That's So Raven

You counted heads.

Seventy-seven.

That was the number still alive — tucked into the shimmer of the bubbles, eating what Nimri's scrolls could produce, sleeping in the ruins of a world that was dying around them. Seventy-seven people who were going home if you managed not to get everyone killed.

The plan took shape the way plans do when there's no good option — by picking the least bad one and committing to it hard enough that it starts to feel like a real plan.

The portal at Bedegar Keep was Mithraides' work. He'd been running a gnoll army through it from this place into the Shadowfell, and from there into the Dessarin Valley. The keep's undercroft held the binding stone that kept this whole pocket plane tethered to the dark. But the portal itself was still open and functional, and Nimri knew of a Grey-Robed Order waypoint in the Shadowfell — a place the refugees could breathe before finding their way home.

That was the exit. But you had to get seventy-seven people through it.

You couldn't do that and reach Leigha at the same time.

So you split.

The old Brookside party — Emmith and Theravos and Josh Huckler — would take the column. Seventy-seven souls, moving slow and quiet toward the keep. Ser Vindictus riding flank. They would wait for the signal.

The signal: when Crowley returned the godspark to Leigha, the divine protection keeping her chapel alive would fail. The bubble would drop. That collapse — visible across open ground — was the trigger. The moment the old party saw it, they would start moving.

You left them to it.

Moist cast Pass Without Trace and the world went quiet around you. Six of you, moving through the grey gnoll-haunted dark, the spell making you nothing. No sound. No trace. Just pressure in the air where people used to be. A patrol crossed your path and kept walking.

The Brookside chapel materialized out of the murk.

You could see through the shimmer. Leigha, pale and still at the altar. The godspark Crowley had carried around his neck — his sister's soul, the thing that had been burning him in his sleep — waiting to be set free.

You were at the door.

Next session: The bubble breaks. The world ends. And everyone moves at once.