06/16/2026: Deciding What Comes Next

The tree blight lies broken across the road, branches still twitching faintly as if some sap-thick memory of life refuses to let go. The air reeks of crushed pine and the metallic tang of ichor, and steel rasps against wood as the party and a handful of borrowed guards hack their way down toward the two buried beneath it. Sawdust and splinters settle in their hair like snow.

It’s in the middle of all this that Etuttelong makes its appearance — a small, curious creature that has apparently been living in Firesoul’s pack since her brief and unplanned visit to the Ethereal Plane, and which has just decided enough is enough. It wriggles free, devours the last of her rations without ceremony, and toddles straight over to introduce itself to Reynaldo, the party’s resident demonic rabbit. The two take to each other instantly.

“They are also known as ‘Sweetheart Demons,’” Firesoul says, grimacing at the thing as though it might bite. “I can’t see why. It’s been riding in my pack for days. Inches from my spine. I didn’t know.”

“Well, I think it’s cute!” Nike crouches down, delighted, scratching behind whatever passes for the creature’s ears. “Reynaldo’s been lonely. Look how happy he is.”

Firesoul does not look convinced that “happy” is the correct word for whatever Reynaldo is doing.

⚔

Between the rhythmic chunk of axes and the groan of shifting timber, the conversation turns practical: Yester Hill, and the very real possibility of a fourth tree blight rising if someone doesn’t deal with the Keeper of the Gulthias Staff and the druids nesting beneath that cursed tree. Nobody is eager to fight another one of these things.

At last the final branch gives way, and Shifty and Nikolai are pulled free, bruised but breathing. Nikolai barely pauses to thank anyone before he’s gone, sprinting the road toward Wachterhaus and the family he has not seen in what was, for him, no time at all — and for them, a year of mourning.

⚔

Vallaki’s gate looms ahead through a thin grey mist, and Nike draws her hood low over her face before they pass beneath it. The streets are familiar to her in a way she’d rather they weren’t — every cobblestone a memory of hunger, every shopfront a place she once watched from the shadows rather than walked past in daylight. They make their way down the central street to the Blue Water Inn, its windows glowing amber and welcoming against the cold.

Urwin Martikov greets Crystal and Biblo warmly, his handshake firm, his eyes already scanning the group for one face he doesn’t see.

“And Novaril?” he asks.

The silence that follows answers him before anyone speaks. Novaril has gone to face Strahd alone, and the warmth in the room dims. Urwin looks at Crystal sadly. “May the gods protect him,” Urwin says.

Zilk steps in to fill the quiet, gesturing to the two newest faces. “This is Nike. And Soulfire.” Introductions, at least, are easier than grief.

Nike says little, shrinking further into her hood. She knows this place — knows Urwin, knows Danika — though she never once had coin enough to sit at one of their tables. Vallaki made her, in its way: born sickly, healed and then cursed in the same breath by Baba Lysaga, abandoned by her parents not long after. She grew up picking pockets to survive, and one of those pockets, fatefully, belonged to Count Strahd von Zarovich himself. He did not take the insult lightly. She remembers his teeth, and then she remembers nothing — only waking alone in an empty house with twin wounds at her throat, and the slow, creeping sense ever since that something in her is changing. 

Crystal alone seems to have any real idea what that something might be, though even she admits it’s only a guess — Baba Lysaga’s curse, tangled up with Strahd’s bite, fighting some silent war beneath Nike’s skin.

⚔

The talk turns, as it always does now, to Ravenloft. To Strahd. The room’s mood shifts from mourning into something sharper — purpose. They are heroes in this town now, after Wintersplinter, and Urwin presses them on what Madam Eva foretold they would need: the Symbol of Ravenkind, secured. The Tome of Strahd, in hand. An ally raised from death itself, in Nikolai Wachter. Only the Sword of Sunlight remains lost, buried somewhere in the crypts beneath Ravenloft, in Strahd’s own tomb.

Urwin offers more than advice — the Order of the Feather will fight alongside them, he says, though only one of its leaders can go. “Danika or myself. Never both. Our children can’t be made orphans on a gamble, however good the cause.”

The door opens before anyone can answer him, and Nikolai Wachter walks in.

⚔

The reunion between Nikolai and Urwin is immediate and unguarded — two old friends gripping each other’s arms, neither quite trusting the other is real. Behind him come Lady Fiona and Nikolai Jr., and the warmth in the room cools by several degrees the moment their eyes land on the party.

Nike feels it first — the flicker of recognition in Lady Fiona’s gaze, the dawning certainty that this hooded girl matches a face posted on half the walls in Vallaki. Lady Fiona says nothing. Not yet.

Biblo and Nikolai Jr. have unfinished business of their own, old words resurfacing fast enough that Nikolai Sr. has to ask his son to leave the room. Lady Fiona ushers the boy out without a backward glance, and only once they’re gone does the tension in the room loosen its grip.

Nikolai turns back to the party, his voice steady but final. “I owe you a debt that I will pay at Ravenloft. But I will not take sides in my own family’s quarrels — not even for you. Not even now.”

It’s an honest one answer, and the party lets it lie. They agree to give Nikolai the time he needs with his family and turn their attention back to Strahd. They will go back to the Amber Temple library, where answers about Baba Lysaga’s weaknesses might be waiting, with perhaps a detour to deal with the Druid of the Old Ways along the way.