23rd May 2025 - Echoes of Ash and Shadow

The cave air stank of stone and death. Lars felt, a pressure behind the eyes, like a storm just beyond the horizon. Strahd.

The vampire lord did not walk so much as glide through the chamber, his presence part threat, part performance. His voice, slick and condescending, echoed through the cavern with practiced cruelty.

“Athun,” Strahd said with the tone of a man offering wine and war in equal measure, “kneel, and power is yours.”

Athun blinked. "I thought it was dinner first."

The others tensed. Marcus, still cursed into the form of a rat, squeaked indignantly. Kasimir, bloodied and one-armed, motioned toward the stairs. “Now,” he hissed. “Run.”

Lars didn’t wait. He grabbed Ireena’s arm and whispered a prayer to any god still listening. Together, they slipped into the shadows, feet silent on the cold stone. Behind them, Aeli drew the Sunsword, its golden glow like a sliver of dawn in that wretched dark. She didn’t swing it. Not yet. She only needed it to shine.

They fled, not with cowardice, but precision—soldiers surviving to fight again.

Strahd let them go.

That, somehow, was worse.

Freedom, brief though it was, came with a price. The moment the cave mouth spilled them back into the forest’s breath, the sky shifted.

They heard the flapping first, then the sound became a roar. A swarm of bats darkened the horizon, a vortex of wings descending like night itself.

Lars reached for his Vampire Bane bow and loosed an arrow into the swarm. The shot was perfect. It didn’t matter.

The bats ignored them, diving into the cave they had just escaped. Moments later, they returned, black, fluid, and furious, streaming toward Castle Ravenloft like smoke drawn to fire.

Aeli narrowed her eyes. “You think...?”

No one answered. But they all watched the swarm disappear into the mist. And no one breathed until the last wing vanished from sight.

Krezk greeted them like an old wound reluctantly dressed. The guards, unusually cheerful, ushered them in with grins that didn’t reach the eyes.

They made their way to the Healing Spring.

It shimmered like a promise in the pale morning light.

Athun hesitated at its edge, the curse of the Nightmother gnawing at his soul. The others drank greedily. Marcus dipped a finger first, ever the scholar, always testing the waters, literally.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, eyes widening. “This water is amazing.”

Even wounds beneath the skin began to fade.

Aeli, meanwhile, pored over Strahd’s tome, flipping pages with the rage of a storm. She found it, words written not in ink, but in obsession. Descriptions of storing life essence in an external object. Not lichdom, not quite. Something older. More intimate.

Marcus peered over her shoulder. “A phylactery... of a sort.”

No one said what they were thinking.

If they could find it, destroy it...

Maybe.

The next morning, joy clung to the village like fog. Unnatural. Coated in something too sweet.

The Baron and his wife had taken in six children.

Six.

But there had been nine in the caves.

Aeli’s voice cut through the pretence. “Where did these children come from?”

A villager, cheeks ruddy with mirth, answered. “They appeared last night. At the gates. All alone.”

The others exchanged glances, each mind doing the same grim math. Six found. Three missing.

And behind that: What if these weren’t rescues? What if they were sleepers? Seeds planted in good earth... waiting to bloom with teeth?

Lars wanted to leave. “Guys, I think we gotta get out of here,” he whispered, eyes darting to the shadowed corners of the village.

Aeli proposed a subtler route, “Congratulate the Baron. Ask questions.”

Marcus crossed his arms. “If these kids are infected, we can’t wait until the full moon to find out.”

Athun muttered something about silver weapons and too few of them.

And so, once more, the group made for the Baron’s house, unsure if they were walking into celebration, deception, or one of Strahd’s many, many games.

* Where are the other three children? * What, precisely, is Strahd’s external anchor? And how* long do they have before he tires of invitations and plays his final hand?

The mists around Barovia never lift. Not fully.

But hope, like light through a crack in stone, finds a way.

At least for now.