One of Us Will Die
Curse of Strahd Adventure Report 17:
The Feast of St. Andral

The taproom of the Blue Water Inn falls still. Even the fire in the hearth seems to quiet, its crackling subdued beneath the weight of what’s just happened.

Rictavio stands there.. no, Rudolph van Richten stands there—his old, trembling hands frozen on the neck of his lute. The echoes of his song still hang in the air like ghosts refusing to fade.

Across from him, Esmerelda d’Avenir stands motionless. Her lips tremble. Her tears fall freely, cutting through the dust and ash of the road that still clings to her face. The song they sang together still burns in her mind, each word now twisted by doubt.

He probably didn’t mean a single word.

“Go home, Esme,” he says softly, voice cracking. It’s meant to sound firm, final.. merciful even. It sounds instead like cowardice dressed as kindness.

The crowd looks between them, uncomfortable, sensing something breaking—something deeply personal and far too human to witness.

At the edge of the room, Rowan Daggerford’s chair scrapes violently against the floor. She has been standing in the shadows all evening, watching the performance from start to end. She steps forward now like a storm breaking loose, her jaw set, her gauntlets creaking as she clenches her fists.

“Go home?” she says, voice low and dangerous. “That’s all you have to say?”

Rictavio barely has time to turn before her hand grabs his collar and slams him against the wall. The force rattles the bottles behind the bar.

Rowan’s eyes burn with fury. “How dare you play games with her heart!”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Rictavio sputters, but even his lies sound exhausted.

The tavern goes deathly silent. The tension is thick enough to choke on.

Rowan doesn’t let go. She drags him toward a chair and forces him down, armor scraping against the wood. “Sit. You’re going to face her.”

“Rowan.. please…” Esme’s voice wavers. She takes a half-step forward, but she can’t move closer. She’s seen this before; years ago. She sees it again now: a man who cared for her, cornered, accused, broken. It’s her father all over again; the day Van Richten killed him in front of her.

Rowan leans close, her voice a whip. “If you hate Vistani so much, then tell her. Go on. Tell her how you feel about her kind, after everything she’s done for you, after everything she lost trying to find you!”

Rictavio’s jaw trembles. His hand clenches around the edge of the table as though he could steady the shaking inside him.

“Say it!” Rowan barks.

He looks at Esme. His lips part.. but only the faintest whisper comes out. “I… hate the Vistani.”

Esme’s breath catches.

For a moment, all is still. Then the knight’s gauntleted fist slams into his stomach with enough force to lift him from his chair. The old man flies backward, striking a wooden post with a hollow thud. The impact knocks his hat of disguise aside, and the illusion shatters.

Gone is the flamboyant bard in bright silks and false smiles. What remains is a frail old man with hollow eyes, his hair gone silver-white, his face carved deep with guilt. Dr. Rudolph van Richten: the famed monster hunter. The man who slew vampires, ghosts, liches… and who could not conquer his own grief.

The audience gasps.

Esme stares at him, her hand over her mouth. He looks so small. So weak. The great Van Richten, reduced to a trembling shadow of the man so many idolized.

“You…” Rowan’s voice is shaking with fury. “You hypocrite. You hunt monsters, but you can’t even face the one inside you.”

He looks up at her with sunken eyes. “You don’t understand!”

“No,” Rowan growls. “You don’t!”

“Leave me!” The old man spits before snapping his fingers. He blinks out of existence. Where he is, they can no longer tell.

The tavern patrons scatter, chairs clattering to the floor. The only ones who don’t move are Rowan, standing like a sentinel, and Esme, her hands shaking. She once felt resentment for him for casting her out. Her heart sinks as it feels as if it is being torn apart by the hate she feels from him. Her heart cannot bring itself to hate him back if not for what fills it now… Not hatred. Heartbreak.

Rictavio watches the tavern from a nearby rooftop, putting his hat of disguise back on. “She is the best of us,” he whispers, voice barely audible. “Better than I ever was.” Van Richten does what he does best. He flees. No matter how many monsters fell by his hand, Rowan was right, he would never escape the beast within his own tortured soul.

Hope jerks awake to Kellam’s frantic barking at the carriage window — a rapid, urgent staccato. The sound is a code in his throat: Help! Coffin shop! Ambush! Only the rhythm comes through to human ears, but Hope recognizes the urgency. She vaults from the carriage before the others even look up.

Rowan and Esme are already at the tavern door, boots slamming on the cobbles. The night air tastes of iron and smoke. They run.

Inside the coffin-maker’s storage, violence is already uncoiling. Volenta has Sabrione pinned against a crate, one hand crushing a wrist, the other twisting the knife as she whispers in the other vampire’s ear. Her smile is a thin, bright line of malice. “How does it feel,” she purrs, “to be the prey for once? After centuries as the hunter—how does it feel to know everything you prized can be broken?” She laughs, delighted by the cruelty of the question.

Sabrione’s face is a hard mask; but the laugh in Volenta’s tone is a match to a fuse. The vampire claws at Volenta’s wrist. She’s too strong. She can’t break free. She is going to die here!

Marjorie is not far off. She plants her crook into the ground and whispers a command like prayer and promise. Rats pour from shadows, from gutters, from hollow crates as if conjured by the earth itself. They flood Volenta’s boots and climb up her skirts, teeth finding flesh and leather. Volenta screams, the sound tearing through the alley. The rodents bite and gnaw, but she laughs through it, more possessed by rage than pain.

“Get back!” Marjorie shouts, voice iron. She stands shoulder to shoulder with Soa, who clanks and clatters, drawing his sword to defend his friends. The rats are hers to command; they obey the cadence in her voice. The swarm keeps pressure on Volenta, gives Sabrione a sliver of space to move away from her and the rest of the undead filth.

Ivan, the voice in Sabrione’s skull, roars through her like lightning. Her sword screams as it leaves the scabbard. For a heartbeat it is all vengeance and hunger. Then she bites the inside of her cheek and does not lunge.

“We’re surrounded,” Marjorie says in a rush, the tactical clarity of a shepherd who’s had wolves on her trail all her life. “Out. Now!”

Sabrione’s left hand goes to the pistol. Her aim is flat, efficient. She shoots Henrik, the coffin-maker, high in the thigh. The single crack of the shot rings stupidly bright in the dark storage room of the coffin shop. Henrik collapses, clutching the wound, a howl of surprise and panic spilling from his lips.

That noise is a signal. From the crates, pale, hungry things crawl free: vampire spawn, their mouths slavered dark. They smell the blood and they move. The first sinks its teeth into Henrik like a dog tearing at meat; he’s a live target and it draws them.

Sabrione does not hesitate. She rips through the nearest window in a blur of motion, a practiced ghost of motion honed by centuries of hunting and biting and not belonging. She becomes a streak of shadow, and then she is gone.

Soa hefts Marjorie and tucks her under an armored arm. “Fly!” he signs, and heaving, launches her through the air. The old woman falls through space, air roaring in her ears. Above, a flurry of black wings, Marjorie’s raven allies, answering her call, catch and slow the fall, tugging leather and cloth until her feet find the cobblestones with a shuddering thud. She grunts, pain and relief mixing in her breath; nothing broken, just bruised and fierce.

Rowan mounts Maisie already rearing, slams a boot into the mare’s flank. They thunder toward the coffin shop. Esme and Vasilka run to catch Marjorie’s side; together they form a human wall of defense, faces set against the hunger of the night.

“Hope—the coffin shop! Trap!” Sabrione’s voice is a rasp from a broken throat as she scrambles out onto the street, blood still on her hands and spewing out of her chest. “They lured us—Volenta, and at least seven vampire spawn!”

Hope does not wait to be told twice. Two great leathery wings break out from her back, enormous and dark as thunderheads… The demon blood had taken root. Her muscles strain as she launches upward, fire blooming in her palms. She spits two fireballs like suns through the second-story windows of the coffin-maker’s. The blast shoves out rotten timbers, showers of splintered wood, and a gout of smoke curls into the night. Volenta scrambles, shrieking, as the heat strips rats from her like leaves from a branch.

One of the vampire spawn, hungry and still unfed, lunges for Henrik with a slavering hiss. Its fangs find purchase. The sound Henrik makes is a single, terrible note. The spawn is a whirl of teeth and wrist; sailors’ blood and powdered dust splash the charred walls as all die in the fiery inferno,

Volenta, hair wild, on the other side of the shop, drops from the second story amid a spray of cursing and rats. She vanishes into the shadows.. slipping into an arriving carriage that squeals to a halt; black leather and brass, doors thrown wide, a driver who knows the road far too well. She slides into the coach in one fluid motion, a practiced escape artist, and they are off. The carriage bucks, wheels skittering, and then it rockets through the streets.

Hope sees it: Volenta’s black silhouette in the carriage’s window. She launches another streak of heat after them. The carriage’s canvas catches in a bloom of flame. Passersby blink at the torching; some step back, others gape. A stunned child points, eyes wide.

Two enormous wings emerge from Sabrione’s back with a savage snap and tears after the burning coach. In the air, she is a dark shape of revenge, her sword flicking like starlight. Hope keeps pace, breath burning, grief and rage braided into everything she is. They become two meteors streaking over a sleeping town.

“DID THEY ALWAYS FLY!?” Esme’s face contorts in shock as she witnesses Hope and Sabrione.

“Nope.” Rowan says before heading back to the tavern.

She hears Marjorie bark orders and turns; her duty a physical ache. “Put the fires out!” Marjorie bellows. “The carriage draws the crowd. We need buckets, water — everything!”

The patrons see Rowan enter through the door, but this time she isn’t here to attack the bard. “Your village is on fire!” she shouts into the stunned, slack-jawed mass. “Grab buckets! Help us now!”

A cricket chorus of indifference answers. For one beat, no one moves. Then Esme, her voice a hard bell, roars behind her. “You heard her! Move!”

That breaks the paralysis. People spring into action as if a rope had finally been pulled taut. A boy sloshes out with a bucket, then another, then a line forms. The folly of earlier nights.. the forced cheer and banners dissolves under the simple, urgent need to save what remains.

Down the lane the burning carriage coughs and slows; its skeletal driver throws the reins and leaps, curse on his lips. Volenta is forced to stand on the roof now that her vessel had been turned into an inferno on wheels. Sabrione latches onto the backboard like a hawk, claws finding wood. Hope dives and catches at her enemy’s ankle. For a second, shadow and flame and claws and leather tangle; the carriage pitches. The world smells of smoke, iron, and the fierce, metallic tang of too-close blood.

Then, as suddenly as the violence erupted, the carriage breaks free of the winged harpies. Wheels hit the cobbles with a hard, graceless roll and scrambles. Volenta smiles. A monstrous thing with a face like joy when cruelty succeeds. Very good… Chase me. You think yourselves the predators, but you are the prey!

The townsfolk, shout, whisper and gasp as the carriage rides past them towards the Svalich Woods where Volenta had set another trap for them. Vampires… In Vallaki! Did the Burgomaster lie to us?!

Breathing hard, Marjorie strides forward, crook planted, voice loud, steady. “Bind the wounded. Help the bitten to the church. Someone find Father Petrovich.”

A man with a bucket meets her eyes, then nods. He runs.

Around them, the town moves from stunned to furious. Maybe it is the sight of blood, maybe it is the realization that terror comes to their doorstep and must be answered. The villagers form a clumsy wall, filling pails, stamping flames with boots, and dragging stumbling victims to the rectory.

Hope looks down the street as the carriage gains distance. It’s on fire. She can’t hide in the mist! Volenta is still alive, a smear against the dark. Her wounds are healing already from her previous attacks. Hope’s hands clench until her knuckles ache. The hunger inside her hums.. a promise and a threat both. She wants to tear Volenta apart, to rip every small, hard thing from her chest and swallow it. Tonight, they shall bury a monster!

Sabrione flies beside her and rubs at the smear of black soot from her cheek; Hope sneaks a quick prestidigitation to lift it away. Sabrione allows herself a brief, crooked smile, then sets her jaw. The city smells of soot and fear. For the first time in a long while, the group feels smaller and more fragile than the darkness that hunts them. The trap had been sprung, but they are not dead.. but the board is set, and the pieces are moving.

Still standing on the carriage’s roof as if her feet were planted there with nails, Volenta lifts her hand once in a slow, careless salute before it rushes along the road.

Flames bloom across Vallaki like a constellation gone wrong. One by one, roofs catch and chimneys vomit orange. The night fills with the smell of singed thatch and the metallic tang of panic. Volenta watches from the coach’s roof, eyes glittering like coals, then grins. The plan unfurls exactly as she hoped. Hit them everywhere at once; force them to bleed thin; make courage crack into mere survival.

She shouts orders through clenched teeth as she shoves another bolt into a crossbow. “Spread! Make them run!” she snaps at the undead clustered in doorways and alleys. “Strike the wells, burn the panniers, set the carts! Tear their town apart!”

Panic becomes machinery. Fires leap from lane to lane. Men who thought themselves brave now stumble dragging pails, buckets slosh and spill. Women shout for children. Dogs bark in a chorus of alarm.

Hope and Sabrione descend like two bullets. The burning coach is a staccato of flame and motion beneath them. Volenta eyes them, crossbows spinning in her hands, her feet planted on the carriage. She fires with a snarling, manic glee; silver-tipped bolts whine through the air, spitting sparks as they bite at the leather of Hope’s wings. Hope answers with a white-hot bark of flame, searing a ragged arc that strips paint off shutters. The carriage wheezes under the damage but keeps hurtling down the Svalich road. The town quickly disappears behind them now.

Sabrione tucks in close to Hope’s flank, talons and knives flashing. They time their movements with a terrible choreography: dive, climb, fire, weave. Volenta’s laughter cuts across the night; it is thin and wet with triumph. “Die!” she shrieks, and her voice makes the blood in Hope’s ears throb.

Below, the street becomes a frantic theatre of rescue. Soa, rubbery and earnest, flings himself into burning doorways. He claws at beams that groan, drags groggy sleepers from beds, and hauls an old man out by the collar as the smoke rolls in. His armored joints creak with effort; he is terrified, and everyone can tell, but he moves as if someone welded duty into his frame.

Vasilka, huge and solemn, lugs buckets like they were nothing. She stumbles through the smoke, water sloshing against her arms. The look on her face is pure concentration: a golem finally tasked with mercy. She transfers a bucket into a neighbor’s hands, then dives to tamp a small ember with the edge of her sleeve. She doesn’t understand all of it, but she understands survival.

Marjorie stands in the square and whistles once. A black cloud of ravens peels down from the eaves at her call. She points, sharp and sure, and the birds fan out: watchtowers in feather. They sweep above alleys and roofs, squawking warnings back to her. She maps fires in a breath and directs hands like a conductor, sending teams to the worst blazes. Her voice cuts through the noise: “Buckets up the lane! Two more to the east well! Get the sick inside the church!”

Men and women run at her command, stumbling but moving.. the first, clumsy answer to coordinated terror. The town begins to fight back in fits and spurts. The effect is enough to keep some flames from swallowing whole houses; not enough to stop everything.

Inside St. Andral’s, candles are a forest. The church fills with the low drone of prayer as Father Petrovich rings consecrated bell after bell, his voice high, trembling, a rope thrown to souls. The smoke curls through the stained glass and settles like a gray shawl. People press together, shivering with fear, hands folded, lips moving against prayer.

A few in the congregation do not bow. Hooded figures rise. Weapons flash. Anastrasia: not the kindly hostess the party met, but sharp-featured, fierce-eyed witch. She throws back her cloak. Her voice roars down the nave. The prayers stop as the congregation turns to her as if she were delivering the sermon.

“Where is Ireena Kolyana?” she demands, like someone who intends to take what she wants by force. The room tightens; some folk fall silent, heads bowed. Fear is a chord here.

Father Petrovich whirls. His expression hardens. He looks every inch the priest in crisis. He wants to shelter, to stay, to pray with his flock.. but a priest’s work is also to act. He whispers a line of words to the Morninglord, then slips out through the vestry.

“Find help! The church is taken!” he snaps to the younger men nearby. “Rally at the west gate! Where the hell is the city guard!?”

Outside, the mist curls low and mean. The attackers.. vampire spawn, hags’ acolytes, hired brutes.. use the smoke as mask. They strike wells and merchants’ carts, tearing bucket lines, pushing the town toward exhaustion. It is strategy: pumps and people tied up, and then the true strike. Anastrasia’s eyes are set on her goal. Tonight, Ireena Kolyana dies.

Rowan moves like a blade through the chaos, Maisie’s hooves hammering for buckets and lines. She helps drag a woman from a stoop, helps a man splint another’s arm, then runs on. Her calm is a kind of fury; she does not want this to be the new normal. “We need water at every blaze, now!” she barks. “Form chains! Pass ‘em here!”

Sabrione and Hope scream after the coach, cutting over treetops as embers sprinkle their heels. The carriage gains up the Svalich Road, wheels throwing sparks in the taut night, but Volenta is not making a beacon escape. She wants them away from their allies, away from Vallaki. She wants them in her domain.

From the smoky crowd, a shape emerges: Ismark, shoulders squared, his jaw like a flint. He moves to center square as if he means to be the rock they cling to. “To the wells!” he calls, voice rough. “No more hiding. This is your town! Protect your homes! PROTECT VALLAKI!”

His voice gets louder now. “Will you let these devils ruin our lives further!? Show them who we are! Barovia!” It is a battlecry that rings throughout the streets.

“BAROVIA!” The crowd cries.

A mob forms. Too slow, too ragged, but it forms. Men with pitchforks, a few with hunting spears, a group of women with buckets and shovels. They are not heroes of legends; they are terrified people with freshly found resolve. That is the problem the vampires cannot crush: when the hunted bind up and fight.

Marjorie moves like a hand on a clock, turning people where they falter, steadying those who would run. Soa, metallic, earnest, hauls bodies to safety. Vasilka picks a child off the plank of a wagon and sands her down like she’s putting down a sleeping foal.

Skeletal hands emerge from the ground. Crates in alleyways across town burst open to reveal ghouls, zombies and ghasts had been smuggled in. This attack was coordinated. The undead are unleashed on the town, but the townsfolk fight back.

At first, Vallaki trembles. The streets are chaos: the clatter of overturned carts, the crackle of flame, and the shrieking of the dead echo between burning roofs. Pale shapes crawl from the mist: vampires and thralls, their eyes glowing faintly red in the smoke. One lunges for a fleeing woman, dragging her down. Another rips the sign from a storefront and hurls it through a window.

But this time, the townsfolk do not run.

The first to stand is the toymaker Gadof Blinksy, still wearing his soot-streaked apron. He grabs a broken beam from the wreckage of his shop and drives it into the chest of a charging ghoul.

“Not in my hyappy town!” Be bellows. It’s the first time anyone’s ever seen him angry.

It works — barely. The creature shrieks, thrashes, and burns to ash under the faint light of the Morninglord’s blessing from above. Blinksy stares in disbelief for a heartbeat… then roars, “They can be kyilled!”

His shout spreads like fire through dry kindling.

From the alley, a blacksmith emerges with a hammer, striking another undead in the jaw so hard its skull bursts like rotten fruit. A laundress flings boiling water from a cauldron, scalding a vampire’s face.

The townsfolk pull carts and barrels into barricades, creating chokepoints down the main road. Archers, real and imagined, take up spots on balconies, hurling whatever they can find: crossbow bolts, spears, silverware, stones. A fisherman throws his net over a vampire’s head, and his friends haul it down, dragging the beast screaming into the fire.

And through the firelight, something begins to change.

The same men and women who, just weeks ago, laughed hollowly through Baron Vargas’s “All Will Be Well” festivals, who smiled because they feared the whip, now stand together without anyone forcing them to. They move with purpose, shouting names of neighbors, pulling strangers to their feet.

Even fear begins to turn against its masters.

A baker strikes a zombie across the face with a peel still dusted in flour. A mother smashes a window and hauls two crying children from the smoke. An old guard, missing a leg, hurls a spear from his porch and pins a thrall against a burning wall.

And as the dead wail, the living scream louder.. not in fear, but in fury.

From the steps of St. Andral’s Orphanage, Ismark raises his musket high, its faint glow stretching into the smoke-choked streets. “Vallaki stands!” he cries, his voice cracking with tears. “No more running! No more hiding!”

For the first time in a century, the people believe him.

All across Vallaki, the living rise: farmers, smiths, mothers, children.. their hands blistered, their throats raw, their hearts pounding with something they had forgotten: defiance.

And as the undead press in, hissing and shrieking, the townsfolk of Vallaki push back.. not because they think they can win, but because, at last, they’ve remembered that they can fight. The battle is messy, human, filled with wrong choices and right ones. It will not be clean. It will not be quick. But Vallaki breathes and fights and refuses to go quietly into the dark.

“Ser Rowan!” Father Petrovich cries as he approaches her amidst the chaos. “Gather your companions! The Cathedral is under her control!”

“Whose?” She asks, Esme and Marjorie already arriving to hear the news.

“Anastrasia… She’s looking for Ireena. I think she wants to kill her! She’s taken hostages. She’s too powerful for anyone else to combat! Please, you have to stop her!” He begs.

No time to lose. They make for the Cathedral.

They split the woods like a breath through teeth.. trees clawing at the sky, fog curled low like someone’s bad dream. Volenta grins wide, all teeth and old cruelty, and the plan hums like a wasp in her head: draw Hope far from the town, strip away allies, then finish her where no one can save her.

Hope is bright and reckless, wings beating the cold air as she dives, thinking only of catching Volenta before she can slip away. The world narrows to the sight of a familiar silhouette, the heat of righteous fury in her chest. She arcs down, faster, the wind roaring.

That’s it. Just a little further, little dove! Volenta gleefully whispers to herself as something sings along the spokes of the carriage wheel — a high, crystalline note — and the wheel shatters under the carriage. Frost blooms across the iron like white veins and the carriage crashes into the dirt, overturning. Now that’s just cheating.

Volenta lands on her feet, but her ride is destroyed. It’s alright… We made it here! She orders her undead henchmen hiding in the trees and the mist. “Loose!”

Hope is a bug in a trap. The bolts fly. Her wings, sudden and traitorous, falter; the air folds up beneath her and she pitches. Silver tipped shards of metal whizz past her as she falls. She slams into the unforgiving earth; the breath knocked out of her in a keening animal sound. A spray of gravel stings her palms. For a heartbeat she lies there, the sky a cold, indifferent dome.

Volenta’s laughter peels through the trees. “That’s right,” she calls, stepping forward like a priestess. “Come down where I can reach you.”

Hope scrambles to her feet. The first trap closes with a mechanical bite: a bear-trap the size of a coffin slips shut where she would have landed. She rolls instinctively, the jaws snapping shut inches from her shoulder. The blast of heat follows, a roaring wall of flame that Hope throws up with a single shouted word. Fire blooms around Volenta, licking her cloak, and for one small, burning second Volenta flinches. The flames smoke her hair; she spits and scowls but keeps moving. She expected this. The woods are a course of wicked surprises she prepared for.

Her loyal undead thralls close in! Figures hunch in the brush beyond the flame, crossbows leveled and wicked with silver-tipped bolts. Volenta’s plan is not only traps; she has sharpshooters ready like vultures for the kill. Hope feels the hairs lift along her arms, every nerve a bell. She tastes metal on her tongue and knows… they have her in a trap.

Sabrione arrives like a slash of shadow and steel, caught mid-flight with fierce, furious relief on her face. She’d fallen back during the chase, her wings unable to keep up with the rage of an angry vengeful sister. It’s a rage all to familiar for her. Two bolts speak then, bright and terrible. One finds Sabrione’s chest; the other tears across her shoulder. She staggers, a long white line blooming across her coat. Blood is hot and immediate.

She does not fall gracefully. She folds, knees hitting root and loam, and for a breath she looks younger than she is, a face opening in stunned betrayal. Her body failing her. Then she yanks a pistol, the move calm and crisp as wind through a slit. She fires once: a percussion of lethal noise that answers the trees. One of the sharpshooters goes down with his head split open like an overripe fruit. That should help.

Sabrione’s lips are pale. She presses both hands to the wound as if the motion can hold the blood in. She meets Hope’s eyes and there is no pleading in them, only an iron-scented clarity. “It’s up to you,” she breathes, voice small against the thunder of hooves in the distance. “Finish this. Make her pay… Kill her!”

The hoofbeats come closer; there’s a metallic clack of harness and the thin, high song of panic. Volenta, cursing, steps out of the ring of fire, letting the flames kiss her flesh in searing pain. The sharpshooters regroup, moving like scavengers, reloading cold, efficient mechanisms. Volenta ducks into shadow. “You should have stayed with them,” she hisses at Hope. “You should have left well enough alone.”

Hope burns. Fire answers the hunger inside her now with something harder: triumph, a little sweet and terrible. She wants so many things in one raw, greedy breath: her sister safe, Asha’s cure unburned, Volenta dead. Power cups around her like a new skin, eager and hungry. The memory of visions she could not stop flickers through her: the dinner, her sister’s room, the blast, the face of Asha as they struck by the trap. She tastes fate like iron and wants to chew it apart.

Hope does not pursue blindly. She knows now that Volenta planned this — a dozen contingencies, betrayals draped in courtesy. She also knows Sabrione bled for this, and the sound of hoofbeats pulls at her conscience like a cruel bell. She turns and sees a figure approaching Sabrione on the road. Is she in danger? No… Focus on the goal. Kill the bitch!

The cathedral doors burst open with the sound of splintering wood and roaring wind. Stained glass shudders in its frame as Rowan charges in, sword already drawn, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind glowing faintly at her throat. Marjorie and Esme flank her — a vanguard of light and fury breaking into the sanctum of the damned.

The air inside is heavy.. thick with candle soot, dried blood, and the cloying perfume of old roses. At the far end of the nave, Anastrasia stands before the altar like a bride abandoned at her wedding, her crimson gown clinging like spilled wine. Her face is beautiful in the way storms are: terrible, breathtaking, full of ruin.

“Where is she!?” she screams, voice echoing through the vaults like the peal of a cracked bell.

The rage behind those words is centuries old. Ireena. The newest vessel for Tatyana’s soul, the eternal rival who had stolen Strahd’s heart over and over. Every lifetime, every century, every rebirth.. Anastrasia had to watch her lord’s affection slip through her hands again, like sand through fingers already bloodstained. And then.. each time he lost her, it would be her shoulder he cried on, her arms that embraced him, her words that comforted him… but never did he ever think to ask how it all made her feel.

The thought of her name alone curdles her composure.

He no longer visits her chambers. He no longer listens to her music. He no longer spends long nights drinking with her.

And now she will burn an entire city to the ground for it.

There is no parley. No chance for reason. Only the tension before the storm breaks.

Rowan bursts down the aisle, armor clattering against marble, the stained glass throwing fractured colors across her steel. Her every step feels like thunder. She can feel the relic pulsing against her chest, warm, alive.. the Morninglord’s will answering hers.

Two doors slam open at the sides of the cathedral. Two vampire spawn crawl from the shadows like beasts from a nightmare.. bone-white, slick with blood, eyes reflecting the light like glass. They pounce.

Her minions are hiding in the shadows, waiting for the time to strike.

Soa meets them head-on to the left, his blade flashing like silver lightning. Vasilka catches the other mid-leap, the abomination’s claws raking across her stitched flesh as she hurls it into a pillar hard enough to crack stone.

Anastrasia raises a hand and blows gently across her palm. The candles around her are all snuffed out as her form disappears into the darkness.

“Careful!” Esme shouts, loading her crossbow by feel, the click echoing like a heartbeat. “She could be anywhere!”

Rowan doesn’t stop. She can’t. Her boots hammer against the floor, the relic’s glow her only guide through the pitch black. She thinks only of the town, of the orphans, of the burning rooftops outside. This woman will kill them all.

She feels the relic flare in her palm.. an instinct. The holy light bursts from it like dawn breaking through a storm, painting the pews gold. The silhouettes of two more vampire spawn leap into view, claws bared.. but they don’t reach her.

Esme, Marjorie, and Kellam are already there. Esme moves like a dancer, two blades flashing as she cuts one down; Kellam barrels into the other, barking loudly. Marjorie chants steadily, her crook aglow, prayers spilling from her lips in the language of the Morninglord as the darkness begins to crawl backwards from her.

Rowan presses forward. The relic hums louder, almost eager. “Morninglord, let Your light guide us!” she cries, and the Holy Symbol ignites, freezing the two spawn in mid-step. Their bodies lock in place, faces contorted in horror as divine sunlight burns through their unholy flesh.

And then —

A blur to her left. A whisper of silk.

Anastrasia erupts from the shadows like a phantom, slamming into Rowan with the force of a landslide. They crash into the stone, and a dagger punches up under Rowan’s arm, scraping through mail links and flesh alike. She feels the hot rush of blood. Then fangs.. sharp and wet.. pierce the skin of her neck.

“Rowan!” Marjorie screams.

She holds her down, intending to drain the paladin dry in front of her friends.

Marjorie’s heartbeat drums in her ears. She thrusts her crook upward, calling out the prayer of illumination, and her body blossoms with light. It pours from her chest in radiant waves, flooding the cathedral and painting every shadow gold. The vampire spawn circling her recoil, their skin smoking.

“Blessed Morninglord,” she chants, “let no darkness take hold here!”

The light reveals movement. Two more spawn closing on her flanks. Marjorie barely has time to react before Esme slams shoulder-first into one of them, shoving it away. “Here!” she shouts, tossing her crossbow mid-run.

Marjorie catches it without breaking stride. The weight feels foreign in her hands. She’s no marksman. But faith steadies her aim where training cannot.

The vampire closes in.

She breathes once, exhales, and fires.

The bolt sings across the cathedral! A silver streak through the haze of holy light! It buries itself in Anastrasia’s chest just as she lunges once more for Rowan’s throat.

The vampire reels sideways, off Rowan, with a guttural scream, clawing at the bolt buried deep in her lung. Her elegant gown blackens where the silver touches it, the wound searing with divine heat.

Rowan stumbles to her feet, her hand slick with blood, eyes blazing with fury and faith. She clutches the relic and thrusts it toward the heavens.

“May the sun shine once again over Barovia!” she cries. “Let its light banish the dark!”

The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind bursts open like a star.

Golden light floods the cathedral. The air burns with radiance — a pure, cleansing blaze that feels like morning for the first time in centuries. Every vampire screams. Their shadows peel away from the floor. Their skin cracks, burns, and flakes into ash.

Hostages cowering under pews peer out, eyes wide in awe, as the woman in silver armor stands bathed in sunlight, her sword raised, her blood-streaked face serene and terrible.

The monsters recoil, caught between pain and disbelief. Some disintegrate where they stand, nothing left but a smear of dust on marble.

But not Anastrasia.

She staggers, yes.. smoke pouring from her wounds.. but she still stands. Her face twists, teeth bared in something between a snarl and a sob. “You think this light will save you?” she hisses. “You think you’re pure?”

She draws her sword, its edge black and jagged like a claw, and with her other hand she unfurls her talons.

Steel meets steel.

The clash rings out like a bell of war, echoing through the burning city beyond. Rowan drives her sword forward, Anastrasia parries, the two circling in the golden haze, fury and faith colliding in every strike. The relic’s light still glows, gilding Rowan’s armor in sunlight, as if the Morninglord Himself were watching.

Then.. a moment’s opening.

Rowan twists their blades into a bind, locking her enemy’s sword. She reaches to her belt, her free hand closing around the small glass vial Hope had taken from the pool at Krezk. Its contents shimmer faintly: holy water, sanctified by a miracle.

Anastrasia sees it too late.

For the first time in decades, fear flickers behind her eyes.

The forest burns with the light of a dying star. Flames twist through the trees like serpents, swallowing the night. Smoke coils upward, choking the moonlight, and through that infernal haze, something moves.

Sabrione’s eyes flicker open. Every nerve in her body screams with pain, but her mind clears at once when she sees the silhouette kneeling above her. Vasili von Holtz. His eyes—calm, deliberate..search hers as he tips a potion between her lips. The sharp sting of healing floods her mouth.

“I came as soon as I saw the chase,” he says, mounting his horse again. His voice is steady but grim. “You two fly too fast for your own good.”

He hands her a rifle, polished and silver-lined. “Come on. We can’t let Hope fight her alone.”

The two ride into the fire.

Ahead, Volenta Popofsky bursts from her ruined carriage, half her gown aflame, skin blistered and blackening at the edges. Her breath rasps as she stumbles into the clearing, her own trap-laden woods twisting around her like a labyrinth. Every branch and shadow she once controlled now mocks her.

No matter, she thinks, clutching her sending stone. This fight is only a distraction. I just have to give the signal. The city will burn. The bones will be destroyed. Strahd will—

A scream cuts through the forest.

“Get back here, you coward!”

Hope’s voice. It’s coming from everywhere… The trees, the sky… the flames. Her voice has become inhuman, monstrous. If terror itself had a voice, it would sound just like Hope.

Where is she!?

The vampire looks up.

Through the canopy, a dark figure descends—black wings spread wide against the burning sky, her eyes twin brands of searing red. The air trembles with the heat radiating from her as if even the elements fear her fury.

Volenta stumbles backward. No. This isn’t fair! She was not supposed to live. I killed her! I saw the explosion. She should have died screaming, just like the others.

She bolts for the trees, but her leg catches a root—no, not a root, a glyph. The ground erupts beneath her feet as a wall of fire spirals up around her, closing her in. The circle hisses like a living thing, cutting her off from the forest, the sky, the world.

For all her traps and tricks… how naïve of her to think Hope couldn’t do the same.

“Damn it! Where are my sharpshooters!?” she shrieks, drawing her crossbows. The forest answers her with silence. Then—two sharp cracks. Her sharpshooters fall like puppets with their strings cut, the sound of gunfire echoing through the trees.

Sabrione stands at the edge of the clearing, smoke curling off her torn cloak. Each breath is ragged, blood seeping through her armor, but her hands are steady on the rifle. Her aim doesn’t waver. Another shot rings out. One more vampire spawn falls.

Hope’s vision blurs—her mind fracturing. She sees, for an instant, the future: the carriage behind her exploding in white fire, the bones of St. Andral turned to ash. The end of Vallaki. The ruin of everything.

She shakes her head violently, wings snapping wide. No. Not again. Another one of Volenta’s exploding monstrosities.

“The bones are in the carriage!” she screams over the roar of the fire. “It’s rigged to blow!”

Sabrione doesn’t question it. “Vasili—help Hope! I’ll get the carriage!”

“You can’t handle that thing alone!” he calls, already drawing his sword.

“I’ve handled worse!” she shoots back, sprinting toward the smoldering wreck, her lockpicks flashing in the firelight. “I’d ask the same of you!”

“Of course I can handle it!” Vasili shouts, spurring his horse toward the inferno. “I’ve read Van Richten from cover to cover! Been waiting for this moment for years!”

In the clearing, Hope dives.

Two vampire spawn erupt from the underbrush, claws bared, shrieking. One never reaches her—its head vanishes in a burst of gunfire as Vasili fires from horseback. He leaps from the saddle and engages the other in a blur of silver and motion. Sparks fly as his blade meets undead flesh.

Hope doesn’t even glance at them. Her eyes are locked on Volenta.

The vampire can’t breathe. Her body trembles, her mind a whirlwind of fear and disbelief. The heat has melted her skin in patches, revealing the sinew beneath. The air reeks of her burning flesh.

“NO!” she screams as Vasili gets ready to charge their leader. “SHE’S MINE!”

There hasn’t been a single member of her family that did not suffer because of her.

Hope hovers in the sky above her, the ground cracking under her from the force. She is radiant and terrible, wings unfolding like the shadow of a goddess. Her talons drip with flame and blood. Her voice is both beautiful and horrific, echoing through the trees like a choir from the pit.

“I’ll cage you,” she says, every word trembling with restrained hatred. “I’ll torture you like you did my sister, you miserable wretch!”

Volenta stumbles back, her feet scraping in the ash. “Stay away from me!” she snarls, though her voice cracks. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with—”

Volenta tore her family apart.

The flames rise, all around her.

Her older sister lay comatose at home if not for the cure she destroyed.

Hope slowly emerges through the flames. The fire bends around her. It doesn’t burn her. It bows.

Her twin’s life had been made a living hell in that castle from her bullying and torment.

Her staff gleams with otherworldly light, the shadow it casts long and curved—shaped like a scythe.

She burned down the only home Asha had, and just when it seemed like she had nothing left to destroy, she took Hope’s life away.

Volenta realizes the truth.

This isn’t vengeance. This isn’t grief. This is death itself. The dark powers Strahd swore allegiance to had taken flesh, and they had chosen her as their herald.

On the small farm on the Sword Coast, Hope’s husband languishes in tremendous grief all because pathetic little Volenta couldn’t live with the fact that her own husband didn’t give a damn about her.

Hope’s face flickers in the light. For an instant, it’s not a woman’s face at all—it’s a skull made of flame, empty eyes burning in the sockets.

Volenta got what she wanted. Hope is dead, but in the land of Barovia, the dead reign, the dead feed, the dead rage!

“Stop it..” Tears run down her eyes. “Stop it.. please.. make it stop..”

Every muscle in Volenta’s body locks. She can’t move. She can’t speak. For the first time in a hundred years, she understands what it feels like to die.

And for the first time in a hundred years—

Volenta Popofsky screams… as the vial of holy water is emptied on her face.

The night burns. The forest is alive with smoke and wailing.

Volenta Popofsky staggers backward, her every breath bubbling like boiling tar in her lungs. Her skin smolders, blistering from the holy water that clings to her like molten wax. She claws at her face, her nails peeling charred flesh from her cheekbones.

Her scream splits the woods. She can feel her skin melting. The holy water seeps under her clothes, between her teeth, under her eyelids. It burns where there is no flesh left to burn.

Sabrione’s rifle cracks. Another of Volenta’s assassins falls face-first into the mud, skull caved in. Vasili’s sword flashes silver in the firelight.. swift, merciless, cutting through a second vampire’s neck.

“For Arrigal…” Sabrione whispers. Her face is blank, cold as iron. “For Asha…” Hope hisses, her voice trembling with hate. “For Ireena…” Vasili growls, driving his sword through another spawn’s spine.

Volenta shrieks again as more holy water spatters across her body. It eats through silk, through skin, through the fragile illusion of beauty she’s clung to for centuries. She tears off her porcelain mask with shaking hands—beneath it, a ruin of a face. Burnt. Scarred. Wrong.

“No…” she chokes, falling to her knees. “No, no, no…”

The firelight dances on her ruined features. Her teeth chatter as panic claws up her throat. She can still win. The carriage—yes, the carriage. The trap will kill them all. She clutches her sending stone like a talisman, voice trembling.

“Detonate.”

Nothing.

“Detonate!”

Still nothing.

Her hands shake harder, voice rising to a desperate wail. “Detonate, damn you! Detonate!”

Sabrione emerges from the inferno, rifle slung over her shoulder. In her gloved hand, she holds the gutted explosive device—crushed to dust.

Volenta freezes. She feels it again—that presence behind her. The air grows cold, and the shadows stretch long and thin. Her instincts scream run, but her body won’t move.

All hope is lost. she thinks No… Hope is in the sky. And she wants me to die.

A crack echoes through the forest. From the treeline, a skeletal mage hand emerges, dragging behind it a jagged shard of wood, the sharpened point glinting orange in the firelight. It moves toward her slowly, almost ceremonially, like the executioner’s axe finding its mark.

Volenta bats it away, staggering to her feet. She has one chance left. One chance to survive.

Then the world collapses.

Hope drops from the sky like an angel of judgment, her black wings folding as she crashes down. The force of her landing shakes the ground. The Gulthias staff drives forward, its sharpened end plunging through Volenta’s chest breaking through her sternum.

The sound that escapes her is not human. It’s wet, ragged, and filled with the horror of understanding.

The wood splinters bone. She feels it push into her heart—her heart!—the ancient, blackened organ that has beaten for centuries. The pain floods her body in waves.

Hope’s face hovers over her, bathed in the firelight. The light flickers, and her features shift—one moment the face of a young woman, the next a grinning skull, hollow-eyed and burning. Her voice is calm, almost merciful in its cruelty.

“This is what you gave my sister,” she says. “Now you get to feel it too.”

Volenta’s fingers twitch. She wants to fight, to claw, to curse—but her strength is gone. Every thought blurs together into fear and self-loathing.

So this is what it feels like… the helplessness. The misery. The pain. No pity. No mercy. Just the dark.

The staff twists. She gasps as her spine cracks, the flames reflecting in her wide, bloodshot eyes. Somewhere, deep in her fading consciousness, she realizes why Strahd was furious at her.

I made this.

If she had obeyed, if she had never touched those explosives, if she hadn’t tried to kill Asha… hadn’t helped create this abomination, maybe she’d still be at his side. Maybe he’d still call her his darling Volenta.

I’m scared. I don’t want to die. Please… someone help me.

A male shadow appears in the light of the fire. It’s him! She knew he’d come for her! He did love her!

Vasili steps from the smoke, his coat soaked in the blood of her minions. His eyes are cold, his smile colder. He looks down at her, then at Hope.

Volenta’s voice breaks. “Please… please… I don’t want— Have pity!”

“Like you pitied Asha and Arrigal?”

The figure of Sabrione steps out from behind Hope, haloed in firelight. Her hair—once silky and immaculate, is now wild, frozen by smoke and ash. Her once-perfect dress is torn, her face streaked with soot and blood. In the wavering glow, Volenta sees not a hero, but a reflection; an echo of what she might have been, had the world been just a little kinder.

The failed opera singer… her beauty marred, her grace burned away by tragedy. Yet she still sings. Still dares to live.

Volenta blinks through tears that boil in her sockets. She’s ruined, she thinks. She’s ruined and still she shines.

They are the same. Both broken women shaped by cruelty, both turned monsters by men who loved their own egos more than they ever loved them. Both adorned once in silk and music, both cursed to kill to survive. But Sabrione… she still smiles. Still laughs. Still finds meaning in the warmth of others.

Volenta’s lip trembles. Her breath hitches. She can feel it—the warmth radiating from Sabrione, even now, even amid the blood and fire. It isn’t the warmth of life. It’s something rarer, something Volenta hasn’t known in centuries: belonging.

She’s just like me… Volenta’s mind reels. Her voice is small, hoarse, half-choked with blood. Just like me. So why? Why am I so empty? So hollow?

Why did nobody ever stay? Why did Strahd stop calling her darling? Why did the others fear her laughter, her touch, her love?

Why does she get to have this? Why does she get to be loved when I never was?

The rage wells up faster than the tears. Her ruined face contorts, trembling between fury and grief.

“I hate her,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I hate her… I hate her!”

But the words aren’t anger anymore. They’re a child’s sobs. A plea. A confession born from the deepest, loneliest pit of her soul.

Because the truth strikes her like the holy light of the relic.. blinding and cruel. She doesn’t hate Sabrione for what she is. She hates her for what she still has.

As she looks at her reflection through the haze of pain and fire, Volenta understands too late that she is staring at the woman she could have been.. if only she’d chosen differently. If only she had not let Strahd turn her heart to stone.

The confusion is maddening. The pain unbearable. The jealousy curdles into self-loathing as she screams and weeps at once, her tears steaming away in the heat.

And in her last, trembling thought before the stake pierces her heart, Volenta sees herself standing where Sabrione does now—bloody, scarred, but surrounded by those who could have loved her if she’d just given herself another chance.

She finally stops lying to herself. At the end of it all, it wasn’t the world that was cruel. It was me. In the end… It was just me.

Volenta’s body jerks once. Then the fire catches her hair, her dress, her skin. Her eyes go wide and glassy. Her final scream tears through the forest—high, desperate, animal—until her throat burns away and her voice dies.

In the end, there is nothing left but ash.

Hope stands above her, chest heaving, eyes like molten gold. No pity. No remorse. Just the silence of righteous fury spent.

Sabrione lowers her rifle, trembling. Vasili sheathes his sword. For a moment, none of them speak.

Then Hope sways, her wings flickering out as exhaustion overtakes her. She collapses backward into the dirt, unconscious.

“Get the bones,” Vasili says quietly, wiping his blade clean. “I’ll find Ireena.”

And he vanishes into the burning woods, leaving the forest heavy with the scent of blood, ash, and judgment.

The Cathedral of St. Andral is half-ruined now. The walls are scorched from fire, the pews splintered from the battle, and the light of the holy symbol still lingers like dawn breaking through smoke. It glows in Rowan’s hands—soft, radiant, merciful—while at the far end of the nave, Anastrasia Karelova writhes on the marble floor.

The holy water hisses where it touches her skin. Blisters swell, burst, and run in black rivulets down her cheeks. Her hands claw at her face as if she could tear the pain out by force. Steam rises from her body, her red silk gown clinging to her as the poison seeps in.

“Where is she!?” she sobs. “Where’s… where is she…”

Her voice fractures into a scream that isn’t just pain—it’s heartbreak. Her knees buckle beneath her as she collapses by the altar, the same one she desecrated when she entered.

“She isn’t here, Anastrasia,” Rowan says softly, standing over her like a statue of judgment and grace. “Ireena isn’t here.”

“She should be…” Anastrasia gasps, eyes wild and wet. Her burned fingers tremble as she grips the edge of the altar. She’d worked so hard for this, all to get to Ireena and she was gone. “She has to be! Everything… everything I did was for him! She should be here!”

Her words spill out in a feverish rush. “Ever since he found her, ever since he remembered her name—he hasn’t looked at me! Not once! I just want him to see me again, to touch me again! I just wanted him to stop!”

She laughs through her tears—high, broken, and mad. “All I wanted was for him to love me the way he loved her. Is that so wrong? To want to be seen?”

Marjorie stands a step behind Rowan, her expression stricken, her crook still faintly glowing with divine power. “She’s not a monster,” she whispers, more to herself than anyone else. “She’s a woman who gave everything to the wrong man.”

Rowan kneels beside the weeping vampire, her armor clinking faintly in the silence. She studies her—not as a foe, but as a tragedy. In Anastrasia’s eyes she sees a reflection of every soul Strahd has ever broken. Once, perhaps centuries ago, this woman was kind. Now, she is only grief and hunger, wrapped in a corpse that refuses to die.

“I will do you this mercy,” Rowan says at last, her tone firm yet gentle. Marjorie hands her a large wooden stake. Rowan holds it for a moment, feeling its weight, before offering it to the fallen vampire. “You’ve done terrible things, Anastrasia. For him. Because of him. You deserve judgment—but not his kind of cruelty.”

Anastrasia’s hands tremble as she accepts the stake. “Mercy…” she breathes. “No one’s ever given me that.”

“Then take it,” Rowan says. “End this on your own terms. We will look away to preserve your dignity. No one will see your final moment but the Morninglord.”

Marjorie places a hand on Rowan’s shoulder, her voice soft. “We’ll give her peace, not punishment.”

The companions step back, and even the terrified townsfolk who have been hiding under the pews are ushered out. The great doors creak closed, leaving Anastrasia in the flickering light of the relic.

For the first time in a hundred years, she feels something close to warmth—not from fire or blood, but from the faint glimmer of compassion.

Her face softens. Her eyes close. The stake trembles in her hands.

Even in the end, her heart feels full of love for a man who didn’t give it back. She smiles, filling her own mind with memories of him that she cherished. If she dies here, it will be with the knowledge that she loved him no matter what; that for a few hundred years, she laughed, smiled and giggled… even if she was invisible while she did.

Rowan lowers her head, whispering a prayer under her breath. Marjorie joins in, their voices blending like a hymn of release.

Anastrasia closes her eyes. “Tell him…” she whispers. “Tell him I only ever wanted him to look at me.” She raises the stake, breath steady now, and for the first time her lips curl into something like a smile. The town was burning all so that her husband would see her in the light of the flames. “That I did my best to be enough…”

Marjorie holds her breath, waiting for the end.

But the sound that follows isn’t a prayer answered.

It’s a crack.

A sharp, violent snap—like a hammer striking bone.

The stake never falls.

Anastrasia’s scream tears through the cathedral, shrill and piercing, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. The companions whirl around just in time to see her body jerk upright, frozen in place. Her eyes are wide—too wide—locked in an expression of pure betrayal and horror.

Blood trickles from her mouth. The stake she meant for her heart lies untouched on the floor, another is embedded in her chest, impaling her from behind.

Behind her, a dark figure stands amidst the fading holy light.

Strahd von Zarovich.

The Count’s silhouette cuts through the haze like a blade. He’s immaculate, not a single hair out of place, the polished head of a carpenter’s mallet gleaming crimson in his hand. Fresh blood spatters his sleeves, stark against the white of his cuffs.

He looks down at what remains of his consort—his creation, his discarded bride—and sighs. “What a mess you made, Anastrasia… What a disappointment you turned out to be.” he says flatly, voice low and measured, as though explaining away a nuisance.

Rowan’s sword is drawn before she realizes it. “You—” her voice shakes, breaking with fury—“you monster! She was going to die anyway! She was ready to accept her end!”

“She attacked this town,” Strahd replies. His tone is even, detached. “She endangered the woman I love. She earned her death at my hands.”

“Love?” Rowan spits the word like venom. “She loved you! She killed for you, bled for you, died for you! All she ever wanted was a kind word, a little of your attention—some sign that she mattered! And you—” She takes a step forward, eyes blazing. “You didn’t even give her mercy!”

Strahd’s crimson eyes flick toward her. There’s no anger there. Only pity. “We all become monsters for the ones we love,” he says quietly. “She did. So did I.”

Then, he drops the mallet.

It hits the marble with a heavy thud, the sound echoing through the cathedral like a tolling bell.

Before anyone can move, his form dissolves into mist. Bats pour from the vapors in a writhing swarm, their wings battering the air, their screeches deafening. They burst through the shattered stained glass, scattering into the night sky until only silence and moonlight remain.

Rowan runs to Anastrasia’s body, collapsing to her knees beside it. She reaches out, trembling, to close the vampire’s eyes, but they will not shut. Her face is frozen in the final, awful instant of recognition: the moment she saw her killer and knew who it was.

Marjorie kneels beside Rowan, her hands steady though her lips tremble. Together, they try to fix the woman’s hair, to smooth the lines of her face, to grant her the dignity denied her in life. But no matter how gently they touch her, that look of betrayal will not fade.

“She’s at peace now,” Marjorie says softly, though her own tears betray her words. “She has to be.”

Rowan’s voice breaks. “No. He stole that from her too.”

She gathers Anastrasia’s body into her arms, holding her as though she were a fallen comrade instead of an enemy. Her armor creaks under the weight, her tears falling into the vampire’s matted hair. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “You deserved so much better than him.”

It is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for Anastrasia Karelova.

But she isn’t alive to feel it.

A moment of silence passes as the vampire crumbles to dust, and the cathedral doors open once more, light spilling in through the smoke. Father Petrovich enters, making the sign of the Morninglord across his chest. Behind him comes Sabrione, limping and bloodstained, Hope slumped in her arms with Addy clutched against her. The little doll holds a small silver reliquary—inside, the bones of Saint Andral.

“I’ll get these back to the crypt,” Father Petrovich says quietly, accepting the relic from Sabrione. “You all need rest.”

He looks at the pile of ash where Anastrasia use to be and hesitates, bowing his head. “May the Morninglord have mercy on her soul.”

Marjorie nods, still kneeling beside Rowan.

The cathedral is silent again, filled only by the faint echo of the battle long ended. But above them, through the broken window, the bats are still circling—watching, waiting, as if the shadow of their master still lingers.

The Blue Water Inn blazes with light and laughter that feel almost alien after so much blood and grief. The smell of roasted meat and spiced wine fills the air. The music is loud and off-key, but it doesn’t matter, every note, every cheer, every clinking mug is a hymn to survival. For once, Vallaki breathes again.

The townsfolk sing of their victory, of the fires quenched and the undead driven back. They sing of courage in the face of darkness and of the heroes who fought for them. Whenever the companions are mentioned, the people raise their mugs toward the table by the hearth. Hope and the golems rest outside by the carriage, their task done for now. Inside, Sabrione, Marjorie, Rowan, and Esme share a table, the warmth of the hearth reflecting in their tired eyes.

They drink in silence at first, not the silence of fear, but of deep, hard-earned calm. Purple Grapemash No. 3 never tasted so rich. The laughter of the inn feels distant, dreamlike. Marjorie’s eyes drift to the bar, where Urwin Martikov meets her gaze.

He nods. “We’ve been expecting you,” he says simply. “Muriel told us everything.”

Marjorie sets down her mug, heart suddenly steady. “You’re granting my request?”

“After what happened today?” Urwin’s lips twitch into a knowing smile. “We’d be fools not to.” He glances toward her companions. “But you’ll need to come with us alone. There are things known to the Keepers of the Feather that even the Devil Strahd does not know; or perhaps does not care to.”

A heavy pause follows. Rowan’s hand rests briefly on Marjorie’s shoulder, a silent promise that they’ll be waiting. The decision is hers alone.

Marjorie follows Urwin into the back room. The music fades behind her. A trapdoor opens, the scent of wine and dust rising from below. The stairs creak underfoot as she descends, and when the door closes above her, the world is swallowed in darkness.

Then.. light.

Several candles are lit, one by one, until the room glows with soft gold. All around her are papers pinned to the walls.. drawings, letters, scribbles in charcoal and ink. Marjorie steps closer and realizes what they are.

“Thank you, Lady Marjorie. You are the light in the darkness.”

“Thank you for saving us.”

“You’re our hero.”

The words blur as her eyes sting. Each note bears a child’s hand, clumsy drawings of her standing before a monstrous Rowan in that terrible morning at St. Andral’s, arms outstretched to protect them. In one, she’s surrounded by little figures, the orphans, who hold her hands as the dark is kept at bay.

Marjorie stands still, her breath catching. She never thought herself a protector, let alone a hero. Once, she had knelt in a stone circle, her hands slick with blood, her voice trembling as she offered lambs to the Lady of the Moors. She had believed the fae’s honeyed whispers, that the sacrifices were mercy, that the Lady would bless her family. She hadn’t known the price until the voice asked for her child.

And she’d obeyed.

Her knees weaken at the memory. The candlelight flickers.

But then she looks back at the wall. The children’s drawings stare back at her.. clumsy, colorful, radiant with hope. And she realizes something she never dared to believe.. she’d made it right. She’d saved others where once she had failed to save her own.

She’d become a mother to these children.

Footsteps echo from the shadows. Davian Martikov steps forward, older and sterner than his son, carrying a small tray. Upon it rests a simple wineglass, its contents dark and gleaming.

“Marjorie,” he begins, his voice ceremonial. “Hero of St. Andral’s Orphanage. The one who stood between evil and the innocent. You are called to join the Keepers of the Feather.”

He raises the glass toward her. “Once you drink, you will share in our burden — and our gift. You will stand watch where light cannot reach. You will oppose the Devil’s will at every turn. Do you understand your task?”

Marjorie nods, steady now. “I understand. What happens when I drink?”

Davian’s expression softens. “You will bear the gift of the raven. Your body will change. You will soar upon the wind, and your senses will sharpen. But with that gift comes instinct — to collect, to covet, to steal. You will feel the pull of the moon, and sometimes you will not resist it. Your soul will remain your own, but your spirit will fly beside ours.”

Marjorie takes the glass. The wine smells of copper and wild air.

“I’m ready,” she says.

She drinks.

It burns like fire and frost at once, coursing through her veins. The world begins to spin, the walls melting away. She gasps, clutching her chest, but Davian’s voice is calm, measured, grounding her.

Davian’s words fall like a stone into the candlelit darkness, and the room answers with motion. The flame of each taper fractures, shivers, multiplies. Paper and dust blur into a slow tide of images; they do not simply show — they insist. The light becomes a lantern in a storm, and through it Marjorie sees things that are not meant for ordinary eyes.

“Listen,” Davian says, voice low, almost like prayer. “This is the truth we keep even from the Devil himself.”

The candles shudder; their halos stretch into windows. The first vision is not a place so much as a sensation — the thickness of the air itself, as if the world had gathered its breath and then never exhaled. Fog pours over a great black map. Marjorie feels it at the back of her throat, like the wet taste of iron. The mist peels back to reveal a dozen lands, each ringed by a different night. They are not cities but cells: bleak kingdoms with towers like broken teeth, forests that bend away from any traveler, seas whose waves move like hands seeking purchase on the shore.

In one pane, a lich sits upon frost-covered bones, its crown a halo of ruined moons. Its eyes are not eyes but deep, slow embers; when they open they burn like comets lowering toward a planet. The lich moves and valleys crumble. In another pane a warlord of glass commands armies of shadow; in a third, a monarch made of storm stands alone while stars fall at his feet. Each image is small and then too large to comprehend. Each tyrant rules a domain that feeds on a single appetite: greed, grief, rage, despair. Each world is a cage.

Marjorie’s breath quickens. The visions are not merely shown; they are felt. She feels cold seep into her bones, feels the weight of those captured inside those mists — a thousand generations of hunger, pacts forged in twilight, bargains struck with whispers. The lantern light throws the faces of the children’s drawings into grotesque scale beside these panoramas, and for a terrible second she can’t tell where the cartoons end and the worlds begin.

“These are the domains of dread, Marjorie. Barovia is but one of many in the dark corners of the Shadowfell!” The were-raven says sternly. “All prisons for both their people… and their masters!”

The information overloads her mind. She sees several faces, all great evils in their own right.

“Only one has escaped,” Davian says. His voice cuts across the images. “Vecna, Dark Lord of Cavitus. He turned his hunger into cleverness. He ascended to godhood. When he tore free of his domain, his world came back to the material plane. Imagine a land that is returned, relieved of its master once more appearing in reality after so long… Strahd seeks the same. We do not know how, but he seeks godhood. He seeks freedom.”

A vision of Vecna flashes, not as a godly triumphant figure but as a wound made manifest: the air above his old realm blooms with a black star and then recedes, the land reforming like a body stitched back together. The people spill out, some freed, some broken. The memory of that unmaking hangs in the room like an aftertaste.

Marjorie swallows. “If Strahd becomes like that,” she whispers, the thought a lit match in her mouth, “then Barovia would be released. We would all be free.”

Davian’s face is a storm now. “Free, yes. But at what cost? Strahd is not a conqueror who will step down to kindness the way a tired king might. He would be a god of undeath and of longing made monstrous. Imagine a being who commands the very notion of death itself, who can shape the seasons to sorrow and call famines with a whim. Imagine Strahd with no roofs of mist, no limits. He would not merely hold Barovia; he would spread its hunger outward. Villages would become tombs, nations would learn new kinds of grieving. The world would remember Barovia not as a cursed valley but as the harbinger of a new era.”

The visions multiply, not as prophecy but as consequence. A map unrolls and shows tendrils of shadow leaking from one domain to another, thin as veins and just as terrible. Where they touch, empires shiver and rot. Cities that once laughed are reduced to echoing colonnades. A hive of pale eyes opens in a capital far from Barovia. That single god’s ascent ripples like a tide across the tapestry of the material world.

“You can kill him,” Davian says finally, and there is both hope and granite in his tone. “If you do, Barovia stays a prison. No dark lord escapes. No more realm returns. The people inside remain here, but we live; the world beyond sleeps unnoticed.”

He lets her hear the other, crueler bargain. “Or you can let him ascend. Freedom for Barovia. Fire for the world.”

The images recede. Candlelight returns to its honest, ordinary glow. Marjorie stands with the wineglass still warm in her hand. The children’s drawings, the simple gratitude tacked across the room, seem both fragile and monumental beside the enormity of the choice just laid bare. Freedom — the bright, human dream of it — suddenly smells like ash and iron.

Someone in the room shifts, a soft noise like a footstep. Marjorie thinks of the faces on those pinned pages: small hands tracing her shape, a child’s uneven letters spelling her name like a talisman. She thinks of her daughter, of the lambs in the circle and the fae voice that once promised returns. She thinks of the orphans she has fought to keep living. For an instant she sees two futures at once: one in which she walks out of these mists into sun, the sky an honest blue; another in which she opens the gates and lets loose a god whose first decree is hunger.

Her throat tightens. “There must be another way,” she says, because saying it aloud keeps her from falling into the hush that follows revelations. The candle flames shiver like small wings, as if even light is listening.

Davian meets her eyes. There are no promises in his expression, only a weary, terrible honesty. “Perhaps there is,” he replies. “But if there is, it is buried deep. You will need more than courage. You will need knowledge, alliances, and sacrifices that do not come easy in the Domains of Dread.”

Then the pain comes. Feathers grow out of her pores, her blood begins to boil as her body shifts for the first time.

“Mother!” The image of Morgwyn appears in front of her. “I’m here, mother… Take my hand.”

A hallucination or her spirit come to help? She does not know, but she accepts the help nonetheless.

“Morgwyn, I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here for you when you went through this.” Marjorie weeps.

“I’m here for you now… You did it. You didn’t abandon those children. I won’t abandon you. You can make it through this transformation. It hurts. I know it hurts. I’ve been through something similar… but I’m here, mother. I’m here!”

Marjorie’s eyes close as the curse takes her. Like her daughter had been all those years ago. The shepherdess stands in that ring… cursed til the end of her days.

Another One Bites The Dust by Queen plays over the credits.

The last embers of celebration still linger in the Blue Water Inn — laughter dimmed to murmurs, mugs left half-full, the warm scent of smoke and wine hanging in the air. Vallaki, for the first time in years, breathes. The flicker of candles catches the faces of weary heroes, half asleep at their tables, half afraid that if they close their eyes, the nightmare will start again.

Outside, the rhythmic clatter of hooves breaks the stillness. The sound doesn’t belong here — too even, too measured, too real. The ravens on the rooftops stir and flutter, their black eyes tracking the unfamiliar silhouette that rolls through the mist.

A carriage pulls up before the inn, its wood lacquered, its crest unmistakable: the silver blade of Daggerford over a blue ocean. The door opens, and a man steps out — tall, broad-shouldered, his armor burnished copper in the lanternlight. A cloak the color of stormclouds drapes across his shoulders, the steel of his greaves ringing softly against the cobblestones.

Luvash, sitting on the driver’s bench, tips his hat and mutters a prayer in Vistani under his breath. There’s something about this traveler that the mists themselves seem to permit.

When the knight enters, the room stills. Even the hearth seems to lower its voice. His eyes sweep the tavern, searching — until they find her.

Rowan Daggerford looks up from her seat by the fire, her hands still around a mug gone cold. The years between them fold in an instant. The last time she saw Ser Herod Sand, she was a squire trembling in her armor, swearing her oaths beneath his watchful gaze.

Her breath catches. The firelight flashes off the crest on his chest — her crest. The one she left behind when she rode east and never returned.

For a heartbeat, neither speaks.

Then the knight inclines his head, solemn and deliberate. “Ser Rowan Daggerford,” he says, his voice carrying the weight of the world beyond the mists. “At last, I’ve found you.”

Rowan rises slowly, disbelief softening into wonder, then dread. “Ser Herod…? You’re— You’re not supposed to be here. No one can be here.”

The knight’s expression does not change. Behind him, the door to the inn remains open — and beyond it, the mists curl inward like fingers, whispering around the carriage wheels.

“I crossed where no road should lead,” he says. “Your father sent me.”

The candlelight flickers. The laughter dies. Even the ravens fall silent as the door closes behind him, and the last note of the music fades into the hollow quiet of Barovia.