That's So Raven

Before you went in, KeYs pressed her breastplate into Ser Vindictus's hands.

Then she handed her the sword.

The moment Vindictus closed her fingers around the Holy Avenger's hilt, the blade blazed — not the careful flicker of a flame but the full, sudden radiance of something that had been waiting for exactly this. A weapon finding the hand it belonged to. KeYs took back her longsword and said nothing.

Vindictus inclined her head and held the light.

Then you crossed the threshold.

The chapel was exactly as Leigha's divine field had kept it: candlelit, undamaged, suspended. Leigha lay at the altar, pale and still. Crowley walked to her. He lifted the pendant from his neck — the bone necklace that had burned him in his sleep since childhood, the contract and the symbol and everything he'd carried from home to here — and broke it against the altar stone.

Diamond light cracked outward.

The godspark descended and sank into Leigha's chest.

She took a breath.

The bubbles dropped. Both of them. The chapel went dark around you, the preserved light collapsing like a held breath released, the ruin showing through what had been warmth. Outside, you could feel it — 77 people watching two glowing hemispheres wink out simultaneously, which was the signal, which meant the column was moving.

And somewhere to the east, a sound like the world being torn.

The World Eater had felt the change.

You ran.

Lessie carried Leigha. Falkor and Zago caught up from the air, close and urgent. The road to Bedegar Keep crossed a gnoll encampment, except by the time you reached it the gnolls were already gone — devoured by the thing they'd worshipped, indifferent to the distinction. The road was clear.

The drawbridge was up. Crowley went over the wall instead, hand over hand up the stone face, found the winch mechanism, and cranked.

The bridge came down.

The column was already there — 77 people plus Emmith and Theravos and Josh Huckler, streaming across the bridge two and three abreast, the portal blazing black in the courtyard ahead. They ran and didn't look down at the crevasse.

Then the Wraith King appeared.

He floated in the center of the courtyard — five feet above the stones, robes still, radiating the particular wrongness of something that should not exist in this shape. You knew his face. You knew what he was now, what he'd been all along.

Mithraides. Wearing the Wraith King entire.

He wanted Leigha.

He had waited years for exactly this — for the godspark to be restored, for the divine vessel to be breathing and vulnerable and one short sprint from his hands. He was not going to simply let you leave.

You didn't ask him to.

The fight was short and brutal and almost didn't go your way.

He hit AC and Zago with the same blast — 41 damage, simultaneous, the kind of opening move that tells you immediately what kind of fight this is. His fear wave rolled through the courtyard and caught AC and Falkor and all 77 refugees at once — except the refugees ran toward the portal, which was the one lucky thing that happened in the next two rounds.

Vindictus hit him with the Holy Avenger and scored a crit. Thirty-six radiant damage, the blade blazing at full intensity, and she looked back at you over her shoulder and said: "Run. Save Leigha. I will hold him back. Do not let the Wraith King get her soul."

She turned back toward him.

Ubys tried Banishment twice. He burned Legendary Resistances to stop it — he came into this fight prepared. Moist elephanted into a mammoth and charged and didn't quite knock him down. KeYs critted. Falkor breathed. He kept absorbing it. He paralyzed KeYs with a touch — 9 cold damage through her resistance — and she reached out telepathically to Zago: take me. Zago grabbed her and flew for the portal.

AC, still feared, unable to approach, grabbed refugees and threw them through the portal until there were no refugees left to throw.

Then the World Eater arrived.

A claw the size of a house came over the keep wall. Below the crevasse, something vast was climbing.

You went through in a rush — Lessie carrying Leigha, Moist charging through as a mammoth, Ubys blinking via her patron's gift, Dhuxtyn Misty Escaping through the fire and landing on the right side. AC last.

The portal closed.

Behind it: the World Eater took what was left.

Vindictus did not come through.

On the other side: the Shadowfell. Milky black air. 77 survivors. Leigha, breathing. Falkor, shaken. And every one of you — somehow — still alive.

Next session: You're in the Shadowfell. The refugees need somewhere to go. And you have absolutely no idea where you are.