the incident." Velen fit the mold in this regard, as Geralt learned while he wandered through it in search of Ciri. There he encountered a trio of highly suspicious magical sisters called the Ladies of the Wood, who directed him to a clump of bogside huts known as Downwarren. Geralt was to solve their "problem": a rash of mysterious murders. He spoke to the ealdorman and learned that the evil power behind the killings dwelled in the Whispering Hillock. Wherever else?
...or, if you visit a spirit trapped in a cave under the tree before you are required to do so in the Ladies of the Wood quest.
While roaming the thick, gloomy tangles of the Velen woodlands, Geralt came across a spirit whose heart was trapped in a cave under an eye-catching tree…
Ancient Oak
Velen / Novigrad
Cave Beneath the Whispering Hillock
Velen / Novigrad
Raven Nest
Velen / Novigrad
Find the entrance to the Cave Beneath the Whispering Hillock. There is a werewolf (8) near the entrance that you can try to skip it, but it is best to kill it.
Enter the cave, and follow the flooded corridor to the largest cavern where you will find a large beating heart trapped between the roots of a tree.
Depending on whether you came here before you contacted the crones in the Ladies of the Wood quest or after you talked to them and the ealdorman of Downwarren, the dialogue options will be slightly different. In the latter case, you will be able to ask the spirit about the crones. Eventually, the imprisoned spirit will ask you to help him get free. You can agree to help him or decide to kill him.
If you agree to help the spirit, he will tell you to gather three items needed to perform a ritual that will set him free: the spirit's bones, a raven's feather, and a wild, black horse.
Note: An additional entrance to the cave will be opened.
To get the bones go to a place in the marshes marked on the map. Find a small grave and interact with it to get what you came here for.
The feather can be found in the same Raven Nest where you can find a bottle for Johnny. So if you've done this part of the Ladies of the Wood quest, then you'll probably already have it. If you don't have it yet, just head to the nest and take it.
When you get the bones and the feather, then you can go towards the Crossroads signpost near which you should come across some black wild horses. Calm a wild horse using the Axii sign and then mount it.
Go back to the cave and enter through the entrance that opened after talking to the spirit.
You can start the ritual to free the spirit. As a result of the ritual, the spirit will transfer to the horse, becoming Black Beauty.
You can also change your mind and trick the spirit or kill it. If you choose to trick the spirit, then you will start the ritual but then refuse to finish it, letting the spirit to die without a fight. If you decide to kill it then the fight will start.
The truth hidden under the Whispering Hillock? A woman's spirit, imprisoned in a cave within it. Geralt felt sympathy for the ill-treated ghost and helped it enter the body of a horse, thus regaining its freedom.
Freeing the spirit will have the following consequences:
If you choose not to free the spirit, you will have to destroy the heart in the cave. During the fight, the spirit will summon endreka workers to defend it. Kill them as quickly as possible and then attack the roots protecting the heart and heart itself.
The truth hidden under the Whispering Hillock? A woman's spirit, imprisoned in a cave within it. Geralt concluded this foul being was responsible for murdering the inhabitants of Downwarren, and so destroyed its heart, loosening its last grasp on our world.
Killing a spirit will have the following consequences: