Can't use blood altar

My Einhar's Menagerie quest is stuck on "Use the Blood Altar" but I have no recipes unlocked and no captured creatures. Playing through for the first time with a friend and we were separated when he killed the beast for the quest. We let the riverways refresh and scoured it trying to find a beast for me to kill but came up empty handed, is there any way around this issue?

You can just keep on going and you'll meet Einhar again and capture beasts