13th June 2025 - A Glimpse of Renewal

The chalice trembled in Aeli’s hand. Its surface, dulled by years and sanctified by ritual, shimmered faintly with the light of something older than magic—something elemental. With a breath and a prayer, she upended it into the vat.

The blackened wine responded like a living thing. It seethed.

A roar of frothing bubbles rose as the thick, corrupted ooze convulsed, reacting to the sacred infusion. It spilled over the rim, across the floorboards, and into the cracks of the winery. Where it touched green poison, transformation. The foul liquid cleared, becoming a deep, rich red. Wine that sang of sunlit hills and soil untainted by death.

And it did not stop.

The blessed tide flooded room after room, seeping beneath doors and through floorboards, finding rot and corruption as if it were hunting it. Outside, the wind shifted. Distant, agonized howls filled the air, blights dying in droves, their corrupted connection to the land severed.

Upstairs, Lars and Marcus reached the windows. Lars unlatched the shutters and watched as thorned bodies of vine blights twisted, shuddered, and fell apart. The earth seemed to breathe again, wet, rich, and alive.

Athun stood vigil by the cart outside, sword in hand. The mist around the vineyard thinned, the shadows retreating, not in fear, but as if they no longer belonged here.

Davian Martikov, gaunt and cautious, approached with wide eyes and children clinging to his sides. His hair was matted, his clothes wine-stained, but in his hand he still held the key to the vineyard, an iron ring of keys, and a pendant in the shape of a raven.

"You did it," he whispered, voice hoarse from hiding. “You really did it.”

They gathered in the tasting room, what remained of it, near the hearth, where flames cast long shadows and hope felt like a fragile thing. Davian Martikov poured glasses of Red Dragon Crush, the first vintage not cursed by Strahd’s touch in years. Its flavour, it's true flavour, was joy on the tongue.

Davian cleared his throat.

“You should know,” he said, “what it is you’ve stumbled into. And what you’ve restored.”

He told them the tale of the gems.

“Centuries ago,” Davian said, “a mage came to these lands. A dreamer. He forged three gems, pinecone-sized, each one brimming with his hope. He planted them in the valley’s soil, believing they’d grow eternal vineyards.”

His voice lowered.

“The magic failed. But they came.”

“The Ladies Three,” Marcus whispered. “The Weaver, the Huntress, and the Seeker.”

Davian nodded. “Archfey, or something older. No one knows for sure. But they blessed the gems. Not just for wine, for the land itself. Those stones became roots, not of vines, but of life.”

And for a while, that life endured. Even when Strahd’s curse settled over Barovia like a shroud, the gems kept the vines alive. Kept something in the land resisting decay.

But then the balance broke.

“One gem was stolen,” Davian said, voice tight. “Taken to Yesterhill. The druids there—mad, wild—they believe Strahd is a god. They use the gem to birth blights. To feed the land his image.”

Another was lost to a darker force. “Baba Lysaga,” he spat, “the witch of Berez. She has the second. Twisted its power to curse the swamp.”

“And the third?” Lars asked.

A shadow passed Davian’s eyes. “My son. He feared it would be taken too. So he hid it. He... he died before telling anyone where.”

Silence fell.

Davian’s hands trembled.

“They’re more than magic,” he whispered. “They’re tethers. The last links between this land and the Ladies Three. If they’re all corrupted, if they’re all lost, then Barovia will never be free.”

Aeli’s hand curled around the edge of the tome in her lap. The echoes of the fane’s presence, their plea, hung in the air like a scent only she could sense.

Lars stood abruptly, fire behind his eyes. “Then we take them back.”

Davian’s gaze was tired, but not hopeless. “The druids will fight you to the death. Strahd watches them. He lets them believe they serve him.”

That night, they slept little.

Aeli poured over the cursed tome. She deciphered a passage, a frustrated rant from Strahd about a lich named Darkon, and how his own immortality had trapped him here. Not a phylactery, no. But something else. An anchor. A soul held hostage by the land itself.

Athun’s dreams were worse. His sleep plagued by whispers and shadowed memories. The Night Mother still clutched at his thoughts.

Come morning, they left for Yester Hill.

They passed cairns of dark stones, slick with slime and warm to the touch. Each mound whispered a name, long forgotten. Each one a warning.

And then, at the hill’s summit, he appeared.

Strahd.

Seated atop a steed of fire and smoke, his crimson cloak billowed like a wound made real. He raised a hand. The cairns cracked. Fingers broke through the stones. The druids had not been buried, they had been stored.

Strahd smiled.

“The land loves me,” he declared. “It drinks my blood like wine.”

The party lay hidden among tall grasses, breath still.

To strike now was death. To wait was risk.

But to do nothing... would be surrender.