28th November 2025 - The Embers of Krezk

The first warning was the smoke.

It curled up the cellar stairs in a thick grey plume, creeping into the Abbey’s dining hall as the party stumbled out of the firestorm they themselves had unleashed. The air tasted metallic, bitter with burning varnish and splintered wood. Beneath it, the stone groaned with the first hints of collapse.

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he said, voice dry as old parchment. “I think it’s time to get out of here.”

No one argued.

They ran, boots splashing through puddles, cloaks whipping behind them, until at last they spilled into the courtyard overlooking Krezk. Morning had come, but Barovia’s eternal haze turned the sun into a pale, blurred coin. The Abbey burned behind them, slow and inevitable.

That was when the sound began.

A distant, rhythmic thud, deep, ponderous, wrong. Then the forest far below rustled in a rolling wave, trees swaying aside as though something massive moved through them.

Dread settled over the group like a damp cloak.

Lars knelt, closing his eyes. He reached outward with primal instinct, searching the miles around them. Within seconds he paled.

“Something’s coming,” he whispered. “Something big.”

Aeli glanced back at the Abbey, flames licking higher. “Our options,” she said, “are slimming while we speak.”

They turned from the fire and descended toward the one place in Krezk that had granted them safety before: the blessed pool at the village’s heart.

Tremors followed them down the hillside, small at first, then growing, beating a grim cadence beneath their feet.

Their plan formed fast, desperate, and strangely brilliant.

The pool was holy. Holy water hurt undead. And whatever was coming could not be worse than facing the unknown on open ground.

Lars filled his waterskin with the shimmering liquid, while Marcus, paranoid ingenuity sparking, ransacked a nearby shed. He emerged with a bucket, then promptly scaled the town wall like a disgruntled insect, positioning his prize with careful aim.

“Holy-water bombardment,” he muttered to himself. “Perfectly reasonable.”

They waited.

But the creature marching toward them did not arrive.

Something else did.

A familiar black wagon creaked into town, the same one Vidar had fled in. It rolled slowly toward the burning Abbey, its wooden wheels whispering over the gravel.

Lars didn’t hesitate. Subtlety was never his domain. One arrow thudded into the wagon’s side.

It stopped.

Silence.

Marcus sighed. “Marcus will just hurl a fireball at it.”

The explosion lit the morning like a second sunrise. Flames roared up around the wagon, only to gutter away, leaving the wood untouched.

Aeli raised an eyebrow. “This is some voodoo bullshit.”

Lars shattered a window with a second arrow.

The wagon shuddered… and the fight began.

The party unleashed everything they had.

Ice rained down from Marcus’s conjured storm, battering the roof. Lars fired arrow after arrow. Aeli’s Sun Sword glimmered in her hand, anticipation humming along the blade.

It was Athun who ended the standoff.

He strode forward through shards of melting ice and, with a single brutal swing, split the wagon door down the centre.

Inside were three coffins. And a chest.

The coffins burst open.

Strahd’s brides spilled out, undead monstrosities in tattered wedding gowns, eyes burning like coals. More specter than woman, each moved with hungry purpose.

One launched at Athun, fangs sinking deep. His strength ebbed instantly, muscles trembling. Another grappled with Aeli, only to recoil as radiant light scorched its flesh.

Marcus, blasting one apart with Magic Missile, shouted triumphantly, “STAAAKE!” The new battle cry was born.

A whirl of magic and steel followed. Marcus transformed one of the brides into a helpless tortoise, flailing uselessly on its back. Lars tore a spoke from the wagon wheel Athun had broken, then drove it through the immobilized creature. Aeli followed through with a radiant decapitation, dissolving it into ash.

The others fell soon after, fire, sunlight, and steel overwhelming them in a storm of brutality.

When the final bride crumbled, silence returned.

Aeli knelt beside scattered ashes. “Stake, decapitate, burn,” she recited. “But the Sun Sword handles all that neatly.”

They moved to the chest.

Athun avoided a volley of poison darts with practiced ease, then opened the lid.

Inside: a collection of Strahd’s macabre treasures. A wedding veil woven from mist. A painting of Ireena that seemed to shift when not observed. Silver and obsidian jewellery meant for a bride.

A card lay atop the items.

*To my beloved Tatyana.

No one spoke for a long moment.

The ground trembled.

Not subtly. Not distantly. Now with the force of something enormous approaching fast.

When the party turned toward the gate, their breaths caught.

A colossal tree, its bark riddled with black veins of necrotic light, strode through the forest like a titan. Branches swayed with unnatural sinew. Roots snapped and reformed as it walked.

They knew that shape.

The Gulthias Tree.

But grown monstrously beyond their last encounter.

It marched toward Krezk with terrible purpose.

Decisions crashed over them like cold water.

Lars hefted his axe. “Holy water won’t help against a tree,” he said, already moving toward the gate.

Marcus, Athun, and Aeli exchanged looks, then retreated toward the blessed pool, holy water still their only reliable tool against undead forces, should more arrive.

Above them, the sky dimmed further, as though even the sun feared to witness what came next.

The colossal tree descended upon Krezk.

And the party braced for two catastrophes at once, one of wood and rot, the other of fire and obsession, each threatening to remake the village before the day’s end.