One of Us Will Die
Curse of Strahd Adventure Report 19:
Festival of the Blazing Sun

A few hours earlier, some time before the others would open their care packages, a soft gloom settles over Vallaki. The battle is over. The ringing steel, the shrieking dead, the shouts of the desperate have faded into the stillness of aftermath. But no peace comes to the survivors… not truly.

In the back of the battered carriage, Hope curls into herself, blanket wrapped close like a shroud. Addy, the silent little bat who has become her shadow, rests against her chest. Her eyes are closed, but sleep does not come. The pain is not just in her bones or her torn flesh. It is in her blood. In her soul.

Strahd had called her abomination. A word she did not want to believe. But as her body twisted, as her hunger surged beyond human limits, she felt it. Something inside her shifting, reaching… wanting. He wasn’t wrong. Hope is no longer the sweet girl who baked honeycakes with her husband’s flour-dusted hands. No longer the little sister who chased fireflies with Asha. She feels the Shadowfell clawing through her, remaking her in its image.

The carriage creaks. A familiar voice breaks the silence.

“Hope,” Sabrione says gently, sitting across from her. “You awake? How are you feeling?”

Hope’s eyes open, dull and heavy. “I’m awake.”

“You went through a lot last night. Especially when Volenta almost had you trapped.”

Hope stares down at her hands, remembering the splatter of blood, the sound of bone crushing under her weapon. “Oh, that… I only remember the first half. I hear I was kind of brutal.”

Sabrione’s expression softens. “That’ll happen. I just want you to know.. you’re still you. You still have control. You just need to set some rules. Make a line you never cross.”

Hope pulls a crease into the carriage’s cushion beneath her, thinking. “A line… I don’t know what mine is yet.” She swallows the dryness in her mouth. “All I know is I feel different. I want demon essence. I’ve had some, and now I want more. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s hunger or power or… something else.”

“You have us,” Sabrione says, leaning forward. “If you need anything. Anything at all.”

Hope musters a small smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

A silence settles, broken only by the creak of the wagon wheels. Hope’s eyes brighten a fraction.

“Sabrione? What’s your line?”

Sabrione looks away, fingers tracing the rim of her flask. “My line’s been… moving around lately. I don’t know where it is anymore.”

Hope’s hand finds hers in the dim carriage light, cold to cold, cursed to cursed. For a moment, they sit like that. Not monsters. Not horrors. Just two women who survived something that should have killed them.

“Are you hurt still?” Hope asks. “She got you bad. Stabbed you in the back at the coffin shop.”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.” Sabrione keeps her eyes ahead, but the strain in her voice betrays her wounds.

Hope silently reaches into her pack and pulls out a vial of glowing amber liquid. “Here. I stole it from the Abbot. I think it’s a healing potion.”

Sabrione takes it. “Oh… Thank you.”

When she exits the carriage, she tips back the vial. The wounds begin to close—slowly, painfully. Healing never removes the scars. They fade, but they stay. A reminder. That she, too, is undead, and nothing will ever restore her to the life she once knew.

“Sabrione!” Arabelle calls, trotting toward her. Behind her stands Luvash, hooded, and an armored stranger. As they dismount from their wagon and head toward the inn, Sabrione raises an eyebrow. A visitor from beyond the mists. Another ripple in the chain of fate.

“Hello there!... Sorry, who are you again?” Sabrione teases.

Arabelle plants her hands on her hips. “You know exactly who I am.”

“Oh yes, you’re the princess who refused to give her sleeping lover that fairy-tale kiss.”

“Am not!”

“So you admit you could have healed him!”

Arabelle’s annoyance dissolves into pink-cheeked laughter, and she drags Sabrione to the back of the wagon. “I need your help,” she says, opening the latch. Inside? Crates. Heavy, iron-banded, with markings from another world.

Sabrione lifts the lid of one and finds rifles stacked like silent soldiers inside.

“Arabelle... These are not things a princess should be handling.”

“They’re from… outside,” she says, tapping her foot. “Outside outside.”

“You mean beyond the mists.”

“Yeah! He went all the way to visit the Sword Ghost!”

“The Sword Coast.”

“Yeah! That's what I said!”

It takes the better part of an hour to unload them. Arabelle watches, wide-eyed, as Sabrione moves crates alone that should take three men. All the while, they talk, laugh, and forget for a short time how grim the world has become.

As Sabrione peers through the tavern glass, she watches as the others finding gifts: Rowan embracing her uncle. Hope and Marjorie receiving love from their husbands across worlds. But no package sits with her name on it. No care worn from familiar hands.

Arabelle notices the silence. “You should have gotten something too, Sab.”

A moment passes. Then Sabrione smiles softly. “I think I did. I got to spend time with a very lovely person. Can’t remember her name… Arthur? Anthony?”

“Why are you giving me boy names?”

“So you admit it’s you,” Sabrione smirks. Arabelle scoffs, but her grin shines.

“There’s a letter for Rowan too,” Arabelle says, pulling a sealed envelope from her pocket. “It’s from her dad. I want to give it to her myself.”

Sabrione holds out her hand. “I’ll keep it safe. We’ll give it to her together.”

Luvash’s voice rings out across the yard. “Arabelle! Time to go!”

The girl nods and climbs back into the wagon. She waves as it rolls away, leaving the cold cobblestones and soft torchlight behind.

The first Battle for Vallaki is over.

The new battle is just beginning.

Across the street, lanternlight flickers against the fog as Sabrione steps from the tavern. Her eyes catch a lone figure standing still as stone, half-shadowed beneath the gables of an abandoned building. Izek Strazni. The captain of the guard. The Baron’s iron fist.

She remembers him from the Wolf’s Head Jamboree; quiet, reserved, towering over the crowd. But now, in the stillness of the street, something is wrong. His good arm hangs idle. His hidden arm twitches faintly as if bound to a pulse she cannot hear. At his hip, dangling from a leather strap, is the doll. The one with Ireena’s face. The unnervingly lifelike eyes stare blankly into the mist.

Sabrione lifts a hand. “Good afternoon, Izek.”

He turns only his head. The motion is slow. Mechanical. “Afternoon.”

Her eyes drop to the doll. “I see your taste in dolls hasn’t changed.”

“I must keep her,” he says. The words are stiff. Too stiff.

“Keep her… safe?” Sabrione asks carefully.

“Yes. She must be safe forever.” His voice has no inflection. No warmth. It is an order spoken through empty lungs.

“Who is she?” Sabrione presses, gesturing to the doll. “This one.”

He stares at it a long moment. As if weighing the words or the nature of his silence. Finally: “She is… she must be kept safe.”

“You really take your hobby seriously,” she says softly. “Do you own more?”

His eyes flick toward her. His jaw tenses. “Yes. We will have a tea party.”

Sabrione forces a chuckle. “Oh, I love parties.”

“You may come,” he says, without a blink. “This way please.”

He turns, and she follows him. Darkness widens between the buildings as he leads her through back alleys, past shuttered shops and silent doorways. The streets empty as they near the Burgomaster’s mansion. She remembers Izek was taken in by Vargas Vallakovich as a foundling, raised within these walls. Born in violence. Forged in pain.

“I won’t be long,” she whispers under her breath, hoping the others won’t worry. She needed to find out for herself who this man was.

“Inside,” Izek says, gesturing with one arm. The other, always hidden under his cloak.

Up the stairs, down a narrow hallway. The house is too quiet. Every creak of the floorboards sounds like a plea. He unlocks a door with too much care, and the hinges groan open.

The room beyond is cold. Claustrophobic.

Shelves line the walls. Every inch of them is packed with dolls.. dozens of them. Dozens of Ireenas. Fixated glass eyes. Painted smiles. Identical dresses sewn from fading lace. The air smells of wax, dust, and something hidden beneath.. a coppery tang just shy of rot.

Sabrione inhales sharply. “What in all the hells…”

Then one of the dolls moves.

Not a doll. A girl.

Life-size. Pale as death, painted like porcelain. Her body stiff, limbs bound by invisible strings. She turns slowly. Her lips tremble through the mask of makeup.

“Sab run!” Ireena gasps. Terror shakes her voice. “He’s—”

A cloth clamps over Sabrione’s nose and mouth. The reek of garlic powder floods her lungs. She had forgotten. Forgotten the body she no longer has. The breathing she should not need. Instinct betrays her. She gasps. The powder sears her throat. Her vision blurs, narrowing to flickers of candlelight and the pale, trembling face of the real Ireena.

“Safe,” she hears Izek say somewhere behind her. “She must be safe.”

Sabrione’s knees buckle. Her hands slip against the floorboards. Her name leaves Ireena’s lips in a broken cry as the darkness swallows her whole.

Some time later.

Marjorie stands before the door, hand outstretched, quarterstaff poised like a spear. The hallway is still, save for the soft click of Kellam’s claws behind her and the distant sounds of the others clearing rooms. The wooden handle feels strangely cold in her palm.

“We’re coming, Ireena,” she whispers.

She pushes.

The door swings open..

..and everything is swallowed in fire.

A roar of flame blasts into the room, the inferno erupting from hidden vents in the ceiling like the breath of a dragon. Marjorie staggers back, raising her arm against the heat, but her eyes are fixed, horrifically, on the figure in its direct path.

Ireena.

She stands in the center of the room, body bound, unable to move. The fire hits the old mother full force.

Her scream rips through the air as her face melts. Skin blackens and sloughs off. Eyelids shrink away from her skull. Lips dissolve into a jagged, gaping grin of exposed teeth. Her hair burns away in seconds, leaving a smoldering, smoking shell of what used to be a woman.

Her body collapses backward, still aflame, limbs stiff as charred sticks, the last flickers of her voice trapped in a melting throat.

Marjorie can’t move. Kellam barks and howls in horror, but there’s nothing either of them can do. The room fills with smoke. The smell of burnt flesh coats her lungs. She reaches for Ireena even as her mind screams, Stop. Too late. Too late.

Ireena watches a friend die.. helpless.

A sudden gasp cuts through the vision like a blade through fog.

Hope inhales sharply, eyes wide and wild as she’s slammed back into the present. Her body shakes with the force of the vision tearing itself out of her head. Her voice croaks, raw and urgent:

“Marjorie’s about to trigger a trap!”

She’s already running before the others have time to react, Rowan at her side. Hope doesn’t know how much time they have.. only that she saw fire, saw death, and it doesn’t have to happen.

Not if they move.

Not if she makes it in time.

Down the hall, chaos erupts.

“Surrender quietly and you will be given a fair trial!” a guard commands, weapon raised. But Marjorie, driven by fear and fury, swings. Her quarterstaff cracks his skull in a sickening crunch, sending him to the floor.

Heroism slips easily into violence.

Guards flood the stairwell. Esme draws her sword and axe, their balance unmatched. “It’s a fight then!”

She charges down the corridor, pivoting at the bottleneck, her blades dancing as she blocks the guards from surrounding them. “Kellam! Help Esme!” Marjorie yells.

The faithful hound leaps to her aid, springing into the fray with teeth bared and unbreakable loyalty. Behind them, Marjorie sprints, her form blurring, bones hollowing in subtle shifts. The lycanthropy strengthens her: every kick, every spin, every leap has supernatural speed. Her staff cracks ribs and knuckles, knees and temples. Not a knight. Not a mage. But a predator awakened.

She reaches the door at the end of the hall, her hand about to twist the knob.

“Marjorie!” Rowan cries, rushing from around the corner. “The door’s trapped!”

She jerks her hand back. Behind her, two more guards lunge, but she’s too fast. Her left hand whips her crossbow up. Bolt flies. One man’s knee shatters, then another. They fall screaming—they’re just following orders. She won’t kill them. Marjorie’s hands know mercy even as her strength leans toward savagery.

She taps the door with the crook of her staff and pivots away. A burst of scorching flame blasts into the empty space where she once stood.

“Not anymore,” she sighs.

Down the hall, Sabrione wakes in a prison cell. Bound by silver shackles, a silence spell wrapped around her like a tight cloth. If she speaks, she bleeds. But there’s another way.

The ring. Ivan’s ring. She forces her hand out of the manacle.. skin peeling, blood dripping. She can feel her fingerbones crack. Her breath breaks, but she slips the ring on and sings, not with her mouth, but with gestures from one hand.

“Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody!”

Her voice blasts through the house, a musical classic from decades past.

“Sab!” Marjorie races to the cell, Rowan and Hope close behind.

They hear him then.

A shadow. A whisper. Izek Strazni, looming in the smoke.

“You will not take her,” he says, eyes glowing in the half-light. “You will not take her from me.”

“Well, will nobody in this gods forsaken valley just leave Ireena alone!?” Rowan spits.

She skids to a stop, grabs a ring of keys off a fallen guard, and hurls them across the hall. Marjorie grabs the ring, unlocking the cell door as Sabrione collapses into her arms, one of her hands completely deformed and mutilated.

Down the stairwell, Esme and Kellam hold the line, a tangle of blades and teeth. Van Richten appears at the end of the hall, sword in hand, sighing as he sees his student.

“Esme! When did I ever teach you to let yourself get surrounded indoors?”

“Oh, shut up, you deadbeat!” Rowan growls as she slashes another guard with the flat of her blade.

The corridor warps with heat as Izek steps into full view. His cloak, once concealing, is half-burned away, the smoldering edge falling to the floor as something enormous shifts beneath.

He growls—not quite human.

Then, with a rasp of scorched leather and splitting skin, his right arm tears free from its sleeve.

It is not an arm.

It’s a hell-forged limb—red-black and ridged like stone under molten flesh, ending in a clawed hand that pulses with ember-veined fury. Each finger ends in a blade-like talon, glowing faintly from the fire raging beneath his skin. As he raises it, soot and cinders spill from the seams of muscles that should not exist.

But they do.

“Ireena…” he breathes. His eyes are wild, unfocused. A servant of loyalty twisted into obsession. “She is mine.”

His infernal arm swells with heat—and then erupts, a roaring ball of fire shooting from his palm.

Hope sees it. Feels it. The air around her freezes so fast the walls crack.

She snaps her fingers and the explosion meets a storm of ice, her frosted breath curling like smoke in front of her face. Sparks lash the air, heat and cold colliding in an arc of red and pale blue.

Her pupils narrow to slits. She inhales deeply, the infernal energy thick on her tongue, rich and inviting.

“Demon,” she says, almost reverently. Her voice trembles—not with fear.

With hunger.

Esme bellows out “Demon!”

Rowan shouts even harder. “Another fucking demon!”

Izek snarls, flame rising around him like a shroud. But the frost is faster—Hope’s ice crawls up his legs, up his torso, biting into his flesh, freezing blood even as it boils. He stumbles, rage turning desperate.

Rowan lashes out with her shield, knocking aside another staggering guard. “Do not kill them!” she calls, breath ragged. “They are civilians.”

But Hope is no longer listening.

Her focus is fixed on the demon in front of her. The heat inside him. The power. The promise.

She steps forward, the frost fire in her veins humming.

“I’m not hungry for them,” she whispers, eyes locked on Izek’s burning, frostbitten form.

She bares her fangs in a slow, hungry smile.

Only him.

And the next move is hers.

The hallway becomes a crucible of fire and frost. Wooden walls shuddering under the weight of magic as Hope meets Izek in a clash of raw, unbridled power.

The demon-armed enforcer roars, molten veins seething beneath his charred flesh. Flames twist at his fingertips, and he hurls a torrent of fire toward her. Hope’s hands snap upward, answering with a storm of ice so cold the air cracks. The spells collide midair, exploding in a shockwave that sends cinders and shards of ice screaming through the room. The pressure drives Hope back, frost smoke rising from her shoulders as she resists the infernal force.

Every impact of their magic leaves the air thinner, heavier, crackling.

To the side, Esme, Rowan, and Van Richten are in motion—blades scraping against armor, shields turning spear thrusts. Rowan knocks a guard into the wall with the weight of her body, then swings her longsword to disarm another. Esme twirls in behind her, her weapons gleaming as she slashes and trips, forcing one man down without spilling his blood. Van Richten’s movements are grim and efficient, the old hunter cutting through the ranks with a rapier and a quiet snarl.

“There are too many!” Esme hisses.

“Hold the line,” Rowan replies, breath sharp. “Hope needs time!”

Hope doesn’t hear them.. not clearly. Everything is fire and cold, her ribs aching where Izek’s infernal blast grazed her. Her gown is half-burned and her flesh smolders. But she stays standing, frost pooling beneath her feet.

Izek raises his cursed hand, and with a roar, unleashes a devastating fireball in the narrow corridor.

The world ignites.

Flames tear through the hallway, devouring plaster, banners, guards. Rowan grabs Van Richten, dragging him behind a support pillar. Esme stumbles back beside them, her cloak catching sparks. They hit the ground, rolling out of the inferno’s reach.

But Hope is too far in.

Fire claws her back and shoulders. She screams, the sound swallowed by the inferno.. skin blistering, cloth turned to ash. Her knees buckle. She can barely breathe… not that she needs to.

But she isn’t finished.

Through the agony, her hand rises. Her voice breaks, but the words still carry power. The incantation rolls off her lips naturally like she’d been speaking these languages all her life.

Izek freezes. The flames in his hand gutter out. His infernal arm seems to shrink, flesh and claw crumbling inward as his body collapses and twists.

Into a snail.

A tiny, brown, glistening snail.. its shell still bearing a faint embossed sigil, almost like Izek’s scowl.

Hope gasps, half-laughing through her burns. She scoops him up, holding the infernal snail delicately between her fingers. “Kinda cute,” she wheezes.

Behind her, Rowan rushes forward, kneeling by her side, eyes wide with equal parts horror and awe.

“That was… dangerous,” she says.

Hope grins weakly, soot and blood on her lips.

“He started it.”

The guards still living have dropped their weapons and fled.

And Hope simply lies there, holding the snail, frost still chilling her breath.

“I think,” she says slowly, “I’ll keep him in a jar.”

Sabrione bursts through the hall like a storm let loose from its cage. Her boots slap against the floor, claws already half-drawn. Blood loss and exhaustion weigh her body, but her hunger is stronger. It howls inside her, ancient and unrelenting. Marjorie follows close behind, staff in hand, her feathers bristling in alarm.

“WHERE IS HE?” Sabrione shouts, voice echoing through the narrow corridor. “WHERE’S IZEK?”

Hope blinks, still trembling from her wounds. The tiny snail rests in her burned hand, its shell still pulsing faintly with infernal warmth. She curls her fingers around it, clutching it protectively against her chest. Her secret. Her prize. “He’s gone,” she says softly. “I’ll take care of him.”

Sab does not hear. She kicks open the nearest door, splintering it off its hinges. Inside, two guards stand watch over Ireena, who sits trembling against the far wall. The soldiers move fast, blades flashing, but Sabrione is faster.

Her talons tear through the first man’s throat before he can even scream. The second backs away in horror, but she pounces, a blur of motion, pinning him to the ground. Her fangs sink deep into his neck, and a wet, terrible sound fills the room. It is not a battle cry.. it is feeding. The rhythm of a starving thing.

The man gurgles and goes limp. Sabrione feeds like an animal starved beyond reason, fingers clutching flesh, eyes glowing red as blood fills her mouth. Ireena presses herself into the corner, eyes wide, whispering prayers that sound like apologies.

Rowan and Marjorie reach the doorway just in time to see it.

“Sab…” Rowan breathes as she reaches for her. A mistake.

Sabrione lifts her head. Blood runs down her chin and neck. Her eyes glow red in the candlelight, feral and hungry. Then she moves.. too fast, too desperate.. straight toward Rowan.

The knight raises her arm but is thrown backward, armor scraping the floor as Sabrione lands on top of her. Fangs bare. Breath hot. The scent of noble blood fills her senses. Every heartbeat of the paladin’s chest is thunder in her ears.

“Sab, no!” Marjorie shouts.

For one moment, everything stops.

Sabrione’s eyes flicker, the red fading to blue. Her lips tremble. She sees Rowan beneath her.. terrified but not fighting back. The realization hits like sunlight through storm clouds. Her mouth closes. The hunger breaks, replaced by horror.

She stumbles back, wiping her mouth with a trembling hand. “I—”

Rowan sits up slowly and reaches for her handkerchief. She wipes a streak of blood from Sabrione’s cheek with quiet gentleness. “Hey,” she says softly. “It’s alright. The fight’s over.”

But Sabrione cannot meet her eyes. Her breath shakes. I almost bit her. I almost killed her. The thought pounds like a heartbeat in her skull. The wretched creature immediately gets off her to wipe off her shame in the corner. Rowan stands up.

Marjorie watches her from the doorway. Her voice is quiet when she speaks, almost mournful. “You know, Rowan… she’s a vampire. She may be immortal, but you're not. You've only got so much time to waste.” An older woman's advice to a younger one.

"I am just a girl." Rowan answers. The warning hangs between them like a shadow.

"You're literally the greatest knight in this valley." Marjorie puts her palm on her face.

"And yet I am just a girl." She sighs.

Marjorie can only shake her head. "You remind me of my sheep."

Sabrione hears it all, every word cutting deeper than the fight ever did.

Across the hall, Hope crouches in the corner, muttering to herself as she holds her prize. The snail twitches once in her palm. She takes one of Isaac’s cookies from her pocket, presses the snail between it like filling, and bites down.

The taste is foul—ash and brimstone—but it hums with power. Her veins freeze and burn all at once. She chews, swallows, and licks the blood from her lips.

Van Richten watches from across the room, arms crossed. “Two vampires,” he says grimly. “Ezme, the company you keep is becoming very concerning.”

Esme glares at him. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

He frowns. “Then do what I taught you. Stay alive. Stay human. And go home, Ezme. That’s an order.”

She snaps back, sharp and bitter. “An order from who? Who are you to me to give me orders.”

He turns away, cloak rustling as he stalks down the hall.

Behind them, Hope begins to cough. At first it’s faint, then violent. She doubles over, clutching her chest. The half-eaten snail drops from her hands, rolling across the floor. Esme catches her as she falls.

“Hope? Hope, what did you—”

But the question dies in her throat. The air around Hope begins to ripple. Her pupils split like a serpent’s. Her breath fogs white.

Normally, when a polymorphed creature dies, the form breaks and the victim returns. But this time, the magic does not revert. Hope hadn’t just consumed Izek’s flesh. She’d devoured the mind that came with it.

Her eyes glaze, her lips curl into something halfway between a smile and a snarl. The heat of hellfire flickers beneath her skin.

Esme steps back, clutching her weapons.

Hope whispers, voice low and terrible. “He’s in me now.” She collapses and Esme catches her.

The world slips away once more around Hope. Her body sits still in Esme’s arms, but her mind is somewhere else.. drawn into the remnants of Izek’s mind now flickering inside her like embers in ash.

A boy plays by the lake. The light is soft, the water bright and silver. He is laughing. His sister’s auburn hair shines in the sun as she skips stones across the surface. They are happy, just for a breath of time.

Then the howling starts.

The wolves come from the trees—five of them, black and lean, moving too fast to count. His uncle throws himself at them, swinging a broken oar like a club. Izek reaches for his sister, shouting her name, but she freezes. The wolves tear their uncle apart first. Then they take him. His arm is gone in a heartbeat, teeth crunching through bone. He screams until his throat gives out. His sister finally runs away.

He wakes later on the muddy bank, alone, covered in blood that is not his own. The wolves lie dead around him, their necks twisted, their bodies torn apart by something far stronger than a child should ever be. He stumbles home through the rain, dragging his ruined arm behind him. The pain never stops.

Years pass. The boy becomes a ghost in the streets. He steals, he hides, he prays to a god that never answers. The other children laugh at him, call him names, throw stones at the stump of his arm. The anger grows with him, deep and hot and endless.

One night, while he prays beneath a broken statue, he feels something move beneath his skin. The pain returns—but it is different now, deliberate, shaping him. The veins crawl like snakes under his flesh. Bone pierces through muscle, claw by claw. His arm regrows, but it is no longer his. It is black and red and scaled, with nails like knives and the stink of brimstone. When it flexes, he can hear the bones crackle like firewood.

The next morning, his bullies vanish one by one.

The Baron finds him soon after. The boy is standing in a street covered in blood, smiling faintly. Instead of punishment, the Burgomaster takes him in. “A boy with a strong arm could be of use to me,” Vargas says. So Izek becomes his shadow, his executioner. He learns to torture without flinching, to kill without thought. Every rival that stands against the Vallakoviches disappears into the dark. The people fear him, whispering about the demon-arm that serves the Burgomaster’s will.

And yet, in all the years that follow, one name never leaves his heart.

His sister.

In another vision, Hope sees the girl who ran away. She arrives in Barovia Village, half-dead with cold. The kindly Burgomaster takes her in and calls her Ireena. She grows up beside Ismark, smiling, living, forgetting.

Then, much later, the night of the vampire’s attack. The screams of the townsfolk. The flames in the square. Izek sees her through the fire.. those same auburn curls, that same frightened face from the lake. His sister. Alive.

The need to protect her floods through him like a storm. “She must be safe,” he mutters. “She must be safe forever.”

He takes her from the chaos, brings her home. Locks the doors. She sees the dolls.. wooden faces, painted eyes, every one a pale imitation of the sister he lost. She thinks she is a prisoner. Izek thinks he is protecting her.

But the vision twists, deepens. Hope sees something else—something he saw that day during the attack. The truth he learned while keeping Ireena prisoner. Something that shattered what was left of him. She cannot make sense of it, but she feels it—the weight of it, the sorrow so thick it nearly drowns her.

Mustn’t tell her, his voice whispers in her mind. The truth would break her heart. Nobody needs to know. This is my burden to bear.

The images flicker and die. Hope gasps as the connection severs. Her eyes open to the present, pupils dilated, breath trembling. For a moment, she almost pities him.

Then she remembers the blood, the screams, the burning house.

Whatever humanity Izek once had, it is gone. And yet, now that he lives inside her, she can still feel it.. his love twisted into obsession; his grief curdled into madness. Just a little boy who wanted his only friend in the world back but was too broken to understand his own feelings.

She shivers. Somewhere deep inside, a small part of her whispers that she understands.

Esme lifts the limp vampire into the carriage, her arms trembling from the weight of exhaustion. Around her, the group moves in silence. Their wounds ache, their clothes are still flecked with soot and blood, but they must go. They must be seen. The Festival of the Blazing Sun will serve as their alibi, a shield against suspicion for what they had just done at the Burgomaster’s mansion.

The bells ring through the town as they make their way toward the square. Vallaki has never looked more alive. Lanterns swing from every post, painting the cobblestones in golden light. The air hums with the sound of trumpets and drums, with laughter that feels too loud, too forced, too desperate. There are no ribbons this time, no silk streamers fluttering from rooftops. Instead, the square is filled with steel and stone..carvings of the Morninglord, braziers that roar with fire, and torches that stretch like a halo around the crowd.

At the center of it all towers the wicker sun, a monstrous sculpture of reeds and dry branches bound together with twine and pitch. It looms over the town square, crackling faintly in the torchlight as if ready to consume itself in flame.

The Baron stands before it, cloaked in crimson and gold, his voice booming across the square. “My brothers and sisters in the Morninglord! Tonight, all will be well!” His torch flashes in the air, its flame trailing like a comet. “Tonight we light this in honor of the dawn that will one day break over Barovia! The sun shall return, and the devil shall be cast down into shadow!”

The crowd takes up the chant.

“Down with the devil!”

“Powerless to act! Powerless to oppress! Powerless to destroy!” Vargas continues, each word striking the air like a hammer. “This is the promise of Vallaki! That joy itself shall be our weapon against the darkness!”

“All will be well!” the crowd replies in unison, their voices echoing into the night.

The Baron smiles, and his eyes glint with triumph. “We celebrate not only our town and our blazing sun, but our victory this very day! The undead sought to claim our streets, to drag Vallaki into ruin! And now, the truth must be told!” He turns toward Lady Fiona Wachter, his smile turning cold. “It was her doing! The work of Fiona Wachter and her cult of devil worshippers!”

The people gasp. Murmurs turn to shouts. Her guards close ranks as the crowd jeers. “Heretics! Traitors!”

Fiona does not flinch, but she knows better than to linger. Her bodyguards push through the mob and lead her away as the Baron raises his arms again.

“But did we allow them to destroy us?” he cries.

“No!” the people roar back.

“That is the spirit of Vallaki!” Vargas bellows. “That is the light of the Morninglord burning within us all! And now, my friends, let us bask in the sun!”

The torch in his hand lowers, kissing the base of the wicker effigy. The fire catches instantly, racing upward in golden veins until the entire sculpture is aflame. It burns bright and violent, painting the sky in molten orange. The heat presses against the faces of the gathered townsfolk, and they cheer louder still.

“All will be well! All will be well! All will be well!”

The chant shakes the air. The crowd sways as if hypnotized, their voices drowning out the crackle of fire. Sparks rise like stars into the night.

Rowan watches in silence, her hand tightening into a fist. The Baron’s smile sickens her. He is no savior. He is a tyrant cloaked in light. Yet to speak against him now would mean tearing apart the fragile balance they’ve built in Vallaki.

Marjorie leans close, her voice quiet. “We speak against him, we draw support to Wachter. And I don’t trust her either. She stinks of ambition.”

Esme frowns. “Then what do we do?”

“We wait,” Marjorie says. “We go back to the mansion. See what’s left behind.”

The wicker sun collapses in on itself, sending a shower of sparks into the sky. The Baron raises his arms again, basking in his false glory as the crowd drinks in his lies like holy wine.

For one fleeting moment, Vallaki feels united. But in the flickering light, the heroes can see what the people cannot: the fire is not the sun. It is only wood and flame, burning because there is nothing left here that does not burn.

The streets of Vallaki are eerily quiet when the party returns from the festival. The echo of the crowd’s chanting—all will be well—still clings to the air like smoke. The flickering light from the burning effigy still glows faintly behind them, reflecting in puddles as they approach the Vallakovich mansion. The fire of the crowd had been manic, desperate. What waits inside is worse.

The house is silent. The guards who once patrolled its halls lie unconscious or dead from the earlier battle. The air is thick with soot and iron. When Marjorie opens the door, a faint stench of burnt oil seeps out from the cracks in the walls.

Upstairs, Sabrione smells blood, not from the guards they fought, or her own bloodstains on the wood. This is new. Thin trails, smeared and half-dried, leading down the hall. Hope follows the stains with her finger until they stop at a small storage closet. She looks at Rowan, who gives a nod. Marjorie grips her staff and swings the door open.

Inside, a man is chained to the wall. His eyes are sunken and wild. When the light spills in, he recoils like an animal.

“Oh no, no, no, please, no more!” His voice breaks. “I’ll be happy! I promise! I’ll never frown in public again! I’ll smile every day! I swear it!”

Marjorie kneels, lowering her weapon. “We’re here to help you, sir. You’re safe now.”

“No! It’s a trick! Another trick!” He flails against the chains. “You’re going to lead me into another room, and then you’ll hurt me again! I know your games! I know Captain Izek and the Baron’s games!”

Rowan doesn’t hesitate. She steps forward and releases the shackles one by one. The man collapses, trembling, and curls up on the floor. His wrists are raw, rubbed nearly to the bone.

Esme kneels beside him. “We’ll get you out. I promise.” She meets Rowan’s eyes. “His testimony could break Vargas. If he speaks before the townsfolk, they’ll see what their baron truly is.”

Rowan nods, though her mind is far away. Every step closer to the Baron’s downfall feels like walking a knife’s edge. “Do it. But be careful.”

“Who are you, sir?” Esme asks.

“Udo.” The man responds. “Udo Lukovich… the cobbler.”

Esme helps the man to his feet. “Come on, Udo Lukovich,” she says softly, guiding him down the hall. “Let’s get you to the inn. You’re safe now.”

When she’s gone, silence folds over the mansion again. The fire from the festival feels distant now, a false warmth against the creeping cold that seeps into the bones of this place.

Sabrione glances up. Her sharp eyes catch something above them—a square outline in the ceiling. “There’s a trap door,” she says.

“The attic,” Rowan murmurs. “Didn’t you say the mice were afraid of it, Marj?”

“They did,” Marjorie replies, staring upward. “Said it was full of bright lights and something scarier than the scaryman.” She sighs, rubbing her temples. “Hope nearly got burned alive today, Esme’s gone back, and Sabrione’s one bad memory away from falling apart. Maybe we skip the attic.”

Hope leans against the wall, exhausted. “Or maybe it’s the last secret we need to know.”

Rowan looks at her. The knight nods. “Then we go.”

The trap door creaks open. Dust rains down as a ladder unfolds into the darkness. The smell of old paper and decay hits them at once. The attic is packed with the debris of forgotten years.. rotting furniture, festival masks, broken toys, crates of old streamers, and heaps of moldy decorations from happier times.

Something scurries past their feet. Bone clicks against wood.

Marjorie stops. “A cat?”

Rowan squints. “A dead cat.”

The creature steps into the dim light, its eye sockets empty, its tail little more than a string of vertebrae that clatter faintly with every movement. Then, impossibly, it speaks. “Visitors!”

Only Marjorie can understand its words. Her head tilts slightly, intrigued. “Hello there.”

The skeleton-cat arches its back. “My best friend lives here. He is very nice. Very smart.”

“Where is he now?” she asks.

“In the far room. He performs his experiments there. I do not like the flashing lights. I hide until he finishes.” The skeleton rubs itself against the doorframe, vertebrae clicking with soft rhythmic sounds like a wind-up toy winding down.

Hope stoops and picks up the cat. Its bones feel strangely warm in her arms, like something still alive beneath the surface. She strokes it gently as they move through the attic, careful not to trip over the clutter.

They pass forgotten relics of the Blazing Sun Festival—effigies, half-melted masks, and banners painted with smiling suns. The air grows thicker with the smell of burned oil and candlewax.

At the end of the hall, a faint blue light glows from behind a door.

Rowan raises her hand and knocks three times.

No answer.

A fourth knock.

This time, something shifts inside—the slow scrape of wood, and the quiet, steady hum of magic.

The voice from behind the door is high and trembling.

“Go away! I don’t want to go to the festival!”

Rowan folds her arms. “He orders the whole town to bring their children, but his own son stays home. Typical.” She raises her voice. “We’re not here to make you go! We don’t work for your father.”

Silence. Then the sound of locks being undone, one after another. The door creaks open just enough for a pale young face to appear. A boy—no older than twelve—peers out at them with eyes too sharp for his age.

“What do you want?” he asks warily.

Marjorie smiles, gentle and patient. “We just wanted to ask a few questions, sweetheart. I’m Marjorie. That’s Rowan, Sabrione, and Hope. We saw lights flashing up here.”

“Oh.” He blinks, the suspicion melting into embarrassment. “Sorry. I was practicing.”

“Practicing what?” Sabrione asks, crouching slightly so they’re eye level.

“Magic,” he says, his shoulders squaring a little with pride. “My father hates it, so I do it up here. My name’s Victor.”

The room behind him looks like a storm of parchment and ink. Scrolls, half-burnt candles, piles of open books stacked like crooked towers. There’s order in the chaos though—each page turned just so, each spell component sitting within reach.

“Why not study at the library?” Marjorie asks. “The man there, Vasili, he’s a scholar. I’m sure he could teach you.”

Victor wrinkles his nose. “That Vasili guy? I can’t stand him. He talks like he knows everything, even when he doesn’t. He doesn’t say it outright, but you can hear it in his voice.”

Sabrione chuckles and musses his hair. “Sounds about right.”

“Does your father keep you here?” Marjorie asks softly.

“No,” Victor says after a pause. “I keep myself here. It’s easier for him too if nobody sees me. I think he prefers it that way.”

Hope notices movement in the shadows: three more cats, or rather, the skeletons of cats. Their bones click as they curl and purr against worn blankets and toys.

Sabrione’s tone turns careful. “Did something happen, Victor? Is that why he hides you away?”

The boy swallows. “I was supposed to marry a girl. Fiona Wachter’s daughter, Stella. She was nice. I liked her.” He grips a piece of fabric in his hand.. a ribbon, maybe hers. “I wanted to show her one of my spells and… I cursed her.” His voice cracks. “Her mind is broken now. Her mother hates my father for it, and she hates me too. I just wanted to impress her… I wanted her to like me.”

The room goes quiet.

Rowan takes a step forward. “You’re not a monster, Victor. You just aimed too high too soon.” She looks around at the shelves, the symbols chalked across the floor. “You’re a genius, really.”

He shakes his head violently. “No I’m not! I couldn’t fix her. I can’t fix anything! Even my cats. Look at them! They’re dead, but I couldn’t let them go. They can’t eat, they can’t hunt, they just stay here with me forever.”

Marjorie kneels beside one of the skeletal cats, the bones clicking softly as it turns its head toward her. She lowers her voice to a near-whisper, words carried like wind through a graveyard. For a moment, there is only stillness. Then the creature’s spine arches, and a faint shimmer of ghostly fur ripples across its bones, as though it remembers what it once was.

Marjorie tilts her head, listening. The faintest murmur brushes the edge of her thoughts. She nods once, eyes softening.

The smallest cat speaks first, its voice no more than a child’s sigh. He found me by the lake. I was cold and wet. He wrapped me in his coat and gave me honey bread. I want to stay with him forever.

The second cat, older and more dignified, lifts its skull proudly. He used to read to me by candlelight. Even after my heart stopped, he spoke to me as if I could still hear him. He brought me back so he would not have to read alone.

The third, the largest, sits beside Victor’s leg, tail bones twitching in a ghost of contentment. He thinks he failed us, it says, its jaw clattering gently. But he gave us more time. That is all any of us ever wanted.. to spend another night by his side.

Then, from the shadows at the far corner of the attic, something stirs. A fourth cat, smaller than the rest, creeps out from behind a stack of old toys. Its skull is cracked, one eye socket filled with a faint blue glow. It sits apart for a moment, watching, before it speaks in a voice barely louder than dust. He doesn’t know I’m here. I was too far gone when he tried. But I can see him. I can still see him smile when he talks to the others. I don’t want him to stop.

Marjorie’s breath trembles. She reaches toward the little one, brushing her fingers through its faint ghostly fur.

“You love him,” she whispers. “All four of you.”

More than we loved being alive, they answer together, voices weaving through each other like a single purr from four throats.

Marjorie rises slowly and turns to Victor, her voice soft, certain. “They say they’re happy, Victor. They say you’re their best friend. They love you more than they ever loved the world itself. Even the one you thought you couldn’t save still watches over you.”

Victor stares at her, then at the cats crowding around his feet—their hollow eyes filled with impossible warmth. His lip quivers as he drops to his knees, gathering them up, even the shy one who hesitates before climbing into his arms.

“You really mean it?” he whispers.

Marjorie nods. “They never stopped meaning it.”

The boy buries his face in the clattering bundle, tears dripping between bones that, for a heartbeat, seem to purr. One would think he still somehow feels their fur on him.

He looks up sharply, eyes wide. “You’re not just saying that?”

Hope smiles and gathers the skeletal cats, handing them over like fragile treasures. “They love you,” she says.

Victor hugs them all, his thin arms shaking. Tears streak his cheeks, but he smiles through them. “I love you all too!” He weeps into the bones.

Rowan grins. “Alright, that’s it. You’re coming with us.”

“The cats too,” Hope adds.

“My father’s not going to approve.”

“He already doesn’t approve of us,” Sabrione says with a smirk, letting one fang flash in the candlelight. “Besides, you’re exactly what we need. The Baron would rather choke on his pride than admit his son’s a prodigy.”

Victor hesitates only a moment before darting to a cluttered cabinet. He pulls out a small stack of parchment and spreads them across the table. Each one bears the Baron’s seal. Execution orders. Names of townsfolk who vanished.. dates that match their disappearances.

“You’ll want these too,” he says with a sly, triumphant grin. “I kept them… uhh… just in case I wanted something from father.”

Sabrione’s eyes gleam. “Perfect.”

When they leave, the boy walks between them, clutching his cats in one arm and the damning papers in the other. The night outside is quiet again, the echo of the festival long gone. The Blue Water Inn waits for them in the distance, dark and still, the torches burned out.

By midnight, Vallaki sleeps. The heroes return unseen, with a boy who might just change everything.

“Alright,” Rowan says, voice firm as she leans over the table. The candlelight catches in her armor, turning the edges gold. “Vargas will do what we want him to do now that we know his secrets. House Daggerford was never afraid to strike below the belt.” Her hand tightens into a fist. She feels it in her bones.. the same cold decisiveness her aunt once carried. “We’ll play his game better than he does.”

Marjorie studies her for a moment before speaking. “Do we want to keep him though? Perhaps Fiona Wachter is indeed the lesser evil.” Her tone is measured, but her eyes flick to the window, to the streets below where the remnants of the festival smolder. “Do the keepers know anything about her?”

Dannika folds her arms, shaking her head. “The Wachters have a long history with House von Zarovich. Too long. I don’t trust her simply because of that. You cannot serve Strahd for generations and come away clean.”

Marjorie sighs and rubs her temples. “Ireena Kolyana?”

“Ireena isn’t from here,” Dannika replies quickly. “The people don’t know her. Her brother’s already burgomaster of another town. That makes her a symbol, not a leader. The first noble who dislikes her would call it nepotism. She’d be crushed before she began.”

Her husband is busy attending to the inn so it’s just her with them at the moment.

Sabrione, lounging in her chair, glances up from where she’s polishing her blade. “Vasili von Holtz is eligible for burgomaster, isn’t he?”

Rowan lets out a humorless laugh. “Listen, I like Vasili well enough, but he’s not exactly fit to run a town. He’s too obsessed with his books, thinks he’s the smartest man in every room, and he’d probably forget he was burgomaster by the end of the first week.”

“And Vasili hasn’t worked a day in his life.” Dannika remarks. “The library is barely ever open because he’s always off on little leisurely projects.”

Sabrione tilts her head. “If he wins the election and marries Ireena, she could govern in his stead. She’s steady. Practical. The people would see her for who she really is in time.”

Rowan doesn’t respond immediately. Her gaze drifts to the flickering light of the hearth, the fire painting shadows across her face. The idea isn’t without merit—but the thought of using Ireena like a pawn leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

“We’ll watch,” Rowan says at last, her voice steady though her hands are still clasped tight. “We’ll listen. And when the time comes, we’ll move.”

The words settle heavy in the air. For a moment, no one speaks. The only sound is the restless whisper of the wind pressing against the shutters, soft and thin, like the breath of something waiting just beyond the window.

Esme exhales and leans forward, her gauntlet tapping against the table. “We can’t just keep reacting,” she says. “We need a real plan if we’re ever going to take him down.”

“You mean Strahd,” Rowan says, though the name barely escapes her lips.

“Of course I mean Strahd.” Esme’s tone is grim, but there’s a spark of conviction there. “You’ve all heard the stories. The vampire lord of Barovia is nearly impossible to kill. But I think I know why. When I was investigating his castle, I saw something… something unnatural. You were there, Rowan. A massive crystal heart, suspended in chains, pulsing like it was alive. Every time he was wounded, it glowed. Every time he struck, it blazed brighter. I think that thing is keeping him alive.”

Hope’s brow furrows. “A heart,” she murmurs. “That sounds like the kind of trick he’d pull. Tie his soul to something. Keep it beating for him.”

“The Heart of Sorrow,” Dannika Martikov says quietly. Her eyes are sharp behind her spectacles. “I’ve read about it. Some believe it’s a vessel for his suffering, a focus that drains his pain away and turns it into strength. If that’s true, then destroying it would weaken him.”

“—but it’s in the tallest tower of Castle Ravenloft.” Esme remarks “That place is death itself.”

Sabrione’s eyes narrow. “So when we get to the Castle, we split our attack. Some of us fight him directly while others go for the heart.”

“Easier said than done,” Marjorie replies. “That castle’s crawling with horrors. He’ll have eyes everywhere and he wants us split up. It took all of us to get him just to bleed last time we saw him.”

Dannika taps the table thoughtfully. “We don’t have to do everything ourselves. The Keepers of the Feather have been preparing for this for years. They’ve been waiting for a sign, for someone to give them cause to move. Let them deal with the heart. It’s our kind of work: fast, quiet, surgical.”

Rowan hesitates. “You trust your agents that much?”

“I do,” Dannika says. “They’re not soldiers like you. They’re saboteurs. They’ve been flying messages, tracking his spies, keeping our heads above water since the day you arrived. If anyone can destroy that crystal without dying in the attempt, it’s them.”

Hope looks between them, her expression unreadable. “Then we’ll face him directly,” she says. “And they’ll cut out his heart.”

“Exactly.” Dannika folds her arms. “When the moment comes, the Keepers will already have that tower rigged to blow. He’ll have nowhere to run.”

Rowan nods slowly. The plan is dangerous—almost certain death—but for the first time, there is a shape to their path. A way forward.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she says. “Strahd is sure to strike at the wedding. We’ll be ready for him.”

The wind rattles the shutters again, harder this time, as if something unseen had brushed against the wood. The candlelight flickers, shadows stretching long across the room.

Outside, the night feels aware of them.

Later that night, the world feels softer.

The moon hangs high and full over Vallaki, round and patient, washing the inn’s courtyard in its silver glow. Marjorie sits on the old stone bench, her cloak wrapped loosely around her shoulders, Kellam resting nearby. The dog lifts his head when she stands, ears twitching, tail brushing the ground in steady rhythm.

Marjorie breathes in deeply. The air tastes clean tonight. Cold, but clean.

“Catch me, Kellam,” she whispers with a smile, voice light and trembling with excitement.

The change begins slowly. Her body remembers what to do before her mind does. Bones hollow. Joints creak. Skin ripples and feathers push through, black as pitch and glistening in the light. The pain is sharp, electric, but she does not fight it. This is her curse, her gift, her second skin. When she opens her eyes again, the world is vast and alive beneath her.

She spreads her wings and launches into the air. The first few strokes are clumsy, awkward, like learning to walk again—but then the wind catches her, and she soars. The rooftops blur beneath her. The cold air rushes through her feathers. A laugh escapes her beak, startled and free.

Kellam barks from below, running through the courtyard with reckless joy.

She circles once, twice, daring herself higher, the rooftops shrinking into neat little patterns below. Her heart beats like a drum in her chest. For the first time in months, she feels weightless.. untethered from the sorrow and blood that cling to Barovia. She is only Marjorie, a shepherd turned raven, tasting freedom.

She climbs higher still, brushing the clouds. They shift and swirl around her like soft hills of silver fog. Then they move in ways clouds should not.

A shape forms.. a face, vast and cruel, carved in vapor and shadow. A pale man with a hunger that nothing can satisfy. She recognizes him immediately.

His eyes open first, two hollow red moons burning within the mist. His mouth curls into a smile that stretches across the night sky. His voice follows, low and echoing, though she cannot tell if it is thunder or laughter. The clouds churn, breaking apart in a sudden gale that sends her spinning. The air turns violent.

Marjorie fights the wind, wings straining, until the face vanishes.

Silence returns, but the calm feels wrong now.. too quiet, too deliberate.

She dives toward the lights of Vallaki, heart hammering.

Below, the town slumbers. The streets are cluttered with torn banners, broken festival torches, and scattered weapons. She glides past darkened windows, each one a small flicker of normal life in a place that knows little of it.

Blinksy snores in his shop, his toy monkey curled against his chest.

At the orphanage, Walter and Yeska sleep soundly, one dreaming of dragons, the other of candy. Arabelle’s map lies folded beneath her pillow, marked with plans for another childish “adventure” come morning.

The Yustov twins sleep under heavy gold-lined blankets, their dreams safe behind locked doors.

And high above it all, on the cathedral’s peak, Rudolph van Richten sits watch. The old hunter’s eyes are closed, chin resting on his chest. For once, he allows himself to rest. But below him, just out of sight, something else stirs.. something that has been watching as long as he has.

Marjorie lands softly in the courtyard again, feathers trembling. Kellam runs to her side, tail wagging, but she doesn’t speak. She only stares at the moon.

The wind sighs through the empty streets like laughter that refuses to die.

Sabrione stands alone in her chamber, the candlelight guttering against the cold walls. Her fingers close around the hilt of the sword as if she can anchor something unruly in herself. She breathes once, then again, slow and steady, and lifts the blade until it catches the flame.

“Before anyone says anything, I don’t want any of the other souls in this blade,” she says, voice low and hard with a kind of brittle command. “I want to speak to Ivan and only Ivan. I will not listen to anyone else.”

The moment she names him, the room answers. The metal sings as if the sword itself exhales. A shape coalesces in the wavering gloom, not quite fully solid, not quite merely a trick of light. He is  just there. Ivan, older than the memory of him, ragged at the edges and clear in the places that matter. His face is worn like a well-thumbed map of sorrow, but his eyes find her without surprise. It is unclear to her whether she is imagining this or if he really does appear to her.

“What do you want, Sab?” he asks. His voice is softer than she expected.

She drops the tip of the blade to the floor and slides a foot back, suddenly the child again who is hiding behind jokes and lacquered glee. The armor of insolence slips. “It is strange,” she says, and the admission tastes like vinegar. “I hated you for so long. Killing you was the only thing on my mind for years. But then.. for what?” She swallows. “You tried to kill a monster. You did what you thought you had to. Did you do wrong? Was I… Right to kill you for doing the right thing? How different are you from Esme? I’m sure she’s killed hundreds of monsters.”

Ivan’s mouth twists. For a moment he looks younger, like the boy who learned how to aim and fire and survive. “Hating someone is a poor reason to want to kill them,” he says. “If you think it wasn’t wrong to try to kill you, perhaps it wasn’t wrong for you to hate me for it.”

“No,” Sabrione says too quickly. Her laugh is thin. “You don’t get to tidy this up with words. You poisoned me, Ivan. You put death in my throat… but you were literally doing what you were supposed to do. You were human. I preyed on humans, so you killed me. Did you really deserve to die for that?”

He flinches as if struck. The ghost of him stumbles backward a step and then steadies. “Yes,” he admits without defense. “I poisoned you. I thought I was doing right. I thought you were a monster whose existence was a threat to all of humanity, but that wasn’t why I tried to kill you.”

Sabrione sees the memory rise in him, the fever of righteousness. She remembers the moment she almost tore Rowan’s throat out. The memory sits like a stone in her gut. She had seen food where a friend stood, smelled blood and nothing but hunger. She had not meant for that to be her, and yet it was. The knowledge of the thing inside her claws at her like frost.

“You ruined my life,” Ivan says then. The accusation is simple and absolute. “I hated you because you ruined my life. My town burned. My family bled. Hate was the only compass I had. It was the only motivation I had to live! Then you walked into that ruin and somehow.. somehow you were more than the curse. The more I saw you, the less hatred fit in my heart. I could not hold on to it. You were what you were… and you were… beautiful! I felt joy around you! You made me laugh! So much that I my hatred for your kind started to make less and less sense… so my life made less and less sense. I could not bear that. So I poisoned you.”

Sabrione’s knees want to give. Her throat tightens. “It doesn’t change what I am!” she whispers. Tears begin to run, bitter and hot, down a face that is used to pulling a mask of scorn into place.

“That does not mean you were wrong to be,” Ivan answers, his voice a dry wind. He steps closer, and for a stunned second she expects the rancor she braced for. Instead he looks utterly small before her, human in its most fragile way.

“I’m a monster, Ivan!” She spits back.

“You.. are.. a person,” he says, and the words fall slow and careful. “You are the most human person I have ever known. Cursed, yes. Dangerous, yes. Imperfect like every human should be. But you wanted to be loved and I destroyed the one thing you loved about yourself. I never should have hurt you. I am sorry.”

The apology is unvarnished, stripped of rhetoric and excuse. It lands heavier than any blade. Sabrione thinks of the years she wrapped herself in jokes to hide the raw places. She thinks of the doors she always slammed shut when anyone tried to come close. She thinks of the moments that might have been different if someone had simply taken her fear and held it like the fragile thing it is.

“Ivan,” she says, and the name is a prayer and a wound at once.

He steeples his fingers as if in prayer and the candles throw his shadow long across the floor. “Listen,” he says quietly. “He sits there in that castle. The man who made this hell that you live in. He made created this curse because he could not love what he could not control. His appetite for power birthed your torment. I cannot undo what I did, and I cannot set the world right, but I will be by your side if your desire is to settle the score with the man who made you suffer.”

Sabrione’s heartbeat answers to him, quick and raw. She had always dreamt herself laughing on some distant stage, retorts and triumph. Even revenge had been a fantasy for her, but this wasn’t revenge. It was justice. Justice so that just a few more people in the world would be spared her curse, her suffering. Yet the blade at her feet has teeth.

“I wish kill him for what he did to you,” Ivan says. “When his magic is gone, when the thing that binds me and binds the rest of this land is broken, then I will be freed. We will rid the world of the two men who ruined destroyed life and you will be avenged.”

A grief like rain hits her then. The idea of Ivan gone forever is a hollow where something warm once sat. Her lungs hitch. She had learned to hate him and she had learned also to love him in the crooked way of shared histories and broken companionship. The thought of his absence, even if it meant the end of the curse, feels like a theft. It’s an emotion she cannot express.

“How about it?” he asks, and the question is a hand held out across the abyss. “One last adventure. You and me against that bastard.”

She reaches without thinking. Her fingers close around an emptyness. Air meets air. The hand is not there. For a heartbeat nothing answers, then a smile appears on his face, the first genuine lift she has seen in all the long years. It is both an invitation and a benediction.

She squeezes anyway, as if touching the memory of a hand could anchor a promise. The sword at her feet hums with faint music. Ivan’s form shimmers and slowly unthreads into motes of candlelight, the smile lingering like a brand.

“Let’s go kill that son of a bitch.” he says, voice fading.

When the last wisp of him dissolves, Sabrione stays very still. The room seems louder and emptier at the same time. Her breath comes ragged. Her armor of jokes has melted. For the first time since she became what she is, she allows herself to break. Tears fall unchecked, hot and honest, and she lets them fall.

A sound reaches her then, very soft, like the scraping of boot leather on stone. She sets her sword back across her knees and looks toward the door. Outside there are friends who are weary, who fight and forgive and need her. She wipes her face with the back of her hand, breathes deep, and stands. Just like that the tears are gone.

One more kill. For vengeance. For justice. The scorned names her nemesis.

Strahd von Zarovich must die.

Rowan lifts her head from her embroidery as a knock echoes against the wooden door. The needle stills between her fingers. For a moment, she considers pretending not to hear it.. pretending she can stay inside this little square of quiet where the world’s darkness cannot reach her. But the knock comes again, gentler this time. Familiar.

She sets the fabric aside and opens the door.

Sabrione stands there, her posture oddly soft, and beside her is Arabelle, bright-eyed and hesitant, an envelope held tightly in her small hands.

“We wanted you to read it when you had a more level head,” Sabrione says. Her voice is calm, but her eyes betray something—kindness, concern, maybe even a trace of affection. Arabelle, smiling faintly behind her, holds the letter out like an offering.

“What’s this?” Rowan asks, taking it.

Then she sees the crest. The red wax seal of House Daggerford. A silver dagger covered in blood.

Her breath catches. “It’s from my father.”

She tears the seal, careful not to rip the parchment, and begins to read. Each line cuts her deeper.

Dear Rowan,

I'm sorry for not being there when you left. When I'd heard you decided to go looking for your aunt, I rushed straight home to stop you, but by the time I arrived, you had already gone. I've been in Baldur’s Gate, running the city with your Uncle Charles. The man does not know how to rule. He only knows how to joust.

I want to beg you to stay safe. I want to beg you to come home. I want so much to tell you that you are my heir and that Daggerford cannot afford to lose you... but I know who you are. You will see this mission to the end. You're just like your aunt.

So, all I can say now is... avenge my sister. Fight like hell. Show that man what House Daggerford has risen to become all these years! You are the blade that protects the realm, the best knight that I know. Your mother and I are cheering for you, and we will be here for you when you return.

With love and encouragement, Duke Salvador Daggerford.

Her eyes blur before the end. The words swim as her grip tightens, and the paper begins to crumple in her trembling hands. When the tears finally fall, they stain the ink until it bleeds.

“I never said goodbye to my mother and father before I left,” she whispers.

The admission shatters something small and quiet inside her. All at once, the proud, steel-willed knight gives way to the daughter beneath the armor. Sabrione steps forward, Arabelle close behind, and both of them draw her into an embrace. Rowan doesn’t resist. She presses her face into Sabrione’s shoulder, feeling the faint chill of her undead skin, and lets herself cry like she hasn’t since she was a child.

“They must be so worried about me,” she says into the air.

“Or worried for Strahd,” Sabrione murmurs with a smirk so gentle it almost passes for comfort. It earns the ghost of a laugh from Rowan, shaky but real.

When at last she can breathe again, Rowan wipes her eyes and turns to her desk. “Thank you both… I haven’t heard from him in quite some time.” Her voice steadies. She reaches down and picks something up. “Here. I’ve been working on this for the past few hours.”

She holds out a small, finely embroidered handkerchief, the threads gleaming in the candlelight. The floral pattern mirrors Sabrione’s gown: deep violets, muted silvers, a border of midnight blue. Her name is stitched neatly in one corner.

“Oh my…” Sabrione’s voice falters. “Rowan, I… I wasn’t expecting this.” For the briefest moment, color touches her pale cheeks. The reaction is rare enough that even Arabelle blinks in surprise.

“Please accept it,” Rowan says softly. “I don’t know where we’d be without you.”

Their eyes meet—and for a moment the world narrows to that stillness between them. The knight and the vampire, sunlight and shadow, staring at each other as if something fragile has begun to grow between them. Even Arabelle steps back, wide-eyed, unwilling to disturb whatever hangs in the air.

Finally, Sabrione breaks the silence. “It’s missing something,” she says, taking the handkerchief gently. She reaches out and dabs at the corner of Rowan’s eyes, still wet with tears, then presses the cloth to her face and inhales.

“Well,” she says with a mischievous tilt of her lips, “now it’s perfect.”

Rowan freezes, words failing her. What feels like an eternity passes between them. Arabelle covers her mouth to hide her grin. Sabrione only chuckles, slips out the door with a glimmer of satisfaction, and leaves the paladin staring after her.

When the room is quiet again, Rowan exhales. Her heart beats too fast. She touches her cheek where Sabrione had brushed it and feels the faintest warmth. It lingers.

Then… clatter.

Something rolls across the floor and stops near her feet. A skull.

She gasps, high and sharp, stepping back as it settles against the wooden boards, the hollow sockets fixed on her. “Victor!” she calls up toward the ceiling.

“Sorry! Sorry!” comes the boy’s muffled voice from above. “I’m just trying to make this skull teleport elsewhere! I think I almost got it!”

Rowan looks down, voice trembling. “But… the skull is already here, Victor.”

“No it’s not. Hold on!”

There’s a pause, followed by his delighted shout. “Eureka! I did it! Specimen 435 is gone!”

Rowan stares at the numbers carved faintly into the bone: 435. She kneels, tracing them with one finger, the chill running through her.

“Victor… what the fuck.” She whispers to herself.

The candle flickers. Somewhere above her, laughter echoes through the rafters, half-boyish, half-mad, as Rowan stares into the skull’s empty eyes and wonders just how far forward… or back... this child’s magic truly reaches.

Vampire Club by Voltaire plays over the credits

The adventurers are in bed and Urwin Martikov stands alone in the Inn’s backroom. A cleric, a merchant and a bard enter the tavern.

It feels like a joke, he thinks. But no, this isn’t a joke. It’s a suicide mission. Tonight, they strike at the Heart of Strahd.