One of Us Will Die
Curse of Strahd Adventure Report 22:
The Sword, The Witch and the Vampire

Coco’s lute drifts through the Blue Water Inn like a half-remembered dream. Morning light filters weakly through the mist that clings to Vallaki, turning every windowpane into pale glass. Patrons take muted bites of their breakfast, each one listening without admitting they are listening. Outside, a handful of children scream and scatter down the street with the wild joy of the living.

Arabelle chases after them, skirts flaring. She is laughing at first, then stops abruptly as the others dart around a corner.

“Come back here, you meanies,” she cries.

A raven drops from the roof like a stone. It lands in front of her, feathers falling away in a shimmer of black until Marjorie stands there, steady and familiar, as natural to the world as breath.

“You alright, Arabelle?” she asks.

Arabelle scowls. “They threw rocks at Vasilka. We were playing on the street, and she wanted to join. We let her. We were having fun. Then her hood slipped and they saw her face and they… they threw rocks at her.”

Marjorie’s expression tightens. “Fear does strange and foolish things to people, but that doesn’t make it okay to throw rocks at anyone” except maybe Strahd von Zarovich “Where is she now?”

Arabelle takes her hand and pulls her down a narrow lane. They slip into an alley that smells of rain and damp stone. Vasilka sits there beside a cracked puddle, staring at her own reflection. The water ripples with each trembling breath she takes. Her skin has split in several places where the stones struck, exposing dark seams, threads, and raw stitches. She does not touch the wounds. She only watches them, as if trying to understand what they mean.

“Hello, dear,” Marjorie whispers as she kneels beside her.

Vasilka does not look up. Her mismatched eyes remain fixed on the mirrored image of herself beside Marjorie. The comparison is impossible to ignore. Marjorie, with her white streaks of hair, appears whole in a way Vasilka was never allowed to be. She was crafted rather than born, assembled rather than grown. Marjorie looks like an answer. Vasilka looks like the echo of a question that was never meant to be asked.

“Vasilka is not human,” she says. Her voice is flat, but something quivers beneath it.

“Vasilka is not human,” Marjorie replies. She does not shy away from the truth. She never has, even when the truth cut deep. Many of their companions have had to face similar truths about themselves.

Silence settles like dust. Then Vasilka’s shoulders begin to shake. Her chest heaves with breath she does not require. Her fingers curl, uncertain, reaching for something she cannot name.

“Why is Vasilka shaking,” she asks in a voice that is far too small for the body it comes from.

Marjorie studies her. Vasilka’s eyes remain dry, incapable of tears, yet Marjorie has seen enough frightened children in her life to know exactly what sits in front of her.

“You are crying,” she explains softly. “Not with tears, but with everything else. It happens when people are hurt. Your body is trying to understand a feeling.”

Vasilka’s head tilts. “Vasilka is people?”

“Vasilka is a person,” Marjorie says, and her smile warms the cold between them.

She draws the golem into her arms and holds her, not flinching at the broken stitches or the scent of alchemical oils beneath the skin. Vasilka sits stiffly for a moment, unsure how to return the embrace. Then she leans in, forehead to Marjorie’s shoulder, shaking harder.

Something awakens in her. Not knowledge, not purpose, but longing.

She must learn more. She must do more. She must feel more. Only then, perhaps, can she become what the Abbot dreamed her to be.

A child capable of being loved. A soul capable of loving in return.

And in this quiet alley, under the gray morning sky, she begins.

In the tavern’s luxury room, a glass strikes the wall and bursts into glittering shards. The door hangs slightly ajar.

“How could you do this to me?” A woman shrieks, her voice rising like a banshee’s wail that seems to rattle the rafters.

Vasili sits on the lounge chair, having just avoided the glass with reflexes too quick, too precise to be entirely human.

“Why can’t you be happy for me?” he says. “It is a democratic process. I have my own ideas for this town, and I am entitled to a chance, Auntie.”

“Democratic process,” she spits. “I have spent my life dragging this town out of the Vallakoviches’ claws. Now I am forced to contend with this little worm? What could you possibly know about leading anything?”

“I know Vallaki is suffering,” Vasili shoots back. His voice deepens, taking on the cadence of a speech he has practiced in the mirror. “I know it needs solutions. Education. Better roads. A feeding program. Things that make this place more than a miserable village wrapped in fog. I want it to smile again.”

“You think I do not want that?” she cries.

“Your methods differ from mine, Auntie. I do not agree with your… allegiances.”

She stiffens. “What business is it of yours who I make my pacts with?”

“My business,” he retorts, “as a citizen of the town you want to rule. And as someone who wants to be the person he chooses to be. You know I have always wanted to be a… a…”

“A hero?” Fiona laughs. It is a cold laugh, sharp as the edge of a ritual knife. “What a joke, Vasili. You have never worked a day in your life for anyone else.”

“At least people like me, Fiona.”

The slap cracks across the room. Rowan and Sabrione flinch on the other side of the door, having listened through the entire argument. Fiona storms out, pausing only to glare at the two warriors with venom in her eyes.

“You will regret this, boy,” she hisses. She leans down to whisper something to the imp clinging to her shoulder. Upstairs, Hope feels the vibration of the words through her psychic senses, but the language slithers beyond her comprehension. Not yet.

Inside the room, Vasili remains motionless, body stiff, expression frozen. He looks like a carved figure propped on a chair.

“Well, Vasili, that was impressive,” Sabrione says as she enters.

He does not blink.

“Alright, you can stop. She is gone.” Rowan reaches out and drags her elbow across his head in a playful gesture. “You are safe.”

“You are related to her?” Sabrione asks. “You called her Auntie.”

“She is my godmother,” he replies, sitting down heavily. “My parents chose her. Our families have been close for centuries.”

Sabrione studies him. “Tell us more about your parents. Where are they now?”

Vasili sighs. “They were minor nobles, like me. My father was killed by wolves. My mother died of the plague, same as most orphans here. I grew up in Krezk. I was ten when I lost them. The fortune they left supported me until I opened the library here, though it hardly keeps me afloat.”

Sabrione tilts her head. “And how long ago were you ten years old?”

“Fifteen years ago.”

It fits. Only slightly older than his fiancée. Yet Sabrione cannot shake the image from the Wachterhaus. She chooses her words carefully.

“We found a charcoal etching of one of your ancestors at Lady Fiona’s home,” she says. “He looked exactly like you.”

Vasili’s eyes widen. His jaw slackens. “Then perhaps the rumors are true. Souls never leave this valley. They are reborn again and again, forced into new lives with old shadows at their heels.”

“Just like Ireena,” Rowan murmurs.

“I wonder how that feels,” Vasili whispers. “To remember every life you have ever lived.”

“You should ask her. Though Hope already severed those bonds,” Rowan says.

Sabrione adds, “The memories were too painful.”

Vasili smirks. “Look at you two. Finishing each other’s sentences.”

The women fall silent, glancing at each other. Sabrione blinks rapidly, searching for a joke to deflect her embarrassment.

Vasili rubs his temple. “I cannot do this. The other candidates have people supporting them. I do not have a campaign team and I’m afraid to ask anyone.”

They have met many men in this valley. Brave, foolish, strong, broken. But none more riddled with impostor complex than Vasili von Holtz. Rowan grabs him and scrubs her hand through his hair, treating him like a little brother who happens to be taller than a housecat.

“We are your campaign team, Va-silly,” she laughs.

His smile is small at first, then warm. “Thank you. Truly.”

They step out into the hallway. Victor passes them with one cat perched on his shoulder and another curled in his arms, both nuzzling him with skeletal affection as he murmurs arcane secrets to them. His gentle smile trails behind him like candlelight.

Upstairs, Hope pores over the grimoire. The pages breathe with a faint heat, as if the ink remembers where it came from. She traces the infernal letters Lady Wachter had hissed on her way out of the inn, piecing them together like broken bones. Every phrase makes more sense to her than it should. The demon essences she has consumed whisper faint confirmations, drawing her gently, almost lovingly, toward understanding.

Downstairs, brunch unfolds like a fragile ritual trying to pretend it is normal.

Ezmerelda stares into her mutton soup as though reading a prophecy in its greasy swirls. Marjorie watches Vasilka imitate Rowan's posture, her grip on the spoon, the tilt of her chin. Vasilka copies every movement with stiff earnestness, unaware that Rowan’s grace was carved over years in a castle dining hall, not assembled from scraps of flesh and stray memories.

Hope sits near the window. Her gaze drifts outward… and locks with the beady red eyes of Fiona Wachter’s imp. It clings to the shadowed corner of the eave, frozen, uncertain whether Hope can truly see it. Hope raises one eyebrow. The imp blinks. Neither dares to move.

Soa pretends to slurp from an empty bowl solely to feel part of the meal.

Sabrione lifts a glass of thick red liquid to her lips, and no one, absolutely no one, asks where she got it or what it is.

“Vasilka, you don’t need to imitate Rowan,” Marjorie says gently. “You’re not attending a king’s feast.”

“Abbot says Vasilka must be human.” Vasilka lifts her spoon with the solemnity of a knight raising a sword. “Vasilka must behave like humans.”

Marjorie sighs softly. “You don’t even have to eat food, dear.”

“How can Vasilka be human if Vasilka does not eat like humans? The Count wants a human bride. So Vasilka must be human.” Her voice wavers on the word bride, as if she barely understands its weight.

“That’s a terrible reason to want to be human,” Rowan says firmly.

“But Abbot says—”

“The Abbot can be wrong,” Marjorie cuts in quickly.

“The Abbot cannot be wrong. He is divine. He made Vasilka to wed Strahd von Zarovich.” She repeats the words with the hollow cadence of a ritual she has been forced to recite.

Marjorie leans closer. “What do you want, Vasilka?”

Vasilka’s answer comes instantly. “Vasilka wants to fulfill her purpose. Then Vasilka will be happy.”

Rowan exhales sharply. “Vasilka… Strahd will do worse than throw rocks at you.”

Esme finally looks up from her soup. Her eyes are cold, distant. “She’ll be lucky if stones are the only thing he throws.”

Rowan kicks her under the table. “Esme. Behave.”

Silence settles over the meal like morning frost. No one touches their food for a long moment.

Then Esme breaks it, voice flat, practical. “Today’s as good a day as any. The wedding is in a few days. We’re running out of time. We need that sword if we’re going to defeat him.”

Rowan stiffens, remembering Madame Eva’s voice echoing through the tent, each line stitched with fate:

A weapon forged to end the blight, A sword that burns with morning’s might. Where river chokes a village drowned, And evil’s queen makes marsh her crown.

“Berez,” Esme says. “You asked about a drowned village. There’s one south of here.”

Rowan pushes her empty plate aside. Her expression hardens with purpose.

“Then that’s where we’re going.”

The carriage ride begins peaceful enough, the wheels rattling over firm earth and the horses trotting with confidence. Then the ground sours beneath them. Maisie slows to a wary halt as Soa taps irritably on his own helmet. Mud pulls at the wheels like grasping hands.

The trail follows the river for miles. Grass gives way to soft rot. The path dissolves into marshland where every step sinks. Reeds rise taller than a man, and stagnant pools glimmer with oily film. Fog presses in from all sides. Old cottages sag into the mire like drowned animals, their roofs collapsed, their walls stained black with mildew. Flies swarm in thick clouds, eager for blood.

Across the river, the fog thins. A single light flickers within a circle of ancient standing stones.

Marjorie shifts into her raven form the moment they disembark. Wings beating through the wet air, she glides toward the stones. A small camp lies abandoned, the ashes still warm. A pendant of the Keepers of the Feather rests in the mud beside scattered black feathers.

“Muriel was here,” Marjorie murmurs as she returns. The stones exude a strange humming presence, but she has no time to linger.

The party prepares to move, all except Soa who sits stubbornly on the carriage seat.

“Sorry, Soa,” Rowan says. “You are a hulking suit of armor. The mud will swallow you whole.” She risks the same fate, but no one raises the question. The mission outweighs every concern.

They head down the path. Hope lingers by the carriage, and she is not alone.

“Hello, cutie. Where did you go?” she asks in flawless infernal. Studying the grimoire and consuming demons has made the language feel natural in her mouth. “You know I can see you.”

“You can speak to me?” The imp steps from the shadow. “What are you?”

“Your friend, if you want.” Hope smiles. The air around her chills, and snow begins to fall in tiny flakes, though the swamp remains warm. The imp glances around, startled, then watches her flop down to make a snow angel. Instinct draws him in, and he lies beside her to make one of his own. This creature is dangerous. She needs to keep it away from the party.

Far ahead, Sabrione catches movement in the corner of her eye. “Is that a scarecrow?” She points to a straw figure crucified on a post.

“Yes, it looks like one,” Marjorie replies. “This place seems full of them.”

“That’s odd. I don’t remember this many.” Another stands beside the first now.

“I don’t see them moving,” Rowan mutters.

“They must be. The one behind you has a friend now.”

“There is only one scarecrow behind me.” Rowan spins around. Two stand there instead.

Esme glances left, then right. In moments, a small army of straw men surrounds them, motionless as death yet multiplying whenever eyes drift away.

“Do not look away,” Esme warns. “They freeze when you watch them.”

Kellam, Esme, and Vasilka spread out so every angle remains covered.

“Do not blink,” Rowan says under her breath.

“Vasilka cannot blink,” Vasilka replies.

“Where is Hope?” Marjorie asks, turning in every direction.

At the edge of the ruined village, Hope lies in the snow she created out of the rain, the imp beside her.

“So, you cannot tell me anything,” she says, studying him closely.

“My contract forbids me from helping her enemies.”

“Do you like Lady Fiona?” Hope asks.

The imp’s mouth tightens. “No. She’s crazy. She only cares about herself and doesn’t give a shit who she hurts. It’s nuts even for me!”

“And what do you want? Revenge? Freedom?”

He hesitates, then answers in a small voice. “I have a daughter at home.”

Hope sits up. “What if I could release you? If you served me instead, maybe you would be happier.”

“Demons don’t break contracts.”

“What if you showed me how to break yours?”

“I am not allowed to tell you.” His wings shiver with nerves.

Hope extends her hand. “You do not have to tell me.”

As her fingers touch his brow, she sees everything. The ritual in the Wachter cellar. The screaming sacrifice. The tattooed sigil carved onto Fiona’s wrist. The chanting of her devoted cult. The binding of the imp’s will with infernal law.

To free him, she must destroy that tattoo.

She stands, snow melting around her. “Come. We are going back to Vallaki.”

The imp looks toward the swamp’s depths. “But… your friends…”

“Fiona Wachter told you to kill Vasili von Holtz,” Hope says.

He remains silent.

“And if you cannot kill him, your contract will force you to kill me. And them. All of us.”

The imp looks away. He knows she speaks truth.

Hope opens her wings. “Let’s go get you free.”

Wading through the marsh is a slow torment. They move backward, sideways, forward again, never allowing a single angle to go unwatched. Mud drags at their boots with each step. Reed-shadows shift like hungry creatures. The scarecrows linger at the edges of vision, always still, always present.

Then a figure waves from the road.

“Hello there! Welcome to Berez!” the man calls.

They stop. His body glows faintly, more mist than flesh. A ghost who has never realized he died.

“Hello,” Rowan answers cautiously.

“What brings you to our humble farming town?” he asks with a simple cheer that feels centuries out of place.

“We are looking for a sword,” Marjorie says. “Perhaps your blacksmith might know of one.”

“A sword?” He scratches the side of his translucent head. “I doubt he has ever made a sword. This is a peaceful place. The Count makes sure no one needs weapons.”

“And yet this place lies drowned and lifeless,” Sabrione murmurs under her breath.

Esme, Vasilka, and Kellam hold their vigil over the scarecrows. None move. Yet all seem closer than before.

“The blacksmith is just down the road,” the ghost says.

“Thank you,” Marjorie replies, and they move on.

“These spirits do not know their own deaths,” Esme says softly, watching the farmer wander into the fog as if tending crops that no longer exist.

A metallic rhythm begins to echo through the bog. The clanging of hammer on steel, steady and strong. The smell of heated iron and soot fills the air.

The blacksmith stands at his anvil, half transparent, repeating a labor he must have performed long after breath left his lungs.

“Ah! Welcome to my shop!” he calls. “What can I make for you? A fine horseshoe? A little souvenir for the hearth? I can craft anything if my name is not Gilbert Blinksy!”

“Another Blinksy,” Marjorie murmurs, amused despite the dread.

“Do you make swords?” Rowan asks.

“Never,” he says proudly. “Why waste metal on such needless things? This town has known peace for generations! At least, that is how it feels to me.”

Sabrione barely hears him. Something stirs within a nearby ruin. A faint movement where there should be none.

“Awful lot of scarecrows,” Rowan mutters, glancing behind her.

“Of course,” the ghostly Blinksy replies. “A farming town must protect its crops from the crows. They can eat a harvest in a single season if you let them.”

Sabrione breaks away, drawn by the wrongness in the air. This corner of Berez feels colder, the fog heavier, the shadows too deliberate. She rounds a fallen wall and freezes.

A man crouches in the dark. He is not translucent. His eyes do not glow with ghost-light. His flesh, though sickly pale, is solid. His skin clings to bone like wax left too close to flame.

“Leave me!” he cries, recoiling.

Sabrione lifts her hands. “Wait. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You are a servant of the Devil,” he snarls, his voice stretched thin with fear, recognizing her pale skin in the moonlight. “Why do you seek to torment me?”

“No,” she says, stepping slowly back to give him space. “We came looking for a sword. We need help. That is all. I’m not on his side, I promise.”

The figure studies her for a long moment. The tension in his body eases only slightly. He exhales, a sound like dust spilling from a cracked jar.

“My apologies,” he says quietly. “When torment becomes one’s only companion, it is difficult to recognize anything else. I am Burgomaster Lazlo Ulrich.”

“This was your village?” Sabrione asks.

“It was my village,” he answers. His hollow eyes drift across the drowned ruins. “Before the Count punished us for our defiance.”

The scarecrows behind Sabrione stand perfectly still…but there seem to be more of them now.

The wind carries a faint groan through the reeds.

Berez watches. And waits.

Back in Vallaki, Hope stands before the crooked silhouette of Wachterhaus. The windows are blind with grime. The overgrown garden claws at the fence like a living thing. She closes her eyes and breathes in, letting the psychic currents reveal themselves.

The house thrums like a disturbed hive. Minds flicker and pulse from every corner of its rotting timbers. Most are faint, sedated, frightened. But in the deep, she feels something else. A gathering. Voices murmuring under the floorboards. A congregation forming in the basement, thick with dread.

“What is in the basement?” she whispers.

The imp stays silent. Contracted silence. His wings twitch. His tail curls and uncurls with anxious habit. But his face remains carefully empty.

Hope walks along the side of the house, her boots crunching over dead leaves and discarded bones from the Wachter feast nights. Through a window she spots her target. Lady Fiona sits alone in her lounge, brooding over a cup of wine, the imp nowhere in sight. She stares at nothing. Or perhaps she stares at everything. Hope can never be sure with someone whose heart beats for the Devil.

The glass window lifts with a faint creak. No sunlight spills through. There is no sunlight in Barovia.

Hope steps inside and holds the Tome of Strahd before her. The pages quiver with stolen power, ink writhing under her fingertips. She begins to recite the incantation she pieced together from the Ashen Library and Fiona’s own grimoire. The words twist unnaturally in the air, as if reluctant to obey.

Fiona lounges obliviously in her chair.

The shadows in the room rise like smoke. They coil around her feet first, then her waist, then her throat. She tries to shout, but the darkness presses into her lungs, choking her voice into nothing. Her body begins to collapse inward, bones shrinking, flesh folding, organs dissolving as if eaten by unseen mouths. Her limbs retract. Her features flatten.

In seconds, the great Lady of Vallaki is nothing but a pale starfish squirming helplessly on the wooden floor.

Her consciousness remains intact. Hope feels it. That is the cruelty of the spell. Fiona can observe, can feel, can think. But she cannot scream.

Five tiny pinprick eyes stare up at Hope from the ends of the star-shaped limbs. They are not sophisticated enough to recognize her.

Hope does not blink.

A skeletal hand materializes in the air beside her. Empty bone fingers curl around a silver-edged knife resting on a nearby table. The hand raises the blade slowly, almost tenderly, before dragging it across the twitching starfish limb that corresponds to Fiona’s left human arm.

The creature shudders. A wet tearing sound follows as the limb is severed.

The hand continues. It carves away her mouth as well. No more speaking. No more spells. No more commands to servants or demons or children she would throw under the claws of darkness.

The severed arm drops into Hope’s waiting palm, twitching faintly.

The imp flutters onto the windowsill, watching with wide uneasy eyes. “Her arm will grow back once the spell fades,” he says softly.

Hope burns the arm with a simple spell. “Not with the changes I made,” she replies. “The flesh will not remember how.”

Lady Fiona writhes on the floor, helpless, trapped in a mind that cannot escape itself.

Hope crosses the threshold and steps back into the night. The imp leaps to her shoulder. When her wings open, frost gathers along the feathers.

“You are free now,” she tells him. “The ink on her arm is gone.

The imp hesitates, as if freedom itself is something foreign. Then he nods and clings tighter to her back as they lift into the cold mist, leaving Wachterhaus to its muffled, shapeless screams.

The others stand before the skeletal remains of a once-grand mansion. Its roof lies caved in, its windows hollow and empty like eyeless skulls. A figure moves within the ruin, glowing faintly in the fog. When she steps into view, they all freeze. She is unmistakable. The same auburn hair. The same soft features. The same quiet grace. She is the image of Ireena Kolyana, exactly as every incarnation before her has been.

At this point, none of them need to ask what it means.

“Marina was my daughter,” Lazlo murmurs. His voice sounds like sifted dust. “One day a man came to town. He befriended her. Courted her. We did not know what he truly was, or what the strange marks on her neck meant.”

Esme lowers her eyes. “Asha warned us. Strahd uses magic to disguise himself when it suits him.”

Lazlo nods. “Weeks later, my girl told me she wished to marry the stranger. The priest summoned me to the old church. He told me the truth. The man was a vampire in hiding. He had already begun turning her into one of his own.” His jaw trembles. “We ambushed them at this mansion, and I drove a stake through my daughter’s heart.”

Marina’s spectral lips shudder. Something of her tries to speak, but the wind carries only a faint sigh.

“I will never forget it,” Lazlo says. “To look into your child’s eyes and know you must end her life. To know she does not understand. To know she never will.” His voice crumbles. “In vengeance, the stranger revealed himself as our lord. He brought a flood upon us and drowned the whole village. He cursed me to wander here forever while my dear people relive their final moments without knowing they are dead.”

Marjorie places a gentle hand over her mouth. “That is why they do not seem aware. Their last day loops without end.”

“But what about the scarecrows?” Rowan asks. She glances over her shoulder and flinches. The straw figures still stand in the bog behind them. Too many. Too close.

“A witch resides in these marshes,” Lazlo answers. “An ancient crone who claims to be Strahd’s mother.”

“Queen Ravenova?” Esme asks.

He shrugs. “Whether she is the true Ravenova or not, she ought to be dead. Yet she walks these swamps as if time cannot touch her.”

Vasilka steps closer to Marina’s apparition. Her gaze lingers not on the ghostly face but on her own reflection within it, as though she sees herself for the first time.

“She looks like me,” Vasilka says. Her voice is small, nearly swallowed by the bog. It is the first time she has ever spoken of herself as an “I.”

“Yes,” Marjorie replies softly. “She is the woman the Abbot tried to recreate when he made you.”

Vasilka stands still. Her eyes move from Marina’s flawless form to her own patchwork limbs. She examines the uneven seams on her wrists, the dull varnish of her skin, the mismatched eyes that never quite align. Marina has no stitches. No jagged scars. No torn patches of flesh. She looks complete.

The golem looks ruined.

She looks like an imitation that never should have been made.

“Vasilka is a mistake,” Vasilka whispers. “A wrong thing. A broken thing.” She shakes her head frantically.

Lazlo finally notices her fully. His expression twists. “What in the gods’ names is that?”

Vasilka recoils as if slapped. She steps back into the mud, shoulders hunching, trying to hide her face. Shame settles over her like a burial shroud. She wishes she could sink into the swamp and vanish beneath it. She wishes she had drowned with the villagers. She wishes the Abbot had never created her.

“Something the Abbot of Krezk made to appease Strahd,” Rowan answers sharply. “And she did not ask for any of this.”

“Poor creature,” Lazlo murmurs. “Then my Marina is truly gone. Her soul did not return.”

Marjorie smiles sadly. “She did return. She is strong. Compassionate. Spirited. She is alive again. She is about to be married… to a good man too.”

Lazlo lifts his head. The lines of grief soften into something like peace. “She found happiness after all,” he whispers. “My Marina… happy. Who is she to wed? I must know his name.”

“Vasili von Holtz, a nobleman. She’ll have a comfortable life with him.” Esme says, smiling softly.

He covers his face with his hands. No tears fall, yet his shoulders quake with remembered sorrow.

Vasilka watches him, listening to the soft choking breaths. She tilts her head. “He cries like Vasilka,” she says quietly.

Esme places a hand on Vasilka’s arm and squeezes. “All people cry when they hurt,” she says gently. “It is not something only humans do.”

Sabrione hears the words. Her eyes lower, as if they strike a place she keeps hidden.

And the scarecrows continue to wait in the mist, as silent and patient as the dead.

After a long, uneasy silence, Lazlo gestures for them to follow. He leads them toward the graveyard that rises on the hill like a rotten crown above the drowned village. Each step squelches in the mud. Each breath tastes like stagnant water. Kellam and Esme glance over their shoulders again and again. The scarecrows still stalk them in a loose ring. Their heads tilt at odd angles. Their limbs droop. Their bodies remain perfectly still whenever eyes are on them, but the moment attention shifts, the straw crackles and the bodies shift in the fog.

The graveyard feels older than the marsh, older than the voices of the ghosts that drift below. Broken tombstones jut out like broken teeth. The fog wraps around the graves in long, cold ribbons. At the very top of the hill stands a statue untouched by time. Its surface gleams despite the mist. Its marble is spotless, clean, lovingly maintained even though everything around it has decayed.

A plaque is set at the base:

Marina. Taken by the mists.

Rowan scoffs. “Strahd always finds a way to make himself the one who suffers. She died because of him!”

Esme nudges Vasilka gently. “Remember when I said he would do far worse than throw stones at you. This is exactly what I meant.”

“He will turn Vasilka into a stone!?” Vasilka gasps, horrified.

“Yes, Vasilka. He absolutely will turn you into stone,” Esme sighs.

“Esme,” Rowan mutters, trying not to smile.

Lazlo bows his head and turns away. “If you will excuse me. My part in this endless play awaits. Midnight comes and I must return to the mansion. I must go kill my daughter again.” His voice cracks with a misery that cannot escape his dead throat. He drifts back down the hill until the fog swallows him.

The group presses on. The mist grows heavier. The shapes in the swamp twist into silhouettes of things that might once have been homes. Ahead, a hut rises like a tumor on the landscape. It sits atop a massive tree stump or perhaps has been carved directly from the corpse of the tree. Moss clings to every plank. Vines coil around it, reaching like skeletal fingers.

Rowan steps forward, then freezes.

“No. It cannot be.” Her breath trembles.

Half-consumed by ivy and rot, resting against a cluster of stones, lies a colossal dragon’s skull. The Skull of Argynvost. The last remnant of her order’s founder. Its hollow eye sockets glow faintly, as if some dormant power still lingers inside.

Rowan drops to her knees. She whispers a prayer with shaking hands. When her palm touches the bone, a low, ancient hum vibrates through her entire body. Argynvost remembers her. Argynvost remembers all of them.

Before she can speak again, she notices the cages. Dozens of them. Hanging from poles. From beams. From branches. Ravens cling to the bars, ragged and terrified.

Marjorie bolts to them.

“Help us,” one raven croaks. “She takes one of us every day. No one ever returns.”

“Who lives here?” Marjorie demands.

“Baba Lysaga. A witch. A monster,” another raven cries. “She leaves around this time each night. She goes to speak with her son.”

“Her son?” Marjorie asks. “You mean Strahd is here?”

“No. Not the true Strahd. A shade of him. The one who visits the girl’s ghost. The one who brings the flood at midnight.”

Marjorie’s heart clenches. She yanks open cage after cage. “Fly free. Go. Where is Muriel?”

“She was taken inside,” the ravens chorus.

Marjorie’s pupils contract. She darts to the front of the hut, frantically searching for the door. Rowan, Sabrione, Esme, Vasilka and Kellam rush after her.

“Careful, Marjorie,” Sabrione warns.

“The ravens said she was gone,” Marjorie insists. “If she’s not here. We have a chance.”

“What if she comes back early?” Sabrione asks.

Esme looks around, voice tightening. “Where is Hope?”

The door looms in front of them. Whatever they need lies beyond it. Muriel. The skull. Answers. Danger.

Rowan cracks her knuckles. There’s no time to lose. “I am kicking the door in. We go in, get what we need, take the skull and leave.”

“She might be inside!” Esme hisses.

“If there is even a small chance she is not, then there is a chance we survive this,” Rowan insists.

“Muriel is definitely in there,” Marjorie snaps. “We can’t leave her.”

Vasilka takes position beside Esme. Both turn just in time to see it.

The scarecrows have gathered.

Not dozens. Hundreds.

A forest of straw figures surrounds them, crowding the path, filling the spaces between trees, emerging silently from the fog. Their stick arms droop toward the ground. Their heads loll as if asleep. Yet every single one faces the party. A thousand button eyes gleam like insects.

Esme screams. “FUCK!”

Rowan kicks the door open and the party charges inside as the first scarecrow twitches.

Hope and the imp land beside the carriage. The moment her boots touch the wet earth, she feels something wrong. The door hangs crooked. The reins are torn. The storage trunk lies split open like a ribcage. Their entire ride has been torn apart.

The imp crawls off her back in silence. Hope is already sprinting.

She throws the carriage door open. Feathers scatter from torn cushions. Splintered wood crunches under her feet. The seats are ripped apart, shredded as if by claws or talons. And Addy is gone.

“Addy?” Her voice cracks.

No answer.

She drops to her knees, tossing aside debris, blankets, crates. “Addy! Addy, answer me!”

Still nothing.

Then she freezes, staring at the empty space where the doll should have been. For a heartbeat her mind refuses to accept the truth.

He has been taken.

Hope rises slowly. Her body begins to shake. Her breath comes in sharp bursts. A sound builds in her throat, something raw and primal, something she has never let out before.

Her feet lift from the ground as her wings unfurl. Frost forms in a circle around her. The air grows colder. Her eyes blaze with a terrible, unnatural light.

“Someone took him,” she whispers.

The words are quiet. Too quiet.

Then her face twists into a snarl.

“Someone took him!”

The frost spreads outward. The imp gets on her back, knowing where she’s headed.

Hope’s voice roars through the trees.

“They will pay for this!”

The door of the crooked cottage bursts open, and an old woman stands framed in the dim light. Her eyes gleam like wet stones. Behind her, a cradle rocks gently even though no hands touch it.

“You could have knocked,” the crone murmurs, her gaze locking with Rowan’s as if pinning her in place. “You will wake the baby.”

The party stares past her. The inside of the hut is a claustrophobic mess of bolted-down furniture: warped cabinets, a blood-stained iron tub, a heavy chest reinforced with brass, tables warped by age and rot. The air hums with a rancid heat.

In the center of the room sits a crib made of twisted, knotted wood. Its curtains are drawn shut. Sickly green light seeps through the floorboards beneath it, pulsing like a heartbeat trapped underground.

“The baby?” Rowan asks.

“Yes, little Addy,” the witch replies. “He is sleeping.”

Her smile spreads too wide. It stretches the wrinkles of her face like cracked parchment.

“Who are you?” the knight demands.

“My dear child, I am Baba Lysaga. Mother to Strahd von Zarovich, mistress of this bog, and keeper of all who wander too close. Come in. I have tea.”

Rowan steps back, bile rising in her throat. “I think I will pass.”

“Oh, but I have roast poultry,” Baba croons. Her lips peel back in a grin that shows too many teeth. “Still warm.”

“Muriel! Are you in there?” Marjorie shouts, her voice breaking with worry.

No answer. Only the soft, rhythmic creak of the cradle. A brief silence ensues before Sabrione breaks it.

“Wasn’t Strahd’s mother Queen Ravenova?” Sabrione says, stepping closer, letting her tone drip with disdain.

Baba spits. The saliva sizzles where it lands. “That useless woman only carried him for nine months and lay there while I birthed him!” Her face is red. “I raised him, shaped him, forged him into greatness. She lounged like a fat sow while I taught him magic and destiny.”

The party exchanges looks. None of them are impressed.

“So why did he name his castle after her?” Sabrione asks. “Where is your castle? Babaloft?”

For a moment, the witch’s face twists into something ancient and hideous. Old resentment pulses through her veins like poison. She sees again the queen’s chambers, her own exile, the young prince pulled away from her arms. Her hands tremble.

“You keep your tongue still,” she hisses. “I am Baba Lysaga. I have ruled these swamps for six centuries, and you little worms do not get to mock me in my own home.”

“If you truly are Strahd’s mother,” Sabrione says softly, “then perhaps he should tell us himself. He is in that cradle, isn’t he?”

Her eyes flick toward the crib. Sabrione has seen the way the doll behaves. She knows what is nestled inside those curtains.

Baba stiffens. Slowly, she turns. “Tell them, darling. Tell them who your mother is.”

She pulls open the curtains and lifts the child. Addie stirs, eyes half open. When he speaks, it is Baba’s mouth that moves for him.

“No… I do not want you. Where is Hope? Where is my mom?”

The moment hangs in the air like a suspended scream.

Baba’s face collapses. Her eyes widen, then crack with fury. She drops the child as if he burns her hands. Sabrione lunges, but Baba’s rage is faster. Her spell hammers into the vampire’s chest, knocking her back as she feels herself lose control of her own thoughts.

“YOU STOLE MY CHILD!” Baba shrieks. Her voice tears through the rafters like talons raking wood. “ALL OF YOU DIE! DIE NOW!”

Sabrione’s head snaps toward Rowan. Her eyes cloud over. They fill with a deep, unnatural shadow. Her lips curl into a smile empty of all humanity.

“He is the ancient. He is the land.”

Esme’s blood runs cold. Her stake trembles in her grasp. For the first time in her life, she hesitates.

Van Richten’s warning echoes through her mind. A liability. Too dangerous to keep alive. Too easily turned.

Sabrione draws her sword. She leaps at Rowan with a guttural cry, but the mud betrays her. The knight’s steel sabatons slide. She crashes into Rowan and the two of them topple into the muck.

Marjorie barrels into the hut as Baba Lysaga’s body unravels into a churning mass of insects. They spill across the ceiling, skittering over beams, crawling over one another in a seething black tide.

“Can we have one single enemy who does not turn into a swarm of animals when we try to kill them?” Esme yells, backing up as the insects surge forward.

The hut groans. The crib rattles. The green light beneath the floor glows brighter.

The nightmare of Berez has begun.

“Muriel…” Marjorie calls, voice cracking. “Muriel, where are you?”

A faint rasp answers her from near the cauldron.

Marjorie finds a small iron cage wedged beside it, half hidden under discarded bones and clinging vines. Inside, Muriel Vinshaw lies crumpled on the floor, wings broken and feathers torn out in fistfuls. Her bright eyes are dimmed to dull glass.

“Gods… Muriel, what did she do to you?” Marjorie whispers as she breaks the lock with trembling hands. The were-raven collapses into her arms, shuddering, too traumatized to speak.

Behind them, steel hits flesh.

Sabrione drives her blade up beneath Rowan’s raised arm, sliding it through the links of chainmail with a sickening grind and into her lung. The steel slips between ribs as if guided by a surgeon’s steadiness, not a friend’s trembling hand. Rowan’s breath comes out as a wet, choking gasp. Her knees buckle. Blood stains her tunic in a widening circle.

“Sab… what are you doing?” Ivan’s voice explodes inside her skull, as loud and panicked as a man drowning.

Sabrione cannot answer. She cannot even think her own thoughts. Her face is blank and serene, a cold mask stretched over horror. Her jaw tightens; her eyes stare ahead without recognition. Her limbs move with mechanical precision, puppet-like. Her sword twists inside Rowan’s body as she pulls it free, crimson running down the blade.

Rowan staggers backward, clutching the wound, staring at Sabrione with disbelief so raw it almost hurts to witness. This is the woman she laughed with. Trained with. Bled beside. Loved.

And now she is about to die by her hands.

“Sab… Sab, listen to me!” Ivan screams inside her mind. “This is wrong! This is not you!”

The voice only bounces against the inside of her skull like a trapped bird. It reaches nothing. The command gripping her soul strangles all sense of self. Sabrione steps forward, slow and deliberate, like a predator savoring the final moment before the kill.

Rowan’s vision blurs at the edges. Pain radiates through her chest. Yet her eyes stay fixed on the vampire in front of her. She sees every detail. The tremble in Sabrione’s fingers. The twitch in her jaw. The silent scream hidden beneath her expressionless gaze.

And she knows.

Sabrione is watching this happen from the inside. She is trapped inside her own flesh. Forced to murder someone she cares for. Forced to become her worst nightmare.

“Sab… please…” Rowan whispers, not in fear of dying, but in fear of what this will do to her friend.

Sabrione raises her sword in both hands. Rowan’s blood runs down the blade onto her gauntlets. She takes the stance she always uses when delivering a single, killing stroke.

Now it is the last thing Rowan may ever see.

Ivan’s voice breaks. “Do not do this! You are killing your friend! You are killing the one person in the world you love, Sab! You will regret this for the rest of your unnatural life!... Trust me, please! I KNOW WHAT THAT FEELS LIKE!”

Sabrione’s arms tremble violently. Something inside her fights. Something screams. Something claws against the invisible chains wrapped around her mind. But the spell forces her muscles forward. She cannot stop the downward arc that begins to form. She cannot stop the tip of her blade from lining up with Rowan’s throat.

Rowan’s breath is shallow. She sees the grief hidden behind Sabrione’s empty stare, the silent apology trapped behind her enamel white fangs.

For a heartbeat, she thinks she sees Sabrione’s lip tremble. A tiny crack in the façade.

It breaks her heart.

“It’s alright, Sab,” Rowan whispers, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I know you do not want this.”

Her voice shakes. She tries to smile. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth.

“I... I’ve always….”

Sabrione’s blade twitches, hovering inches above Rowan’s neck.

Ivan screams inside her mind, frantic now. “Fight it! Gods, Sab, fight it, she is in love with you! You will destroy her and yourself!”

But the witch’s spell tightens like a fist.

Sabrione’s boots slide forward in the mud. Her arms lift. The sword rises again, this time with the terrible finality of fate behind it.

And Rowan, bleeding out, still looks at her with love.

Outside, the bog stirs.

The earth trembles as the dragon’s skull begins to rise, lifting itself with a groaning crack. Baba Lysaga stands on the top, arms spread wide. Her scream carries through the swamp like a curse riding the wind.

She rides Skull of Argynvost, carried by grotesque magic. Its empty sockets burn with witch-light as it circles overhead.

The mist shreds away in the sudden gale, revealing the truth.

The scarecrows come alive.

Hundreds of them.

Shoulder to shoulder, twitching, jerking forward in lurching steps, their painted smiles wide and rotting. Every one of them begins to move as if given a single mind.

“Vasilka! The scarecrows are bad!” Esme cries. “Tear them apart!”

“Vasilka will tear apart the bad scarecrows!” the golem roars. She charges into the oncoming swarm, ripping straw-limbs apart with monstrous strength. Kellam leaps beside her, barking righteously as he fights alongside his companions.

But there are too many.

Hope is nowhere in sight. Sabrione is lost to a spell. Rowan bleeds heavily from the chest. The line will break.

Esme hurls a healing potion to Marjorie, who pours it between Muriel’s beak, whispering prayers. Color returns to the were-raven’s face, but faintly.

A thundercrack splits the sky.

Hope arrives.

She plummets from the clouds like a divine spear, wings roaring behind her, the imp clinging to her shoulders with claws sunk deep into leather. The storm-wracked sky splits with her descent. Hope slams into Baba Lysaga, and the night erupts.

A blossom of fire bursts outward. Baba screeches with laughter, spinning through the air as her crooked fingers weave jagged patterns of sickly green light. Hope hurls a sphere of blistering flame in answer. It slams into the witch’s shoulder and scorches a hole through her robes, but Baba only shrieks again, delighted.

The two beings streak across the sky above the sinking hut, spiraling in a violent tangle of claws, wings, and magic. Firelight flashes like lightning. Frost clings to the witch’s face as Hope unleashes a blast of winter that freezes the very air. Baba answers by cracking the sky open with a curse that writhes like a nest of black worms, forcing Hope to veer aside as it nearly consumes her.

They circle each other. Both hover over the bog like fallen stars locked in orbit.

“You think yourself powerful, girl?” Baba cackles, pupils narrow and hungry. “Kindness does not win battles!”

“I do not need kindness to burn you alive,” Hope growls, voice raw with fury and cold. Her wings beat the air so hard the mist scatters beneath her.

She thrusts her hands forward. A rain of scorching rays streaks across the sky. The witch swats two aside, one catches her square in the face, and for a breath she tumbles, shrieking as her skin blisters.

“Pretty fire!” Baba howls. “Let me show you mine!”

Her staff of gnarled root rises in her hand. A coil of shadows winds around it, thick and pulsing. With a single command it snaps toward Hope, ripping through the sky like a living chain. Hope dives. The chain barely misses her back but snags one of her wings. Pain explodes through her spine.

She screams, swings her arm, and conjures a blade of pure frost. She slices through the shadow-chain, shattering it into shards of black mist.

“You stole Addy,” Hope roars. “You hurt my family!”

“And I will hurt them again,” Baba hisses. “All of you are toys. Toys! Nothing more!”

Rage consumes Hope. The air around her darkens with a cold so deep that the clouds above begin to crystallize. Snow falls in a wide circle around her, flakes hissing like embers as they touch the ground. Even the imp clinging to her back trembles at the unnatural chill.

Hope rushes forward, leaving a trail of fire and frost twisting behind her. Her hands ignite. Launches two ropes of flame, unleashing a detonation of raw, blinding light that rips across the sky.

Baba and her vessel are hurled backward, tumbling end over end, her silhouette lit white-hot, smoke rising from her robes.

But she is still laughing.

Still alive.

Still hungry.

The witch steadies herself, eyes wide with madness. “Yes! Yes! Show me more! Burn the sky if you must!”

Hope flaps higher, wings beating with fury. “I am done playing with you.”

She gathers power into her palms, heat and cold spiraling together until her arms tremble. The energy hums, unstable and violent.

Baba’s smile twists. She begins her own spell, weaving blood and shadow into something grotesque and ancient.

The night holds its breath.

Two witches. One wretchedly selfish, one fiercely protective. Both radiant with power.

Their spells collide again, and the bog below flashes with light as bright as dawn.

Baba Lysaga throws her head back and laughs. “By the time your friend regains her mind, she will understand what she has done. Poor little Sabrione will be alone again!”

Her laughter is a shrill blade in the air, sharp enough to cut skin.

“Give me back my Addy, bitch!” Hope snarls. She hurls scorching rays that shatter against the witch’s counterspells, yet some slip past. Fire singes Baba Lysaga’s hair, burns her skin, blackens her robes. In return, one of her hexes strikes Hope like a hammer, nearly knocking her from the sky.

“Focus on me,” Baba taunts, eyes glowing with delight. “Let your friends die screaming. What will you choose, vampire?”

Hope glances back at the imp. Her face is pale with fury.

“Protect the party, Blitz.”

The imp leaps from her back and dives into the scarecrows, scorching them with bursts of infernal flame. One after another, the straw-creatures combust, shrieking as they collapse.

Sabrione towers above Rowan, eyes emptied of her own will, features trapped in a silent snarl. Her blade is lifted high, trembling with the force of magic urging it downward. Every muscle in Rowan’s body strains as she tries to hold Sabrione’s arm back, her gauntlet slipping in the mud, lungs screaming for air. She cannot keep this up. Not against Sab. Not like this.

Her pinned arm twists free. It hurts. Everything hurts. But she forces her hand toward her belt, fingers closing around the silver dagger. She doesn’t even use the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. She promised never to use it on Sabrione no matter what.

Ivan’s voice bellows from the sword. “Rowan, stop! Stop!”

Rowan presses the dagger forward, not toward Sabrione, but toward her own chest. The point rests just over her heart.

Sab sees it all happening from inside her own mind, but she cannot stop herself. Baba Lysaga’s magic is too strong. Her grip doesn’t waver. Her breath catches. She watches, helpless, as Rowan angles the blade.

“Rowan… no…”

Rowan smiles through blood and tears. A soft, broken smile meant only for Sab. Her voice quivers. “I know you are not yourself.”

She pushes.

The dagger sinks in.

A sharp gasp escapes her lips, the pain white and blinding. Her knees buckle. The world tilts. She falls backwards as her heart slowly stops.

Sabrione stares down at her, horrified, frozen, still grasping her sword. For the first time since the spell took hold, real emotion floods her eyes. Confusion. Fear. Grief she cannot express.

Rowan leans back, looking into her eyes one last time.

“I am so sorry… Sab…”

Her fingers tighten weakly around Sabrione’s vambrace.

“I will not make you carry my death. I will not let that witch force your hand. I love you far too much for that.”

A wet cough escapes her. She sags further into Sabrione’s hold, breaths shallow, vision dimming.

“You deserved better than this… better than me… better than anything this place ever gave you.”

Sabrione shakes, trapped in her own body, forced to watch Rowan fade in her arms. A silent scream tears through her mind, but she cannot speak it.

Rowan’s eyes begin to close, lashes wet.

If this is where I fall… then let it be here… touching the one person who ever made this cursed valley feel like home.

Her eyes flutter closed.

Inside Sabrione’s mind, Ivan’s voice becomes a desperate roar, shaking the very walls of her consciousness.

“Think, Sab. Think right now. Queen Ravenova died of a sudden illness on the journey to Barovia. Was that truly illness, or a jealous witch who wanted to be the only one he called mother?”

The words cut through the fog coiled around her thoughts. The spell clings stubbornly, but something deep inside her cracks. A hairline fracture in the control Baba Lysaga wrapped around her soul.

Ivan hammers the weakness before it seals. “If Baba Lysaga murdered someone Strahd loved… then she is his enemy. Sab, listen… She is his enemy!”

Sabrione’s breath shudders. Her pupils contract. For the first time since the spell took hold, her mind obeys her instead of the witch.

Her lips curl, voice low and resonant with the fury forced into her veins.

“I must destroy the enemies of Strahd von Zarovich.”

With a sickening tear of flesh, two vast bat-like wings burst from her back. Blood spatters across the bog. She screams, not in pain, but in wild, furious release—and launches herself toward the sky like a bolt of living night.

Ivan shouts with frantic triumph. “Yes! Do it, Sab! Kill her! Kill Strahd’s enemies… gods help me, listen to what I’m saying!”

Far above, the Skull of Argynvost spirals erratically, carrying the shrieking witch as she hurls curses into the storm. Hope streaks after her, leaving trails of frost and fire. Each spell crackles against the sky, illuminating the bog below like flashes of war-torn lightning.

A bolt of sickly green energy slams into Hope’s chest. She falters midair, wings shuddering. For a heartbeat she hangs over the mire like a broken star.

Baba Lysaga laughs. “I have you now! When you are gone, he will see who his real mother is!”

Below, the bog erupts.

What first seems like the shifting of earth becomes a violent heaving, as though the swamp itself is trying to spit something out of its depths. Thick curtains of mud slide away from the tree stump beneath the hut. The ground trembles.

Then the stump splits.

Two colossal wooden limbs unfurl from the muck, each one shaped like the bowed legs of some primordial beast. Roots twist and snap as they peel upward, dripping with black slime. The hut shudders as the legs straighten, lifting the entire structure into the air.

It rises like an ancient titan awakened from centuries of nightmare.

Its underside drips with congealed swamp water and coils of tangled vine. The timbers of the hut creak and moan—an old house taking its first breath of unholy life.

Then it moves.

The legs slam down into the bog with a force that sends a shockwave through the marsh. Mud explodes outward. Pools ripple violently. The trees sway as though bending in terror. Each step gouges trenches deep enough to swallow a horse whole.

Inside the living house, Marjorie is thrown against the bolted-down furniture as the entire structure bucks like a maddened animal. Lanterns swing. Chains rattle. The walls groan with hunger.

Outside, Rowan lies bleeding, vision swimming as the shadow of the descending foot blots out what little light penetrates the fog.

Vasilka moves before anyone can speak. Her massive arms scoop Rowan up like a child snatched from doom. She leaps backward just as the hut’s foot crashes down, splintering the earth where Rowan lay.

Esme feels the force of the impact vibrate through her bones. Kellam staggers, barking bravely as he shreds a scarecrow as he flees. The swamp around them shifts with each step the hut takes, creating sudden pits and rising mounds of mud that threaten to pull them under.

The hut lifts its leg again.

This time, it swings.

A sweeping, crushing kick arcs across the bog. Trees snap like twigs. A geyser of fetid water blasts skyward.

“Run!” Esme screams, as the hut slams its wooden foot down only a few paces behind them.

Vasilka clutches Rowan to her chest, barreling through the muck with powerful strides. Each time the hut moves, the earth beneath her seems to give way, threatening to suck her down into the mire. She forces her legs to keep going, even as the ground tries to claim her.

Behind them, the hut roars.

It has no mouth, no throat, but the sound emanates from its walls, a deep, resonant groaning that vibrates through the swamp. A cry of hunger. Of rage. Of ownership. As if the bog itself resents every living creature on its soil.

Roots twist from beneath the hut like fingers reaching to grab whoever falls behind.

Each step of the towering structure is an execution waiting to happen.

And Marjorie is still inside, bracing herself as the living house lumbers toward her friends, each thunderous step promising to crush the swamp, the village, and every one of them beneath its monstrous weight.

Inside, Marjorie throws herself into action. A chest spills open under her hands, filled with trinkets and old bones. She barely notices. At the bottom lies what matters: a simple hilt wrapped in aged leather, humming with sleeping sunlight.

“The Sunsword…” she whispers.

Its blade is gone, but its heart is not dead.

Above, Hope and Baba Lysaga clash, their magic twisting the air into a cyclone of frost and screaming flame. One more spell.. just one.. and the witch ends everything.

But a feral shriek cuts through the clouds.

Sabrione.

She dives like a predator, sword raised, wings cutting the storm apart.

Baba turns in time to see death coming. She spits a curse at Sab. Sabrione’s flesh splits open in a dozen places, blood cascading down her limbs.

The pain is unbearable.

But nothing compared to the pain she feels knowing what she did to Rowan.

Sabrione does not stop.

“FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!” Ivan bellows, fury vibrating through the blade.

Sab’s sword drives straight through Baba Lysaga’s chest. She sinks her fangs into the witch’s throat and rips.

The curse shatters.

Sabrione gasps as her mind snaps back into place. Horror floods her.

“Oh gods… what have I done?” Her voice cracks. “Rowan…”

But another voice fills her blade, powerful and clear.

“The Sunsword has been found. Bring me to it. I must be restored.” It is Sergei, echoing from beyond death.

Sabrione wheels away, wings beating furiously as she streaks toward the hut. Baba and the skull tumble downward.

Hope is already descending.

She hits the witch with the force of a falling star, slamming her into the swamp. Mud explodes outward. Hope stands over the broken crone, wings unfurled like a vengeful seraph.

Baba Lysaga wheezes, face twisted in desperation.

“Why… why did he choose you?” she rasps. “Why did he say your name? What did you give him that I did not?”

Hope’s grip tightens on the Gulthias Staff. Shadows coil around her like hungry serpents.

“Because I love my child,” she whispers, voice trembling with wrath and grief. “You only wanted to own yours.”

The witch’s eyes widen as Hope hand extends as she descends on her mind.

Baba’s memories, her triumphs, her pain, her centuries of schemes and failures, her twisted hopes, her obsessions, her ancient knowledge: everything pours into Hope in one unstoppable torrent.

The witch’s scream dies into a faint gurgle.

Her body becomes an empty husk, a puppet without strings.

But inside Hope, something howls.

A thousand years of madness and magic twist together like barbed wire around her thoughts.

Hope staggers.

Because Baba Lysaga’s death is not the end.

It is the beginning of the war now raging inside her.

Driving rain lashes the swamp, cold as iron needles against exposed skin. The colossal hut thrashes and stomps as it sinks deeper into frenzy, but a shadow streaks through the open doorway.

Sabrione bursts inside with a snarl of wind and wings, boots skidding across the tilting floor. Her sword is raised, eyes blazing with unnatural fury barely held in check.

“The hilt!” she screams. “Show me the hilt!”

Marjorie, braced against a bolted-down table to avoid being flung across the room, draws the bladeless sword. The hilt of the Sunsword gleams in her hand, warm with a heartbeat of its own.

Inside the blade of her weapon, Sergei’s voice echoes through the room, resonant and solemn.

“By the power of the Morninglord, I, Sergei von Zarovich, high priest, offer my soul to the Sunsword. I shall be its blade. Let your light shine through me as we bring dawn back to Barovia!”

A torrent of golden fire erupts from the hilt.

A blade of pure sunlight surges upward, a beam so bright it forces both women to shield their eyes. The hut shrieks, its walls shuddering in terror. Green light pulses beneath the floorboards, frantic and wounded.

Marjorie looks through the gaps and sees it: a crystal heart beating beneath the rotten planks, pumping life into this monstrous body of wood and witchcraft.

“I see it!” she shouts.

She switches her grip, holds the burning hilt in both hands, and drops to one knee. The tempest outside howls. The hut raises its leg for another devastating stomp.

Marjorie plunges the Sunsword downward.

The blade of sunlight drives through rotting wood as if through butter. The hut convulses. A piercing scream erupts from its walls. The crystal beneath explodes with a blinding flash.

And the hut collapses.

The immense legs stiffen, falter, then buckle. The entire structure drops like a dying giant, smashing into the marsh with a thunderous crash that splatters mud for twenty yards.

Outside, Esme, Kellam, and Vasilka throw themselves out of the falling structure’s path as it slams into the ground in a storm of splintered timber. Rowan’s lifeless body falls out of Vasilka’s arms and tumbles down the hill.

When the dust clears, the bog is silent again.

Marjorie claws her way out of the rubble, coughing, the Sunsword held high. Sabrione bursts upward beside her, wings folding tight, mud streaked down her face. Together, they stand over the destroyed corpse of Baba Lysaga’s creeping hut.

Then the Sunsword speaks in a voice that does not belong to Sergei.

“That was amazing, mom!”

The voice is bright, young, delighted.

Marjorie freezes.

Sabrione’s jaw drops in slow motion.

Inside the Blade of Scorn, a another voice erupts.

“WHAT?! MY SWORD?!”

Sergei’s outrage echoes through both weapons.

But the Sunsword glows brighter, humming with a new and unmistakable presence.

Morgwyn.

Her soul, her spark, her fierce will to protect her mother has overridden the priest’s centuries-old faith. Her bond with Marjorie is stronger than any ritual, any divine oath, any line written in ancient prophecy.

The Sunsword chooses its blade.

And it has chosen the daughter.

Hope sinks to her knees, the mud cool beneath her palms as a thousand stolen memories surge through her like a breaking dam. They crash against her mind in waves, jagged and violent, dragging her through centuries of cruelty and longing.

She sees the cradle, the newborn prince, the trembling hands of the midwife who wanted so badly to be loved. She sees the twisted pride that bloomed as she whispered her first spell into a child’s ear. She feels the hunger that drove Baba Lysaga to shape Strahd into something ruthless, something cold, something she believed would need her forever.

She witnesses the banishment from the castle, the fury that consumed her when Queen Ravenova held the child she loved. She feels the poison slip into a goblet. She feels no remorse. She feels the loneliness that followed. The decades of hiding in swamps. The envious watching from afar. The desperate, deluded hope that one day he might call her mother again.

Hope staggers as the memories claw at her. Her skin prickles. Wrinkles bloom across her face. Her breath comes out in a cracked, shrill laugh that is not her own. Baba Lysaga’s voice curls through her thoughts like smoke.

“This body will serve me better than my old one. Immortal. Young. Powerful. Let me in, child. Thirty years is nothing next to my thousand.”

Hope trembles. Her vision blurs. Her heart feels buried under the weight of a century of rot. Her short life is a drop of cordial in the sea, rapidly being diluted into nothingness.

Then she sees them.

Marjorie’s steady smile. Rowan’s quiet courage. Sabrione’s fierce devotion. Esme’s relentless fire. Isaac’s warm arms around her as the wind howled outside their farmhouse. The smell of bread cooling on wooden tables. The laughter of her sisters under wide blue skies. The long grass at her feet. The sun on her shoulders.

Her life. Her joy. Her family.

All of it brighter than every one of Baba Lysaga’s dark, lonely centuries.

Hope’s eyes fly open.

“My thirty years are everything,” she whispers. “They are full of love. Full of joy. Full of people who hold me close. You had a thousand years, and you didn’t even love anyone! It’s no wonder nobody ever loved you!”

The witch snarls inside her mind.

“You know nothing! You know nothing of what I have sacrificed!”

“I know enough,” Hope says, steady now. “I lived your memories. I saw how empty they were. You call me weak, but I have loved and been loved. You kept trying to fill that deep black hole in your heart with power and control, but you never could.  You’re pathetic!”

Baba Lysaga thrashes in her skull, shrieking.

“It is not fair. It is not fair! Why should someone so small, so foolish, have the life I deserved?”

Hope rises to her feet, glowing with her own inner light. The witch’s voice cracks under the weight of it.

“You never deserved it,” Hope says softly. “Love is given, not taken. And you never gave anything to anyone unless it suited your own needs!”

The memories begin to crumble. The ancient malice rots away like dead roots. The witch’s howling fades into a whimper.

“Now disappear.”

Hope’s words strike like a bell of pure truth. The witch’s consciousness unravels, dissolving into dust that scatters across Hope’s mind before vanishing entirely.

Hope’s body shudders.

She drops to the ground, eyes fluttering shut.

The last fragment of Baba Lysaga’s voice drifts through her mind like a dying breath.

“You may be young and joyful… but you are immortal. One day, you will know my loneliness.”

Hope’s final exhale is steady, peaceful.

She falls unconscious, but she falls as herself.

The potion burns through Rowan’s chest like liquid fire. Her back arches as her lung knits itself back together. Every nerve screams. Every breath is a battle. But she is alive. Her lungs reconstruct themselves slowly.

Marjorie steadies her, but Rowan is already pushing herself upright. Her vision swims. Rain pours into her eyes. None of it matters.

“Sab,” she breathes.

She stumbles forward, then breaks into a run.

The fog lifts in thin, trembling sheets as the wreckage of the hut looms ahead. Smoke rises from shattered beams. The bog glows faintly from dying magic. Sabrione stands in the ruins, wings folded tight around her, soaked in rain and blood. Her expression is one of total devastation. She has not yet realized Rowan is standing.

Rowan crashes through the broken doorway with a splash of mud and torn wood.

Sabrione turns. Her eyes widen. For a heartbeat she simply stares, lips parting in disbelief. She whispers, voice raw, “Rowan… you were…”

Rowan does not let her finish.

She steps forward, grabs Sabrione by the front of her armor, and pulls her into a kiss.

It is desperate. Fierce. Trembling with everything they nearly lost. It is the confession Rowan thought she would never get to make. It is the apology Sabrione has no words for. It is the miracle the others prayed for in silence.

Around them, Esme gasps. Kellam lets out a loud whoop. Marjorie grins so hard it hurts her cheeks. Even Vasilka tilts her head and softly claps her hands. She does not know what it means, but she knows everyone is happy.

Sabrione’s wings unfurl in shock, then slowly fold around Rowan like a shelter against the storm. Her hands rise, hesitant at first, then firm, cradling Rowan as if she might vanish again.

When they finally part, Rowan’s forehead rests against hers. Rain runs down both of their faces.

“I’m here,” Rowan whispers, breath shaking. “You didn’t lose me.”

Sabrione closes her eyes. A tear slips down her cheek, mixing with the rain.

“I should have protected you,” she says. “I almost killed you.”

Rowan lifts her hand and cups Sabrione’s face with a tenderness that steadies them both.

The party departs the drowned village just as the shade of Strahd rises once more to unleash the nightly flood. Water crashes through the ruins, swallowing the same homes and souls it has consumed for centuries. Yet amidst the tragedy, Burgomaster Ulrich watches them go with a small, aching smile. Perhaps they would be the ones to end this torment. Perhaps, one day, no one would drown again.

Far away, in the dark halls of Argynvostholt, Vladimir Horngaard sits rigid on his throne. The old revenant stares forward with empty eyes when the doors slam open and Godfrey nearly stumbles inside.

“They have done it!” Godfrey cries. “My love, they have returned with the Skull of Argynvost!”

Vladimir springs to his feet in a sudden fit of fury. “Those fools. How dare they come back here. If they still intend to lift the curse, I will run them through myself.”

He storms outside, ready to deliver wrath. But the sight that greets him stops his march cold.

Vasilka stands before the manor, lifting the massive silver dragon skull high overhead without strain. The knights gather around her in silent awe.

Vladimir’s legs give out. He falls to his knees as memories strike him like arrows. He remembers Argynvost. His laughter. His teachings. The oath sworn at the foot of their silver standard:

I promise to protect the people of this valley. No evil shall touch them while I still draw breath. I will be their light in the darkness, their sword against the shadows. My life belongs to the innocent.

“The people…” he whispers.

Ethereal tears spill from hollow eyes as he realizes how far he has fallen. How hatred twisted him. How completely he abandoned the very vow that once defined him.

His sword drops. His crown slips from his brow and clatters across the stones.

“What have I done,” he sobs. “What have I become.”

Godfrey kneels beside him and places a steady hand on his husband’s shoulder. “You are here, Vlad. You have come back.”

One by one, the knights of the Order of the Silver Dragon emerge from the manor. They kneel before the skull of their founder, hands raised in reverence.

Vladimir picks up his fallen crown with trembling fingers. He turns to Rowan and lifts it toward her.

“My child,” he says. “I am unworthy. Please forgive my failings. Take this crown. Carry on my work. Protect the people. Do what I could not. I ask your forgiveness, Lady Rowan.”

Rowan accepts it silently.

It settles above her helm with surprising ease. She has worn many crowns before, but none by birthright alone. This one she takes for duty. For justice. For hope.

Godfrey rises, voice booming.

“Hail, Rowan of Daggerford!”

The knights answer with one resounding cry: “Hail!”

“Princess of the Delimbiyr Vale!”

“Hail!”

“Steelhearted Protector of Barovia!”

“Hail!”

“Lady Commander of the Knights of the Silver Dragon!”

The order responds with thundering voices that shake the walls of the ancient fortress. “Hail! Hail!”

Rowan does not move. She simply breathes, imagining the faces of her parents and kin. If they could see her now, standing in the legacy of a dragon, they would weep with pride.

Later, the party ascends the highest tower of Argynvostholt. The knights bear the skull to the mausoleum to reunite it with its body. The party gathers around an old wooden lever.

“So we pull this,” Sabrione asks, “and the beacon lights?”

“That is what Godfrey said,” Rowan replies. “The presence of Argynvost feels close. I can sense it too.”

Marjorie gives her a soft smirk. “Well then, Lady Commander. What is stopping you?”

Rowan looks at her companions.

Hope stands with Addy cradled close, the imp perched between her shoulders. Marjorie with the blazing Sunsword at her hip. Sabrione by Rowan’s side, finally calm, finally belonging. Esme holding Soa’s dislodged head with determined pride. Vasilka, scarred and steadfast, devoted to her newfound family.

“We should all do this,” Rowan says. “Together.”

She rests her hand on the lever. Sabrione places hers over it. Marjorie and Hope follow. Vasilka and Esme join them at the end.

Six hands. One purpose.

They pull.

A beam of blinding radiance shoots into the sky. It expands into a brilliant flare that washes over the manor, then the forest, then the valley. For the first time in centuries, Barovia knows sunlight.

In Vallaki, Ireena stands atop the cathedral roof as cheers rise from every street. The light hits her face and she shouts louder than all who gather below. Martikovs cry and flap their wings. Blinksy hands out free toys while laughing like a child. The entire town rejoices.

In Krezk, Burgomaster Krezkov and his wife clasp hands as the light warms them. The Abbot tilts his head skyward with a rare smile, seeing a glimpse of the celestial home he once knew.

In the village of Barovia, Ismark leaps onto a roof, firearm raised high.

“Barovia!”

The people shout back, fists in the air, “Barovia!”

The word grows louder and louder until it floods the valley.

In Castle Ravenloft, Strahd von Zarovich sits upon his throne, wife at his side, Rahadin close at hand. He hears the cries echo up the cliffs. A low growl slips from his throat. It sharpens into a shriek that rattles the stained glass.

For the first time in generations, the Devil feels something pierce his heart.

Fear.

His subjects chant his land’s name, yet none of the voices belong to him.

They are not calling for their lord.

They are calling for their freedom.

“Barovia!”

The valley roars the name again.

“Barovia!”

The sound reaches him, louder than thunder.

Strahd once believed he was the land. But now the land itself screams back.