One of Us Will Die
Curse of Strahd Adventure Report 20:
The Massacre at Castle Ravenloft

The following chapter is a spin-off session run as a One of Us Will Die one-shot. Henry plays Coco. Den plays Adele and Alonzo plays Armand.

The midnight march thunders on beyond the castle walls, a slow, inexorable tide of bone and rust. At the stroke of twelve the dead rise in Barovia, each grave disgorging a pale silhouette bound for the high windows of Castle Ravenloft. They move with awful purpose, a procession that turns the moonless sky into a pale smear. It is beneath that terrible cover the three of them press forward, small living shapes threading through a world that has learned to pretend the dark is safe.

Adele keeps her fingers tight around the holy symbol at her throat. She breathes shallow and steady, the way a soldier does before a charge. She is young, no older than a flower in early frost, but there is steel under her skin. Her hands are callused from work that has nothing to do with war: she once tended a the small church in the village, lighting candles for fishermen and sowers. They say she is the last of a scattering of Barovians driven from the village after the failed uprising. She remembers Doru’s face as if it were a grain in her teeth. When the dead took him she learned what it is to carry grief as armor. She does not pray for herself. She prays for those who cannot.

Armand walks behind her like a shadow that carries a grating laugh. He smells of saddle leather and coal. Wherever he goes he keeps a small, battered journal tucked beneath his arm, its pages scribbled in a spidery hand. He murmurs phrases to himself between breaths, riddles half-remembered from taverns and old wives’ tales. The words keep him from slipping wholly into the dark. He is a smuggler by necessity, not by greed. He has ferried forbidden things across Barovia for the Keepers of the Feather, bargains wrapped in cloth and whispered at midnight, the sort of things that buy the lives of strangers. Everywhere he goes, the visions follow him. He always comes back. The phrase muttered from his lips even when he isn’t consciously speaking.

Coco moves last, light-footed, the strap of his lute rubbing a flat line across his back. He is a teller of nonsense in a land that takes nothing as given, a man with more scars than smiles. He wears his losses like a cloak. Once his two brothers rode with him between markets and wayside inns until the ghouls took them in a single hungry hour. He says their names aloud like a vow and then wraps them in songs he hums low enough for only stone to hear. He wields a rapier the way a prayer is wielded, quick, precise, as if each thrust might find a beating heart and hold it still. He keeps a bright humor in the corner of his mouth because the world will not take the rest of him.

They arrive at the empty guard towers and stop beneath a sky hustling with low clouds. Coco’s voice is little more than a hiss. “No sentries,” he says. The silence roars.

“Morninglord protect us,” Adele whispers. The words are not ritual. They are a promise, the kind you make with hands pressed to a wound.

Armand’s pencil scratches across his journal as if writing can tether the moment to reason. “Towers rising over the valley, unmanned, but never blind. He is always watching, and he always comes back.” he murmurs in the same slow cadence he uses when drunk. It is a refrain that has haunted him for weeks. Sometimes he speaks it aloud and lets the sentence fall like a plate. Tonight, the plate does not break.

A dark figure stands at the gate where the drawbridge yawns open like a mouth. The bridge drops with a sound like a coffin struck upon the stones. Fog pours through the gap and the three cluster together, small bodies against the impossible bulk of the castle.

“Who in hell is willing to risk this from inside?” Armand asks, half to the night and half to the woman who vanishes like breath when they answer.

Asha steps from the shadow as though the darkness itself is her servant. Her beauty is as sharp as broken glass, her stillness too precise to be human. The air chills around her presence, the faint scent of old roses carried on the damp wind. She does not move like a woman of flesh and blood, but like something sculpted from night, taught to imitate grace. Her eyes linger on each of them in turn—Adele, Armand, and Coco—and for a moment none dare breathe.

She wears no crown, yet her bearing carries one. This is no noblewoman playing at tragedy, no grieving sister alone in her sorrow. This is one of the Brides of Strahd, a creature of ancient beauty and monstrous patience, the keeper of his secrets and his hungers.

“Be quick with your business,” she says, her voice as smooth as silk laid over a coffin lid. “You were never here. I was never here.”

The last syllable trembles in the air like the pluck of a dying string. Her form begins to waver, skin paling, dissolving into a skittering hum. Her limbs collapse into a crawling wave of black insects that pour down her gown, spilling across the stones and vanishing into the cracks between them. The last thing they see is her face—still, serene, and smiling faintly—as it breaks apart into a swarm of wings and legs that scatter into the night.

Adele’s hands shake. Armand mutters something that might be prayer or madness. Coco only whispers, “The gods preserve us,” though he doubts they can.

The three make their way across the drawbridge. The gates yawn open as if beckoning them into a throat. There is no light coming from inside the castle. Wind stirs the banners high above, carrying the smell of old blood and wet stone. Lightning flashes and the world becomes a place of high contrasts: bright flame and black shadow, the way a skull looks when you hold it to a lantern.

“The front door is open.” Adelle remarks.

Armand shakes his head. “A trap, no doubt. Nobody leaves their front door open like that.”

“Perhaps the nice lady who dropped the bridge for us left it open.” Coco says, turning to him.

“You thought the scary lady was nice!?” Armand hisses and spots a way around. Perhaps there is another way in, a more discreet way.

They skirt the main avenue and move around to the servants’ courtyard, where a carriage house leans like a tired shoulder and iron-banded doors sleep beneath lichen.

Here the smell is different. It is a clotted thing: grease and unwashed linen overlaid with the sour tang of animal. The castle’s servants still have bodies that eat and make beds and dream small human dreams. They may be less dangerous than the lords above, but the keep is built upon their backs. The three know cruelty and the small indignities that make it possible.

Adele’s knuckles whiten on the holy symbol. “This looks like a good point of entry.”

Armand nods, then unmasks an almost tender attention to the lock. He has the hands of a man who has done this too often and so has learned to be quick. “There are ways into everything,” he says. He works the pick with a whisper. Coco watches the metal turn, listens to the lock breathe, and hums under his breath. The old song is not one he learned for comfort. It is a song he learned to keep the things behind him steady.

They slip through the servants’ door like breath through a keyhole. Inside, the hall is a narrow gut of cold and odorless stone. Rats scatter into niches and the smell of slow cooking rises and falls like a quiet accusation. It is the kind of place that keeps secrets by the handful. A table sits upended, vats lie on their sides, and in one corner a pile of discarded cloaks suggests someone left in a hurry. The dead march at the castle gates but the living within move in careful, smaller patterns.

“Keep low,” Coco whispers. His boots pad over the flagstones as if he will not be heard. “If the ghosts outside have made the walls sleepy, the servants will still sing.”

Armand halts at the edge of a vaulted passage. He presses his palm to the cold stone and traces a map with his eyes. This is where the plan begins and where it can end. “The Heart is higher than any of us think,” he says quietly. “It sits in the High Tower that pierces the sky like a spear for the devils. If we even touch the stones near it, we will feel its watch.”

Adele’s lips move in prayer without sound. She has saved a handful of lives for the Morninglord in her short time. She has also learned that prayer does not replace action. The symbol in her hand hums with an old and patient heat. “We find the dynamite,” she says, her voice not younger now than cold iron. “We place the charges on the Heart and we leave. Fast, clean, silent.”

Coco’s fingers find the lute on his back. He runs a fingertip along the strings and the sound is a small, bright thing that does not belong in a place where the dead drum to a different rhythm. “My brothers used to cross floors like this,” he says. “Once, in a different life, there were balls here and dancing feet. I keep them pinned to my heart so I will not forget what the world was supposed to be.”

They are not the heroes of tavern songs. They are the hands willing to touch a hot furnace for the chance the flames will consume what is most inhuman. They are small and imperfect and tired. Yet each carries something that will not be left behind: Adele her faith, Armand his stubborn ledger of sanity, Coco his music for graves.

The Heart waits above. The castle does not sleep. The night is a living thing and it is hungry.

The air thickens as they step into the chamber, every breath tasting faintly of rust and decay. The faintest light from the moon trickles down the stairwell, just enough to glint off the damp stone walls. The skeletal guards stand like statues, their sockets empty, their armor still faintly gleaming from a time long forgotten.

Coco moves first, unable to resist the lure of the desk. His boots leave clean prints in the film of dust. “It’s a logbook,” he murmurs, brushing away years of neglect. His eyes dart from line to line, whispering the words as though afraid they might hear him. “Names… people who were brought in here. A servant’s manifesto.”

Armand’s head turns sharply at the tone in Coco’s voice. “And?”

“They were here,” Coco says, voice trembling. “Marron and Polvo. My brothers were brought into this castle.”

Armand’s whisper slices through the air. “Quiet, bard. You’ll get us all killed.”

Adele’s gaze sweeps across the room, tracing every crack, every darkened corner. “We have to move. What were our directions?”

Coco forces his shaking hands to steady. “Downstairs. To Lady Volenta’s chamber. That’s where the explosives are. She died this afternoon, I hear. She won’t be needing them.”

“She was always dead.” Armand claims.

“You know what I mean.” Coco rolls his eyes. “Either way, we find her chambers, we find the explosives.”

“Then upstairs,” Armand adds, already sketching mental maps. “To the Heart of Sorrow. Madame d’Avenir said that’s where his protection lies.”

They descend into the cellar. The air grows colder, heavy with mildew and age. Fog coils around their legs as if the floor itself exhales. The beams groan above them. Each footstep lands like a drumbeat against their nerves.

A shadow moves.. massive, slow, and deliberate. It glides across the ceiling before its source lumbers into view. The thing that emerges from the mist is almost a man, but not quite.

“Lord Rahadin said nothing about guests,” he mutters in a thin, uneven voice. His face catches the candlelight.. half reptile, half man, stitched together by cruelty. A duck’s foot scrapes the stone floor while furred hands twitch with nervous energy. His mismatched eyes blink at them, one brown, one gold.

Coco forces a laugh, too loud, too rehearsed. “Guests? No, no. We’re tonight’s entertainment! A fine performance for the lords and ladies of Castle Ravenloft. My brothers were to join me! Marron and Polvo Muscovado. You’ve heard of us, surely.”

The creature hesitates. His strange patchwork face twists with uncertainty as he scratches behind a panther-like ear. “Entertainment… yes. Of course. Lord Strahd enjoys his music.”

Armand’s pen trembles over his notebook. Adele says nothing, clutching her holy symbol so tightly the silver cuts into her palm.

“I am Cyrus Bellview, the butler,” the creature says finally, smiling with teeth too sharp for his mouth. “Come. Marron is not far. I will take you to him.”

Coco flashes a grin to the others. It’s all bluff now, and the only thing left to do is see how far the lie can run before it collapses.

They follow Cyrus through a pair of warped doors. The hinges scream. The smell hits first.. sweet rot, blood, varnish. Dark stains bloom across the floor like black flowers. The tables, once fine oak, lie splintered and shoved aside. In their place stand grotesque replacements carved entirely of human bones. Skulls form the legs, femurs the supports, spines the arches. The room looks less like a banquet hall and more like a shrine to madness.

Adele takes one step forward, her voice faint. “Morninglord have mercy…”

Cyrus turns to them, his smile too wide, too human to be real. “Please,” he says, gesturing toward the ghastly furniture with open arms. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

The doors to the north and south are sheathed in bone, but the steel-banded double doors in the center of the east wall are not. Above these eastern doors is mounted the skull of a human. The three do not recognize it, but it is Ivan’s.

“Did you make these sculptures, Cyrus?” Adele asks.

Cyrus beams as if he has been waiting years for someone to ask. “Yes, mistress! All my own work.” He gestures proudly to the grisly furniture, the femur-legged tables and spine-backed chairs. “The bones are gifts from the castle itself. The master and his ladies leave them everywhere, sometimes in the crypts, sometimes on the stairs. Waste not, want not, I always say.”

He laughs—a thin, papery sound—and shuffles to another door. The hinges cry as he opens it. “But come, come. Guests never sit long in my parlor.”

“We haven’t even sat down.” Armand whispers under his breath.

The next room feels heavier, darker. The air is stale, as though something died and refused to leave. Scattered furniture lies in heaps against the walls, crushed into splinters. Armor has been torn apart, bones scattered and broken. Swords and shields jut from the walls like the remnants of a storm.

“What happened here?” Armand whispers. His pen hovers over the paper as though afraid to commit this horror to memory. “Such ruin… and no one repairs it?”

Cyrus’s tone trembles for the first time. “After the master was betrayed by his own. Leo Dilisnya led them, a mutiny against him. He made an example of the survivors. The guards fled to this room for safety.”

“And?” Coco asks, his voice tight.

“Slaughtered,” Cyrus breathes. “Every last one. Their blood still stains the walls. Their bones curse this floor. I do not take from this place. Not even I.”

The group moves on, stepping lightly through the wreckage. The silence presses closer with every step until it breaks.. the faint creak of a bunk.

They find a connected chamber lined with rough beds. Coco freezes when a shape rises from the shadows.

“Marron…” Cyrus croaks. “Someone here to see you.” Then, as though remembering other duties, he bows awkwardly. “You will excuse me, honored guests. I must tend to the upper hall.” His uneven gait fades up the stairs, each step more crooked than the last.

From the darkness, a man steps forward. His skin is copper, his features almost a mirror of Coco’s. The two lock eyes. Then, without a word, they collide in an embrace.

“Marron! You’re here!” Coco’s voice cracks with disbelief. “We’ll find Polvo and go home!”

Adele’s hand tightens on her holy symbol. “Coco.. mission—”

“This is my mission,” Coco says fiercely. “I needed to know they were alive.” Still, the cleric is right so he asks his brother. “Do you know where Lady Volenta’s chambers are?”

“You know where she kept her things?” Adele asks.

“I played for her often,” Marron says, removing his hat in grim respect. “She’s gone now. Dead.”

“One of Strahd’s brides truly has fallen…” Adele murmurs. “The tides are shifting.”

“Two of them,” Marron corrects. “When Lady Anastasia attacked Vallaki, Volenta went with her. The Count punished them both. His wrath is absolute.”

“Volenta died for helping another?” Adele frowns.

Marron glances toward the floor, his voice low. “No. More than that. She helped create something he feared. An abomination. There is only one thing that terrifies the King of Despair… and that is Hope.”

Armand’s eyes darken. “Even his favorites are disposable. Truly the Dark Lord’s cruelty knows no bounds.”

“None at all.” Marron replies quietly. “Either way, her chamber is empty now. I’ll take you there.”

They follow him through the hall of bones again. Coco hesitates. “A wife of the lord, living in the basement?”

“She needed her meals close at hand,” Marron says simply. “Fresh blood. Fresh toys… from the dungeons.”

The door creaks open into chaos. The air is thick with iron and rot. Torn curtains hang in tatters. A massive bed leans against the wall beneath a faded tapestry of Castle Ravenloft. The floor is carpeted with scraps of flesh, discarded trinkets, and the twisted remains of instruments of pain.

“How could anyone breathe in here?” Adele gags, pulling a cloth to her face.

“She didn’t,” Marron says softly. “Vampires have no need.”

He turns to leave. “I must go. Idleness is punished harshly in this place.”

“Marron—what about home?” Coco calls after him.

“I’ll find you,” his brother says, already halfway into the dark. “Finish what you came for.”

He departs, leaving them with the stench of death and the sound of dripping water.

“Quickly,” Adele says, forcing herself to move. “The explosives must be here somewhere.”

They dig through the ruin. Rusted instruments clatter, jars spill black fluid. Coco sifts through a heap of trophies.. rings, teeth, bits of bone.. and finds a dartboard with a familiar painted face.

“Is this… the lady who helped us in?” he asks.

Adele winces. “Volenta had strange pastimes.”

“This is going to take forever,” Adele sighs, wiping sweat from her brow as thunder rumbles overhead, shaking the rotting timbers around them.

They dig through Volenta’s clutter for what feels like hours. Rust scrapes, glass shatters, something wet slaps against the floor. Then—footsteps.

“Shit. We made too much noise,” Armand hisses, voice low but sharp as a blade.

Coco darts to the door and shuts it softly, pressing his ear against the wood. Two voices echo through the hallway.

“So you lost them again, Cyrus. If they’re not staying at St. Andral’s, where are they staying?” The voice belongs to an old woman, shrill and commanding.

“I don’t control the Master’s spies!” the hunchback whines. “Please, Granny Morgantha, don’t turn me into a frog again!”

“I’ll turn you into worse things if you don’t get me what I need. Where is your Master?” she snarls.

The three intruders hold their breath. The stench of Volenta’s room becomes unbearable now that the door is sealed, rot and decay pressing close around them.

“The Count hasn’t been seen in days!” Cyrus cries.

“Well, find him! Losing the adventurers—imagine that. Do you know what they did to my predecessor?” The sound of her cane striking the stone fades as her voice trails off into another corridor.

When the silence returns, Coco exhales. “Coast is clear, friends.”

“I found them.” Armand crouches by a half-rotted trunk, pulling out several sticks of dynamite wrapped in brittle parchment. He slips them carefully into his satchel, handing one each to Coco and Adele. “Let’s move.”

They leave the chamber and climb the servants’ stairwell. Each step creaks like a dying breath. At the top, they find themselves in another decaying room where dirt-caked windows let in faint slivers of moonlight. The air smells of mildew and dust. Broken beds and shredded cloth lie in heaps across the floor.

Against the far wall stands a wardrobe shaped like a coffin. Its black doors are painted with dancing fey creatures whose faces twist strangely in the dim light. Two cracked mirrors flank it, their reflections warped and fractured.

Adele peers at them. “Does it strike you odd that every mirror here is broken?”

“The Count despises them,” Armand says, running his fingers along the wardrobe’s carved edge. “He’s destroyed every one of them in the castle.”

Adele frowns. “How do you know so much about him?”

“From my dreams when I sleep… from my visions when I wake.” Armand doesn’t look up. His pencil scratches rapidly in his notebook.

“How long has that been happening?” she asks softly.

“Since birth,” he murmurs. “Until death. He walks my mind whenever silence falls. Whenever he leaves, I know he will return.”

Adele’s expression softens. She reaches up and rests a hand on his tangled hair. “Some curses are blessings in disguise.”

His eyes flash as he snaps the journal shut. “What would you know of blessings, cleric? Your god abandoned you long ago. You don’t even remember his name.”

The air grows heavy between them, but Adele does not answer.

While they speak, Coco climbs a ladder near the far wall. The upper shelves hide a small gap narrow enough for one man to squeeze through. Curiosity wins. He pulls himself up and crawls inside. The passage slopes upward before curving into a spiral staircase. A faint red glow flickers at the top.

Below him, faint sweeping sounds echo. He follows them and soon finds himself in a lower hall, where Marron is brushing dust from the tiles just down the stairs and through a doorway.

“Coco,” his brother says, surprised. “Where are your companions?”

Coco looks around, lost for a moment. “I thought they were right behind me… seems I’ve lost them.”

“You should go find them,” Marron urges.

“No. This castle’s too big, too dangerous.” Coco shakes his head. “They have the explosives—they’ll finish the mission. But you and I, we’re getting out of here. We’ll find Polvo, leave this cursed land, start the band again. Just like old times.”

Marron hesitates, then nods slowly. “Alright, brother. Come with me.”

They move together through the vast audience hall. Moonlight cuts across the marble floor in thin streaks. The ghosts of recent days seem to linger here, Rowan’s drunken laughter, the twins’ happy reunion, Mad Mary’s final scream as her daughter struck her down.

“This way,” Marron says, leading him toward a set of descending stairs.

Coco doesn’t see the knife glinting faintly behind his brother’s back.

Back in the upper servants’ quarters, Adele and Armand’s argument has not yet cooled. The room feels smaller for it, the walls seeming to lean closer as thunder rolls beyond the windows.

“Where’s Coco?” Adele asks, looking around the room. “He was right here a moment ago.”

Armand does not answer immediately. He is muttering to himself again, voice low and rhythmic, as though caught between a chant and a plea. His eyes glaze over. His eyes are fixed on Adele in a very strange almost sinister way.

“What are you doing?” Adele demands, inching closer.

“Nothing,” he blurts. “Nothing at all.” He straightens, brushing off the air like dust. “Perhaps Coco found a way out. He’s always quick to run off.”

Adele frowns, unconvinced. She turns away from him and toward the wardrobe. Its black-painted doors creak as she pulls them open. Inside hangs a single white dress, plain but old, its silk yellowed with time.

Before she can react, the dress lifts from its hanger, twisting and whirling into the air. It twirls as though caught in the rhythm of music that only it can hear; the hem fluttering to the storm’s rhythm.

“Get back!” Armand stumbles backward, knocking over a chair. “We’ve been spotted! Exorcize it, Sister! What are you waiting for?”

Adele steps forward instead. “No,” she says softly. “It doesn’t feel hostile.” She raises her hand toward the dancing fabric.

The moment her fingers graze the cloth, the air around Adele shivers; not with sound, but with memory. A cold wind floods the room, whispering through the threads of the ancient dress. Her vision burns white.

Then the light begins to take shape.

A woman runs along rain-slick battlements, her auburn hair lashing in the wind. The castle is younger here, its stones alive with firelight. A man covered in blood calls after her, his voice breaking through the storm. The shadow that follows them both is vast and hungry; its laughter carried on the thunder.

Adele feels it: the woman’s terror, her heartbreak, the weight of a love that was never allowed to live. The despair is not shown to her; it is given to her, poured into her heart like molten sorrow. The cleric’s knees buckle under it. She feels the stone beneath Tatyana’s bare feet, the cold air in her lungs as she leaps, and the silence that follows.

But it does not end there. The vision fractures and reforms, cycling through lives that blur together. Each one ends the same way: obsession, pursuit, death. The pattern repeats through centuries, each rebirth wearing a different face but carrying the same wound.

Then she sees her.

A girl in the mists, sunlight caught in her hair, eyes wide and searching. Ireena. The latest vessel of that same doomed soul. Her lips tremble with unspoken fear as something unseen draws closer from the fog.

Adele gasps and stumbles back, clutching her chest. Her heart feels split open — her gift of empathy, that divine sense meant to heal, is now a curse that makes her feel every echo of that ancient suffering. Her breath trembles.

“She’s in danger,” she whispers.

“Who is?” Armand’s voice is distant, as though coming from behind a wall.

“A girl,” Adele says, her voice breaking. “She carries the soul of one who died in tragedy. She’s bound to it still. If we don’t find her soon… she’ll share the same fate. We have to help her.”

The wind stills. The dress collapses onto the floor, the spirit gone. Dust settles in the silence.

Something gleams beneath the fallen fabric. Adele kneels, her fingers still shaking, and pulls the dress aside. A ruby amulet rests beneath it, its surface faintly pulsing with light.. a heartbeat caught in crystal.

The glow throbs once, and in that pulse she swears she feels it: the echo of the woman’s soul, crying out for peace that will not come.

“She left this for us,” she whispers. “Or maybe for her.” She cradles it in both hands. “This might protect her from what’s coming.”

Armand says nothing, but his eyes follow the light. The red glow flickers across his face as he watches her slip the amulet into her pocket.

They search the room again, finding a narrow crawlspace above the wardrobe: a hidden passage, the same one Coco must have found. The air inside is stale and cold.

“It’s tight,” Adele murmurs.

“Then keep moving,” Armand replies.

They crawl through until the passage opens into a stairwell that spirals endlessly upward. As they step into the open shaft, a red light flares far above, filling the tower like a living pulse.

The spiral staircase winds toward the heavens, circling a vast crystal heart that floats in the air at its center. The heart glows with a deep, rhythmic pulse, as if it breathes. The red light beats in time with their own.

At the tower’s peak, the heart shudders.. alive, aware.. and the two intruders feel it watching them.

“That’s got to be it,” Adele says, her voice echoing weakly up the endless spiral. The red glow from above bathes her face in feverish light. Armand follows close behind, breathing ragged, his journal still clutched to his chest like a talisman.

The climb feels endless. The air thickens with every step, damp with something that smells like old blood. Sweat runs down Adele’s neck as her hand grips the cold stone railing.

“I don’t know how much longer I can make it,” Armand huffs.

A grinding sound answers him. Metal scraping against metal, ancient and angry.

From above, a storm of spinning halberds descends the stairwell.

Adele barely ducks the first one as it cleaves through the air where her head had been. The second spins past her, screeching against the wall, sending sparks raining down.

“Traps!” she cries. “Move!”

The stairs shake under their boots as they rush upward. Armand slips, catching himself at the last second. A third halberd spins downward with a shriek, its blade catching his sleeve. He teeters over the drop, eyes wild.

Adele lunges, grabbing his coat by the lapel. “Not on my watch! You may be faithless, but you are not irredeemable!” she shouts, yanking him back onto the steps.

They climb again, the blades shrieking around them like the castle itself is screaming. But the fourth comes silently, sweeping low, unseen in the red light, and cuts Armand’s legs from under him.

“Fuck!” he cries as he falls.

His voice vanishes into the darkness below.

Back at the landing, the knife slips free. Marron moves with a speed that is wrong for him, a motion too clean and sure. The blade sinks into Coco’s back without the hesitation of a man who loves his brother. Coco stumbles forward, stunned, blood seeping between his fingers that had still been reaching for Marron’s coat. He tastes iron. He hears Marron say his name like a litany.

“Brother,” Marron whispers, and the word is a benediction and a command. His eyes are not Marron’s anymore. They glow faint with a light that is not kind. Coco twists, fighting to wrench the knife out, a breath of laughter escaping him like a broken wind. “Marron, why?”

Marron’s face curls into something like sorrow and something like triumph all at once. “He is the Ancient,” Marron says slowly, as if each syllable is a sacrament. “He is the land.” The words chime hollow in the great room. The blade goes home again. Coco collapses against the bone-strewn floor, the taste of steel on his tongue. He looks up at Marron with a stunned, foolish hope and then the light leaves his eyes.

Coco’s last breath comes with a laugh, forced and small. He tries to sing a line, some parting jest, but it dissolves into a gurgle. Blood beads on his lips. His hand finds the hilt of his rapier and then falls away. Marron stands above him, hands trembling, the knife slick. For a single heartbeat something human flickers across Marron’s face. Then it is gone.

“Do not worry, brother,” Marron says to the corpse as if comforting a child at a late hour. “You shall join us soon enough. We will all be together in his embrace.”

There is no time for grief. The pounding of her heart drowns out everything. The stairs narrow as she climbs higher, dragging herself upward until the glow fills her vision completely. She can see it now: the Heart of Sorrow, pulsing and alive, suspended in midair like an enormous organ of glass.

She stumbles onto the landing, the heat of the crystal washing over her.

And then she freezes.

Someone is waiting for her at the top.

“No,” she whispers. “You fell.”

Armand stands before her. But his eyes are wrong; inhuman. They gleam with crimson light, his grin twisting in ways his face shouldn’t.

“This castle does things to you,” he mutters. “All laws of science and logic melt away here.”

He draws his sword.

Adele’s hand finds her own hilt. “How long? How long have you been one of his?”

Armand laughs, a sound like broken glass. “There are no sides here, Sister. Only survival.”

Steel clashes, ringing through the hollow tower. Sparks fly against the red glow of the crystal. Their blades meet again and again, echoing like the heartbeat of the land itself.

“You’re wrong, Armand!” she cries, forcing him back with a surge of strength. “There is hope! It’s not waiting for us at the end.. it’s what keeps us fighting!”

Her sword cuts across his chest, drawing blood. It steams against the red light, hissing on the stone.

Armand staggers. “I kill you,” he gasps, “and he spares me. That is all I know.”

But his footing slips on the blood-slick floor. Adele sees her chance. She tears open her coat, pulling free the bundle of explosives strapped inside.

“For Barovia,” she whispers, hurling herself toward the glowing heart.

Armand lunges after her, his blade piercing her back. She gasps, the air leaving her lungs in a single broken cry.

Her fingers find the crystal’s surface: smooth, hot, alive. She plants the explosives above it, hidden from view of the stairs. It’s all she can do before her strength fails.

Both fall.

They plummet through the tower’s red light, twisting through the air like broken marionettes.

Adele closes her eyes. “O Morninglord, grant me peace. Let my sacrifice be the spark that ignites the flame that shall shine on Barovia once more. May your light return to this cursed land.”

Then louder, as the ground rushes up to meet her:

“May the light of Lathander shine once more!”

She will never see those explosives go off. She will never see that tower fall, nor will she see the sun finally rise over Barovia… but perhaps someone else will. Perhaps now, someone else can.

And for one brief, terrible moment, there is light.

Coco stumbles onto the landing, half bent, one hand clutching his side where the blood still seeps warm and steady. His lute hangs by its strap, slick where his fingers have brushed the strings. The tower shudders faintly with the pulse of the Heart above. The sound is like breathing, deep and ancient.

Marron looks down at him, watching his brother bleed out, mentally preparing himself for the coup de grace. Coco does not reach for his rapier. He only lifts the lute, the one thing that has never betrayed him. The first notes ring out soft and uneven, and the echo that answers them sounds too much like weeping.

His voice cracks as he sings. The words tremble, but they carry:

“Remember me, If I have to say goodbye, remember me. Don’t let it make you cry…”

Marron stops. His head tilts, lips parting as though he recognizes something from another life… the smell of hearth smoke, the clatter of mugs in a tavern, their father’s rough baritone weaving through the same melody.

Coco keeps playing, even when his vision swims. “Even if I’m far away, I’ll hold you in my heart. I’ll sing this secret song for you, each night we are apart…”

Marron’s grip on the knife falters. The weapon falls from his hand and hits the floor with a dull clatter that echoes like a confession. His breath comes fast and ragged. Images flood his mind.. laughter, music, the warmth of brothers huddled around a fire. It’s the same song they’d all perform together.

Coco plays the last line through tears. “Until you’re in my arms again… remember me.”

For a long time, the castle says nothing. Only the soft plucking of the final note, trailing into the hollow tower, and the faint, rhythmic throb of the crystal heart above them.

Then Marron steps forward. His face is wet. His hands tremble as if waking from a nightmare. “You must finish the mission, brother,” he whispers. “You were always the brave one. I’ll meet you down at the chapel. We… we must be free. We cannot bring happiness to the valley in the name of the one who feeds on sorrow.”

Coco lowers his lute, the words almost caught in his throat. “Brother…”

“Go!” Marron’s voice cracks, urgent now, desperate. “The valley needs you more than I do!”

They embrace; a fierce, shaking thing full of blood and forgiveness. Coco smells the dust of the road in his brother’s hair, the familiar scent of the man he’d mourned twice already. Then Marron shoves him gently away, turns, and disappears into the corridor, leaving the echoes of his footsteps fading into the dark.

Coco limps onward, every breath sharp. When he reaches the tower again, the red glow spills over the stone like blood. Two shapes lie broken at the base of the Heart. He drops to his knees beside Sister Adele, her robes torn and her skin pale. She is still breathing… barely. Her survival, even for just awhile is a miracle. A true miracle.

“Armand,” she gasps, each word thin as thread, “betrayed us… He was with Strahd… all along.”

Her trembling hand presses something into his palm — the ruby necklace. Its pulse is weak but alive. “Give this… to her. He thinks he loves her, but he’s killing her.”

Coco nods, tears streaking through the grime on his face. “Rest now, Sister. I’ll finish it.”

She smiles once, small and bright, before her body slackens and her eyes go still.

Coco takes what he can — the amulet, the detonator, the scattered journal pages streaked with ink and blood. He hesitates only once before snatching up the grotesque book lying open beside them. Its pages whisper as he closes it, scrawled with frantic ravings about Strahd, about souls, about hunger.

He looks up toward the Heart of Sorrow pulsing above him and mutters to himself, voice cracking: “One last song, then… but not mine to sing.”

He runs. The halls of Castle Ravenloft are alive. They know he is here. The alarm is sounded. The stench of death has woken up the denizens of the vampire lord. Marron waits for him in the chapel. The smoke of burning oil still hangs in the air as Coco limps through the chapel. His brother is there, waiting by the altar, face pale and wild with fear.

“Is it done?” Marron asks. His voice trembles.

“It’s done. We leave. Now.” Coco grips his shoulder, forcing calm into his tone. “She planted the charges. The Heart will fall.”

“I’ve convinced the human servants to help,” Marron says quickly. “They’ve opened the doors for you. They’ll hold back anything that gives chase.. zombies, ghouls, anything.” He gestures down the hall toward the open main gates. The servants are already there, huddled in terror, clutching brooms, broken spears, rusted scythes; any tool that might resemble a weapon. Their eyes dart toward the darkness behind them.

Coco nods once. The two brothers break into a run.

The air grows colder. The mist thickens until it feels alive, curling like fingers along the floor. A sound rises from the fog: not footsteps, but a slow and rhythmic scrape of steel against stone. Every instinct in Coco’s body screams at him to stop.

And then he is there.

Strahd von Zarovich emerges from the haze, his cloak moving as though underwater, his armor gleaming black beneath the flicker of torchlight. His face is almost beautiful, pale, sharp, ageless, but his eyes are something else entirely. They gleam red like twin coals, and when they meet Coco’s, he feels his soul recoil.

No wolves. No undead horde. Just him.

He draws his blade in silence. The sound is soft, almost reverent, like a priest beginning a sermon as he stands in front of the altar.

The first servant steps forward, trembling, holding out a pitchfork. “For Barovia!” he cries.

It is over in a heartbeat. The sword flashes once. The servant folds in half, blood spraying across the wall.

Then the symphony begins.

Strahd moves through them like wind through wheat. His sword cuts arcs of silver and crimson, his hand seizes throats and crushes them like clay. No scream lasts longer than a breath. He impales one man through the chest, slashes another open from collar to hip, severs a head from its shoulders with the ease of cutting thread.

They try to run. It does not matter.

Marron turns, horror in his face. “FIND POLVO! GET OUT OF HERE!” He shoves Coco forward and slams the heavy door shut. Together, he and the surviving servants brace it with their bodies.

The wood quakes beneath a single blow. Then, impossibly, Strahd steps through the door as though it were smoke.

He smiles. “You thought I needed to knock?”

The killing starts again. The servants are thrown aside, impaled, ripped apart by bare hands. Blood runs down the walls like rain. Marron’s voice rises once in defiance, and then there is only the sound of tearing flesh.

Coco stumbles through the corridor, the screams chasing him like ghosts. He can’t look back. He runs past toppled candelabras, past shattered windows, past the murals of triumph and conquest now painted red with human blood.

He bursts into the courtyard. The mist is waiting, thick and suffocating. A carriage stands ready. A tall gruesome coach driver sits. There is fear in her voice, only a command and a mission.

“Get in. Now.” Esmerelda d’Avenir says.

Coco throws himself inside. The door slams shut behind him. The wheels lurch into motion, tearing through the gates as Castle Ravenloft fades behind the shroud.

And then he hears it… laughter.

It echoes from the castle’s heart, rising above the thunder and the crackle of flame. Not the laughter of a man, but of something that has forgotten how to die. It follows him into the mist, burrowing deep into his bones, and he knows, even as the carriage speeds away, that he will hear it again in every dream for the rest of his life.

"Remember Me" from Coco plays over the end credits

In a post credits scene, Fiona Wachter is seen in her lounge petting an unseen creature sitting on her lap. Her butler knocks on the door.

"Mistresses Hope, Sabrione and Marjorie are here to see you ma'am."

"Let them in." She smirks as she fixes herself up briefly and leaves the chair.