25th July 2025 - Castle of Bone and Shadow

The storm clawed at the castle, as if it too longed to tear down Ravenloft stone by stone.

Rain sheeted the ramparts where the companions walked, half-blinded by wind and shadow. Lightning revealed jagged mountain silhouettes beyond the battlements, and below, a village huddled in gloom. Lars leaned over the slick stone edge, his cloak soaked and useless.

“I see nothing but ghosts and mist,” he muttered.

Aeli’s sword pulsed faintly in her grip, casting a radius of holy light, thin and fragile against the darkness, but stubborn in its glow.

They moved quickly, avoiding the path of a patrolling suit of armor. It was too soon since their last battle. Too soon for more wounds.

Athun spotted the trapdoor first. Beneath it, a tight stairwell spiralled into another turret, mirroring the one they had escaped near the organ room. Down they went, unaware they were descending not just through stone, but into the bones of the castle itself.

The stench hit first: decay, iron, and wet mould.

A chamber unfolded before them, filled with rotting cots and rust-flecked weapons. Yellow lichen bloomed across the ceiling like a sickness too stubborn to die. Lars ran a gloved hand across it, sniffed his fingers, and grunted. “Harmless,” he announced. “Unlike everything else here.”

Then the bones moved.

Skeletons rose from the detritus of the fallen, once guards, now twisted echoes. Their empty sockets flared with false life. Marcus stepped back, fire already forming at his fingertips, while Aeli surged forward, sword gleaming like a shard of sunlight.

Athun, ever the bulwark, summoned the runes branded into his soul. Flames burst from his axe, searing through brittle ribcages. But Lars grunted as a rusted blade scraped across his side, its taint venomous, poisoning his blood.

By the end, bone fragments littered the floor. The silence returned, uneasy.

Among the ruin, Aeli claimed a shield. Athun discarded his cursed axe for a simpler blade. Nothing felt like victory here, only survival, rented by the minute.

The next door opened into madness.

A room sculpted entirely of bone. Ceilings arched with femurs and skulls. Chairs made from vertebrae circled a long, bleached table. And above it all, a chandelier of human and elven skulls, their grins cracked and eternal.

A dragon’s skull, massive, hollow-eyed, rested near a set of sealed double doors. Aeli stumbled back at the sight, her sword dimming.

Her connection to her patron, to the threads of arcane power that whispered through her blood... vanished.

As if the very bones mocked her.

Her gaze lingered on the dragon’s skull. Argynvost, whispered a voice in her memory. It didn’t matter how she knew it, it was him. She swore silently to return him to his resting place. Or make Strahd pay for the desecration.

They left the bone cathedral through the northern passage, unwilling to face whatever lingered behind the eastern doors.

They opened the door where Vidar waited for them like a spider in a lacquered web.

The now servant of Strahd, lounged behind an ornate desk. Candles flickered, casting angular shadows on racks lined with weapons bearing the crest of Barovia. He tapped the lid of a chest beside him. Stolen gear. Seized weapons. Power held just out of reach.

“You’ve added to my collection,” he said, voice like glass over gravel. “My master told me how easily he crushed you. Have you reconsidered his offer?”

No reply came. Only Lars, bloodied, unrelenting, charged.

Steel clashed. Magic sparked. Vidar vanished with a twist of light, Misty Step, and reappeared, blade wreathed in emerald fire. He was graceful, taunting, almost gleeful.

“You won’t survive this,” he hissed, parrying blow after blow. “But don’t let that stop you from trying.”

Yet the tide turned. Athun swung with fury, his fire rune blazing. Marcus’s spells missed often, but his defiance struck true.

Vidar, faced with rising resistance, vanished once more. This time, for good.

The chest burst open, and their weapons were reclaimed. The Sun Sword ignited in Aeli’s hand like dawn remembered.

They barricaded the study with desks and bent wood. Lars, ever the gambler, shoved his own longsword into the door’s gears, breaking the lock.

Aeli opened the Tome of Strahd, pages whispering secrets too dense to grasp quickly. A warning about the land. Rituals. A history bathed in blood.

But they had no time.

Lars, without hesitation, dropped Vidar’s journal into the fire.

“Wait!” Marcus began, hand outstretched.

Too late. Flame consumed words they would never read.

“Nothing worth keeping,” Lars said, not looking back.

As they prepared to rest, metal footsteps echoed down the hall.

“Lars!” Vidar called, his voice playfully cruel. “Come out and play.”

They did not answer. They did not open the door.

Instead, Lars found a hidden panel, a staircase, old and crumbling, revealed by dust and instinct. They fled into it, sealing the passage behind.

The air changed.

Mist rose from the stones, thick and suffocating. It curled into form, tall, regal, fanged.

Strahd.

“You have worn out your welcome,” he said. “Your gods cannot save you now.”

Aeli didn’t hesitate. She thrust the Sun Sword forward. It passed through him, slicing nothing.

Strahd’s image wavered, melting like wax. He laughed, soft, full of promise, and vanished into the stones.

And Now...

They stood in darkness, lit only by one sword’s flickering glow. Bruised. Bloodied. Betrayed. But not broken.

They had escaped Vidar’s clutches, uncovered a piece of Strahd’s lair, and reclaimed what was stolen. And though they were deep in the beast’s den, there was still breath in their lungs.

In Barovia, that was a kind of victory.

The castle would not give them another so easily.