17th October 2025 - The Depths of the Devil’s House

The air in the chapel was thick with the scent of old incense and dust, a silence broken only by the ragged gasp of Marcus as life clawed its way back into his body.

One moment he had reached for a small silver statue, its glow like moonlight trapped in metal, and the next, there had been only cold. Not the ordinary chill of Barovia’s endless dusk, but the deep, devouring absence of warmth. Death had taken him swiftly and completely.

And then… he had returned.

When Marcus’s eyes opened, their usual spark of arrogance had dulled into something else. A weight. A shadow that did not belong to him.

He whispered, his voice rasping through dry lips. “This is one.”

No one understood what he meant. Not yet.

Aeli and Lars watched him rise from the chapel floor, horror etched into their faces. Aeli reached out but stopped short, unsure if the thing standing before her was still the man she knew.

“Don’t,” Marcus croaked, clutching his chest. “Don’t pick up the silver statues. There’s no loot in them.”

A bitter attempt at humor, but even he couldn’t muster a smile.

Kasimir, meanwhile, had stepped closer to the altar, curiosity gleaming in his crimson eyes. He touched the statue. Nothing happened.

Marcus blinked. “What?”

Kasimir frowned thoughtfully. “It’s inert for me. Curious.”

Aeli, always the scholar, opened the Tome of Strahd again, thumbing through the crackling vellum pages until she found a passage scrawled in crimson ink. She read aloud, I sought to claim the light, to bind the Icon’s grace to my will. But its sorrow burned me. I cast it down into the place where even prayer dares not linger.

They realized then what lay before them.

The statue was no mere relic, it was the Icon of Ravenloft, an ancient beacon of sanctified power. A relic of such purity that even Strahd could not endure its light.

But to Marcus, the Icon had reacted not as to a sinner… but to something worse. A cursed soul. A vessel of the Dark Powers.

Aeli’s hand trembled as she looked between the statue and her friend. Marcus met her gaze and said nothing.

Lars lifted the Icon, its faint radiance glinting off his armor. He felt its warmth, gentle and sorrowful, and for a moment, the oppressive weight of the castle seemed to ease.

It would be his burden now, the light they would carry into the dark.

They left the chapel behind, the silence of the dead following them like a held breath. Beyond a narrow balcony door lay a corridor cloaked in cobwebs and gloom.

A low moan drifted from the shadows.

Marcus climbed the wall like a spider, his fingertips finding old ropes hidden among the rafters. “A trap,” he muttered, tugging at one experimentally.

The air split with a shriek of rusted pulleys. From the darkness above, a shape plunged, fanged, cloaked, and laughing. A vampire, descending upon them like a nightmare given form.

Aeli’s blade was already in her hand. “Strahd!”

But the creature’s movements were jerky, mechanical. Its laughter hollow, like the echo of a phonograph.

Marcus’s firebolt struck it square in the chest, and the “vampire” exploded into splinters and cloth.

A mannequin. A cruel imitation.

Lars spat. “He’s mocking us.”

They pressed onward, through dust-choked corridors and the quiet grind of distant gears. The castle was not only haunted, it was alive. Watching. Testing.

In a forgotten chamber, they found the heart of the mechanism: a tangle of chains and cogs driving some unseen contraption deep within the walls.

“Don’t touch anything,” Aeli warned.

Lars nodded, and immediately touched something.

A hiss of air. A lurch beneath his feet. Then the floor vanished.

His scream echoed through the hall as he fell into darkness.

“Marcus! I was right!” he shouted before vanishing below.

Marcus sighed, webbing to the wall like a disgruntled insect. He peered down the shaft and saw Lars lying in a heap, alive, but bruised.

“Hold on,” Marcus said. “I’ll come down.”

He descended carefully, wrapped Lars in his arms, and began climbing back up.

The first three feet went well.

The next three were a disaster.

They tumbled back down in a clatter of armor, curses, and ego. A mechanism whirred to life, and the floor beneath them began to rise, carrying them back up like a lift.

Lars dusted himself off. “See? I meant to do that.”

Marcus groaned. “You’re insufferable.”

The next chamber was a startling contrast, a pristine servant’s quarters, candles burning low, the air sweet with lavender. A woman stood at the center, pale and delicate, humming a gentle tune as she dusted an already immaculate shelf.

She turned, eyes wide with practiced fear. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’m just a servant. He… he took me from Vallaki.”

Her name was Helga, she said. A bootmaker’s daughter. A prisoner of Strahd’s cruelty.

Aeli’s expression softened, but her blade remained drawn. “We can get you out,” she promised.

Marcus offered her a dagger, but when Aeli tried to give her a silvered sword, Helga recoiled as though from fire. “No… no, I couldn’t.”

That was the first crack.

The second came when she mentioned Ireena.

“I don’t know where she is,” Helga said, her voice too smooth, too measured. “But Lord Strahd keeps his treasures in the catacombs.”

As they led her toward the exit, Aeli made an offhand remark about their unicorn-hide rug waiting outside.

Helga stopped walking. Then she laughed.

A low, contemptuous sound. “You think your baubles matter? You think he chose you for your courage? You’re toys. Playthings.”

Her skin rippled, pale turning to corpse-white as fangs slid from her gums.

“Lord Strahd gave me eternity,” she hissed.

The battle was vicious and close. Lars grappled with her as she tried to sink her teeth into his throat, his mace thrumming with the Icon’s light. Marcus unleashed flame; Aeli ignited her Sun Sword, the blade blazing like dawn in the dark.

Helga screamed as Lars’s final blow crushed her skull, radiant light bursting through her form. Her body crumbled to ash.

“Bootmaker’s daughter, my ass,” Lars muttered.

The spiral stair that followed felt endless, each turn dragging them deeper into Barovia’s rotting heart. The stench grew unbearable, the air thick with mold and decay.

At last, they emerged into a vast necropolis, row upon row of sealed crypts disappearing into fog. The ceiling writhed, black and restless. Bats. Tens of thousands of them, shifting like a living shadow.

Marcus’s torch sputtered. “Home sweet home.”

The group split to explore. Lars found a crypt bearing the names King Barov and Queen Ravenovia. Aeli studied the carvings, reverent, mournful. She felt no malice here, only memory.

Then Lars, with grim humor, suggested entombing the Icon with them.

Aeli gave him a look sharp enough to cut stone.

He raised his hands in surrender. “Just saying.”

Overhead, the bats stirred. Kasimir glanced upward. “It’s night. They’re waking.”

Then, all at once, the ceiling erupted.

A torrent of shrieking wings filled the air as the bats surged upward, a black cyclone tearing through the catacombs and vanishing into the night above.

The noise was apocalyptic, a sound that felt more felt than heard.

When silence returned, it was worse.

Aeli’s breath caught. The nearest crypt bore her name.

Her stomach turned to ice.

She forced the door open. Inside, a corpse lay on a stone slab, her face staring back. As she approached, the illusion melted, the name on the crypt fading like smoke.

Strahd was watching. Always watching.

Marcus called out from deeper in the fog. His voice trembled, not with fear, but something heavier.

They found him before a freshly carved crypt. The letters were still sharp, the dust not yet settled.

IRINA KOLYANA, WIFE.

No dates. No epitaph. Only possession.

Aeli’s hands tightened on the Sun Sword until her knuckles went white.

Lars whispered, “He’s already claimed her.”