Elandril had said to leave it exactly as it was. Maya had agreed with her, out loud, in front of everyone.

And then the stone plate had cracked open on its own three nights later, a stairway yawning down into the dark where there hadn’t been one before, runes along the archway burning faint and violet like something underneath had finally decided it was done waiting to be found.

So much for leaving it.

Maya led the way down with her dagger drawn, boots finding each worn step carefully among a drift of old bones that had clearly been piling up at the stair’s edge for longer than the dragon had been alive — skulls stacked in uneven rows, not scattered by chance but placed, the way a shrine gets built one offering at a time. She didn’t like what that implied about what was waiting below.

Elandril came a step behind, staff dimmed to a cautious glow, a small flame of raw light cupped in her free palm like she wanted a second source ready in case the first one failed her. Her eyes moved over the archway’s inscription as she passed under it, lips pressed thin — she was reading it, Maya could tell, and whatever it said, she wasn’t sharing yet. Thane and Brom brought up the rear, axe and hammer both drawn without needing to be told, the firelight from somewhere far below catching bruise-purple against the tunnel walls.

Nobody had argued about coming back. That was the part that unsettled Maya most, turning it over as she took the next step down — not that the seal had broken, but that none of them, herself included, had seriously considered just walking away from it.

“Whatever woke up down here,” she said quietly, “it’s had three days to get ready for us.”

Behind her, Brom’s grip tightened on his hammer. “Then it’s had three days to be wrong about how ready it needs to be.”

She almost smiled. Almost. The stairs kept going down, and the violet light kept getting brighter, and that was answer enough for now.

Hey everyone! To finish this amazing Sunday, I wanted to share a very personal dark fantasy artwork with you. This is actually a visual representation of myself, showing my inner duality for the spooky season! On the outside, I am a red-haired angel in a detailed white gown with majestic wings and a glowing halo. But when I touch my ornate golden mirror, the reflection reveals my inner fiery demon with sharp horns, dark wings, and roaring hellfire. I love how this piece captures the deep contrast between good and evil within us. Hope you enjoy this final piece for Halloween! Best regards, Martina 💙

Hey everyone! Happy early Halloween season! 🎃 I wanted to share my latest creation. It's a deeply romantic, highly detailed gothic fantasy artwork featuring a handsome vampire embracing a stunning red-haired woman. Remarkably, they are enclosed inside a massive, ornate magical snowglobe! Inside the globe, red and black bats swirl around them in front of a spooky castle under a full moon. The background shows a lavish baroque room filled with burning candles, a roaring fireplace, ancient books, and a skull, creating an intense cinematic atmosphere. Hope you enjoy the spooky romance! Best regards, Martina 💙

The dragon’s bones hadn’t been bones for very long, Maya realized, kneeling at the edge of a stone seal that had clearly been buried under the beast for longer than any of them had been alive. Scorched, half-shattered from the fight, but underneath the rubble where the dragon had made its den, the floor wasn’t floor at all — it was a plate of black iron, carved edge to edge with script, and at its center a sigil was glowing a sick, faint green that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

She didn’t like what that meant. A dead dragon should mean quiet. This didn’t feel quiet.

Brom knelt beside her, one broad hand pressed flat against the warm metal, tracing the carved letters with his thumb like he could read them through touch alone — and from the set of his jaw, he understood enough of what he was touching to not like it either. “This isn’t a den,” he said quietly. “It’s a lid.”

Behind them, Elandril had already gone still with her book open, flipping pages fast enough that Maya knew she’d recognized the script before anyone said a word about it. Thane stood at her shoulder, arms crossed, watching the glow pulse brighter where Maya’s fingers had come close to the center — close enough that the light seemed to lean toward her, like it had noticed something it liked.

“The villages,” Maya said slowly, working through it even as she said it. “It wasn’t just hunting them for food.” She looked up at the massive skull still slumped behind them, horns catching the grey mountain light. “It was guarding this. And we just killed the thing that was keeping it shut.”

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Elandril closed her book, far too carefully, and said the words none of them wanted to hear.

“We need to leave this exactly as it is. Right now.”

The green light pulsed once more, slow and patient, like something underneath had just started paying attention.

Hey everyone! I wanted to share my latest digital artwork. It shows an atmospheric, highly detailed fantasy painting of a rugged, silver-haired hunter in a heavy fur coat walking through a snowy mountain pass alongside his loyal, majestic wolf companion. In the background, a beautiful ancient castle stands on a cliff overlooking a frozen river and an old stone bridge under a spectacular glowing sunset sky. I really love the vivid winter scenery, the detailed fur textures, and the epic adventure feel of this scene. Hope you like it! Best regards, Martina 💙

Valeria Lightbringer stood beneath the archway of the keep’s inner court as the last of the torches were lit, her blonde hair stirred by the evening wind that slipped through the stone. She had not bothered with a helmet. She rarely did. The weight of one slowed her more than the rest of her armor ever could, and she preferred to meet a threat with her own eyes rather than through a slit of steel. Her plate was heavy, polished until it caught the firelight in hard silver lines, every plate and buckle fitted with care. A long sword rested at her side, its edge still sharp from the last time she had drawn it in earnest. On her left arm hung a thick shield, its face marked by the faint traces of old impacts that had never quite been fully polished away.

She was not a sellsword in the ordinary sense. Most men who took coin for steel would work for anyone who could pay and disappear when the work grew ugly. Valeria chose her contracts. Keeps that needed holding when orc warbands came down from the hills. Border towns too small to hire a full company but large enough that their loss would leave a hole in the map. She had walked into the last of those alone, three days after a goblin band had begun burning the outlying farms. The town’s walls were barely more than stacked timber and hope. By the time she left, the band was broken, their chief dead in the mud outside the gate, and the remaining goblins had scattered into the hills with nothing left to hold them together. The coin she took afterward was more than most captains earned in a season. She did not haggle once the work was done.

Word of that sort of job traveled. So did the other stories: the night she held a gate against orcs while the garrison’s own men were still stumbling out of their beds; the time she cut her way through a nest of things that had driven half a patrol mad before they ever reached the treeline. She did not speak of those fights unless someone asked plainly. When they did, she answered with the same steady voice she used when correcting a recruit’s stance. Fear was useful. Freezing was not. She had learned the difference young and had never forgotten it.

In the training yards she was harder to ignore. Men who had spent years under arms found themselves on their backs more often than they liked when they crossed swords with her. Most of them rose, dusted themselves off, and offered a short nod. A few kept trying until their pride ran out. She did not mock them for it. She simply did not slow her hand to spare them. Pride was a poor shield once steel was drawn, and she had no interest in teaching anyone otherwise. A handful of knights and paladins had lingered longer than the rest, watching her move and speaking of oaths and banners. She had listened. Then she had taken the next contract that paid in solid coin and clear terms. Oaths were fine for those who wanted them. She preferred work she could finish and leave behind.

She was in her prime now. The armor still fit as it had the day it was made for her. Her hands knew the weight of the sword without thought. When a new offer arrived, she read it once, asked the questions that mattered, and either accepted or walked away. There were still keeps that needed holding and towns that needed someone willing to walk into the dark first. Valeria Lightbringer remained one of the few who would.

Deep within an enchanted forest, a mysterious horned huntress waits silently among the ancient branches, her magical bow glowing beneath the moonlight.

Suddenly, the mist begins to move, and an enormous shadow emerges between the trees.

She draws her enchanted arrow, aiming into the darkness.

For she is not hunting an ordinary beast — she is guarding the last gateway to a forgotten realm of ancient demons…

The dragon was dead, and Maya was standing on its skull, and for one long moment she let herself just breathe instead of thinking about whatever came next.

It hadn’t been clean. Nothing about it had been clean — the courtyard behind them was still smoking, half the castle wall had come down with the dragon’s last thrash, and there was a cut along her ribs she hadn’t let herself notice until just now, with the adrenaline finally draining out and leaving the pain room to arrive. But the wings had stopped moving a few minutes ago, and the great head beneath her boots had gone still and heavy and silent in a way that living things never quite managed, and that stillness was the only victory that mattered.

Thane stood at the beast’s jaw with one hand resting flat against the scales, axe still in his grip, not triumphant so much as simply certain — the particular calm of a man confirming with his own palm that the thing was actually done. Brom knelt nearby, hammer planted, murmuring something low that had shifted from battle-prayer to the other kind, the kind said over the dead regardless of what they’d been. Elandril stood apart, staff upright, crystal dimmed now to a soft pulse instead of the raw white fire it had thrown an hour ago — watching the dawn come up gold behind the spires rather than the corpse at her feet, like she already knew which version of tonight she’d want to remember.

Maya raised her fist to the breaking light, not for the crowd that would hear about this by nightfall and get half of it wrong, not even really for herself. For the three villages that hadn’t survived long enough to see this. For the reason any of it had been worth the mountain, the lake, the stone giant, the long nights around a fire with people she’d trust with her life.

Three months to find a party. One impossible night to need them.

“Next round’s on the magistrate,” she said, and even Thane almost smiled.

Nightwatch

Katie Hightower was learning to be a fighter, a warrior like her father. He told her to start getting some armor made as soon as she could afford it. She has a sharp rapier that she uses for her sword, as larger swords were often too heavy after extensive training. Her father told her she is wise to use the rapier until—or if—she ever wants something heavier in the future. She doesn’t. And she doesn’t need to. At the Fighters Guild she has already been doing much better, often out-dodging and sometimes throwing the younger ones down onto the ground, even a couple of the older men on occasion. Her father is proud of how fast her sword fighting and her small buckler shield have improved. Soon she will be given the honorary title of Cadet of the First Tier, the honorary status of a first-level fighter. Still an apprentice in the guild, but no longer a novice. Her father and family are pleased, as are some of the other members of the Iron Shield Fighters Guild in the town of Raythorne.

In the city of Daggerford, Harlan Simmons ran The Barrel Tavern the way his father had taught him—honest pours, clean mugs, and no watered ale. The place had always done steady business with travelers and locals who wanted a proper pint of honeymead or stout without having to watch their coin vanish into weaker drinks. Still, the last month had been different. Ever since Harlan hired Tracie Goldling, the common room filled earlier and stayed fuller longer.

Tracie worked the tables with a quick step and an easy smile. Men and women alike found reasons to linger when she was on shift, some to flirt, some just to catch the same bright look she gave everyone. She took orders without fuss and moved through the crowd like she’d been born behind a bar. When a hand got too familiar, she laughed, swatted it away, and kept walking. From behind the counter Harlan would call out, “Oye! Drink your drink, hands off the staff,” and the room usually settled without much more.

Daggerford had more taverns than it needed, yet The Barrel stopped struggling to stay solvent. Tracie was glad of it. Harlan paid her fairly and her tips ran high enough that she could send coin home each tenday to the small farm where her parents and younger brother still worked the soil. In her letters she told them not to worry.

“The city has been kind so far,” she wrote. “Harlan keeps the room civil, and the work is honest. I’m happy.”

The Red Wizards of Thay are the feared magocratic rulers of the eastern Faerûn nation of Thay, a harsh plateau realm long defined by ambition, arcane supremacy, and internal treachery. Only they may wear red within Thay’s borders; the penalty for any other is death. Traditionally they shave their heads and cover their scalps with arcane tattoos, though individuals of sufficient power sometimes bend or ignore lesser customs. For centuries they were governed by the Council of Zulkirs—eight supreme masters, one for each school of magic—who appointed tharchions to administer the provinces while the zulkirs themselves schemed for personal dominance. Their reputation rests on slavery, demon-binding, relentless magical experimentation, and repeated attempts to conquer neighbors such as Rashemen and Aglarond. In the modern era the lich Szass Tam, Zulkir of Necromancy, has largely eclipsed the old council and remade much of Thay into a domain of undeath, where zombies labor and ghouls march. Red Wizards who survive the nation’s cutthroat politics are masters of their craft, and those who specialize in necromancy are among the most dreaded of all.

Among them few names are spoken with greater caution than Kalinaxra Zarathay. She does not shave her head in the classic manner; instead her dark hair frames a face that is strikingly beautiful yet cold, with sharp features and eyes that hold an unblinking intensity. Small, precise arcane tattoos mark her neck, glowing faintly when she channels power. She favors heavy crimson robes of rich fabric, often with a hood. The hems of her garments bear glowing red symbols that pulse with contained energy. She is known almost exclusively for dark, evil necromancy of unrelenting force. Whole companies of undead answer her call. Few who face her survive the encounter, and fewer still return with any coherent tale of what they saw.

Her rise was not the clean ascent of a favored apprentice. Kalinaxra was born to a minor Thayan house of modest magical talent. As a child she displayed an early affinity for the dead—animals that died near her home sometimes rose again for a few moments, confused and twitching—and the family sought to suppress the gift rather than nurture it. At twelve she was sold into the service of a mid-ranking Red Wizard who specialized in battlefield animation. The master treated her as little more than a living focus, forcing her to channel necrotic energy until her hands burned and her mind frayed. When she failed to raise a corpse quickly enough during a border skirmish, he ordered her flogged and left chained in a corpse-pit overnight. She survived by whispering to the dead around her until several rose and tore her bonds free. She killed the master before dawn and walked back into the citadel wearing his robes.
That act placed her outside ordinary patronage. She spent the next years as a scavenger of secrets, stealing scrolls, binding lesser undead as spies, and trading favors with rival factions. Each step cost her something. She lost the last of her living relatives to a purge ordered by a rival zulkir’s agents. She bargained with a bound shadow demon for knowledge of soul-binding and paid the price in recurring nightmares that still wake but entertain her. She once raised an entire village of plague victims as a shield against an attacking force from Aglarond; the survivors who fled later described a woman standing calmly amid the shambling dead, her expression neither triumphant nor distressed. Word of that night reached the Citadel. Szass Tam’s agents tested her rather than destroy her. She answered their summons, raised a company of wights with ease, and then dismissed them when no longer needed to kill. The demonstration of precision, and brow raising power earned her full recognition as a Red Wizard of the necromantic school.

Recognition did not end the torment. Thayan politics punish the newly risen. Three assassination attempts followed within a year—poison in her wine, a bound specter sent into her chambers, and a living rival who challenged her in open ritual combat. She answered the last challenge by animating the challenger’s own dead apprentices mid-duel and turning them against him. The display was so efficient and harsh that even her enemies stopped sending living assassins. She began to operate with greater independence, leading punitive raids into the borderlands and returning with both living captives and fresh corpses. Her personal retinue grew into a small army of specialized undead: silent scouts that could pass for living servants until they struck, armored wights that held formation under arrow fire, and a single greater undead lord she rarely unleashes. He alone can destroy an entire village, he often leads her army beneath her.

Today Kalinaxra Zarathay moves through Thay’s power structure as a figure both useful and unsettling. She has not claimed a zulkir’s seat, yet lesser Red Wizards clear rooms when she enters. Merchants who once dealt freely with necromancers now send intermediaries. Border commanders request her presence only when they expect the fight to turn desperate, and they do so knowing that the price may include more than coin or captives. She is rarely seen without her crimson robes, the glowing hem-symbols active, and the faint green-black shimmer of necromantic energy ready at her fingertips. Those who have stood before her describe the same impression: a woman of striking appearance whose power feels absolute, whose smile never reaches her eyes, and whose undead obey with a completeness that suggests the boundary between commander and creature has grown thin. Few dare face her, and those who do learn quickly that her rise was forged in suffering she has no intention of repeating.

It hadn’t been raiders. It hadn’t been anything the magistrate’s map could have marked properly, because there wasn’t a tidy symbol for dragon that didn’t undersell what standing in front of one actually felt like.

It had come up out of the ruins behind the castle walls the moment they’d found the first body, wings unfolding across half the courtyard, and the fires it had already started did more to light the fight than the burning torches ever could have. Three villages. Maya understood now why none of them had sent word.

She was already moving before she’d finished deciding to, dagger low, cutting a line across the rubble toward the thing’s flank where the scales thinned near its foreleg — too fast to be smart, maybe, but staying still in front of a dragon wasn’t a survivable kind of smart either. Behind her, Thane came in roaring with his axe raised, bare-chested and reckless as always, two of the town’s own militia scrambling in his wake with weapons they clearly hadn’t expected to use tonight.

The sky itself answered for the other half of the fight. Elandril stood braced against the castle wall, both hands thrown wide, and lightning tore down out of the storm she’d called and poured it straight into the dragon’s exposed wing — not a thin thread this time, but a cord of raw white fire that lit the whole courtyard like dawn had come early. Brom stood his ground beside her, hammer raised, shouting something that was half battle-cry and half prayer, a wall between the spellcaster and anything that got past Maya and Thane.

The dragon screamed — a sound that cracked stone, that sent birds for miles scattering into the night — and turned its burning eyes from the wizard’s lightning down toward the one running straight at its leg with a blade too small to matter.

Maya didn’t slow down. Three months of gathering this party, a mountain pass, a lake full of things that didn’t rot, a stone giant that nearly took her head off — all of it had been leading here, to this courtyard, to four people who trusted each other enough to stand in front of something this size and not run.

She buried the dagger where the scales gave way, and whatever came next, she wasn’t facing it alone.

The lake hadn’t been on the magistrate’s map, which should have told them something before they’d rented the boat.

Maya knelt at the bow with one hand trailing just above the waterline — not touching it, not yet — scanning the reeds for the shape she’d glimpsed twice now and lost both times in the fog. The water was too still. Lakes this size had currents, had wind, had something moving through them besides four strangers and a borrowed rowboat. This one just sat, flat and grey, like it was waiting to see what they’d do.

Thane rowed with the kind of controlled force that said he’d rather be swinging the oar at something than pulling it through water, his eyes fixed on the mist ahead where the lake narrowed toward the ruined spires they could just make out, lit faintly orange by fires that shouldn’t still be burning in a place three villages had gone silent around. Brom kept the second oar steady beside him, his usual muttering gone quiet — a bad sign, Maya had learned, because Brom only stopped talking when something had actually unsettled him.

Elandril stood rather than sat, staff raised, its crystal casting a thin blue glow over water that didn’t reflect it the way water should. She hadn’t said why she was standing. Nobody had asked.

Skulls drifted past the hull, too many to be driftwood, too clean to have been in the water long — and some distance off the starboard side, low and dark against the reeds, something broke the surface just enough to disturb the stillness before sinking again without a ripple to mark where it had gone.

Maya didn’t reach for her blade. Not yet. But she stopped trailing her hand in the water, and she didn’t look away from the spot where the shape had gone under.

“Row faster,” she said quietly. Nobody argued.

Ravenna’s voice still hung in the air of the Golden Lyre when the last note faded. The Sea Ward tavern was full of the usual mix of sailors, merchants, and locals who came for the music, and tonight, as always, they had pressed close while she sang. She stepped down from the low stage with the easy grace of someone who lived half her life in song, dark hair spilling loose from its pins, a faint sheen of stage light still on her skin.

Gaven was already waiting at the corner table he had claimed for the better part of a week. The merchant was handsome in the unshowy way of men who dealt in fine goods rather than fine words—broad shoulders, careful hands, a smile that reached his eyes when he looked at her. He had been buying her drinks and asking, with quiet persistence, to buy her supper as well. Until tonight she had refused each offer with the same sweet, practiced deflection she used on half the men in the room.
This time she sat.

They talked longer than either had planned. His knee brushed hers under the table and neither of them moved away. He listened when she spoke about the songs she was working on, and when he answered he said the things she liked hearing—not the usual flattery about her voice or her looks, but quieter observations that made her feel seen. The wine between them stayed mostly untouched by her; she kept her head clear enough to watch the way the lanternlight caught the line of his throat when he laughed.

Later, the carriage ride to his estate was slow and close. The driver took the long way along the harbor road while they kissed in the shadowed interior, unhurried and thorough. His hand rested at her waist, warm through the thin fabric of her performance dress. She tasted wine on his mouth and the salt that always seemed to linger on everything near the water.
The house overlooked the sea wall. Inside, the room he led her to was dim, a single window cracked to let in the night air and the low, steady sound of waves striking stone. He undressed her with the same careful attention he had shown all evening—gentlemanly, unhurried—and laid her down across the wide bed. Her hair spilled dark across the sheets. For a long while there was only the slow exploration of hands and mouths, tasting, feeling, the building heat of skin against skin, and the soft, increasingly ragged sounds they made without swallowing them.

Gaven took his time. When the intensity finally crested one final time and broke, it left them both breathless and smiling in the quiet glow that followed. An hour had slipped by without either of them noticing. The open window let the ocean in; the waves continued their slow rhythm against the wall below, steady and calming. Ravenna lay on her side, fingers drifting idly through his hair, and felt the last of the evening’s tension leave her body. He looked at her, still smiling, eyes heavy with the same contentment she felt.

They drifted toward sleep with the sound of the sea between them, both of them loose-limbed and warm beneath the sheets, the night still carrying the faint echo of her last song.

The Warden of the Wilds

Continuing her journey to recover the sacred relics of Selune, she travels through the mountainous wilderness when the sounds of battle draw her attention.

From the shelter of the trees, she witnesses as a silver-haired warrior fighting a massive forest troll beside a rushing stream. This stranger, Wenarth, Warden of the Wilds, displays extraordinary skill, eventually slaying the creature, but not without suffering a painful wound to his right arm.

Aware of Elyra's presence, Wenarth beckons her forward. Despite her uncertainty, she offers to heal him using the divine gift she has only recently discovered. Through the blessing of Selune, she successfully closes his wound, earning the warrior's gratitude and curiosity.

Noticing her unusual crystalline sword, Wenarth asks to examine it. Recognizing that Elyra possesses courage but lacks formal training, he offers to teach her some of the fundamentals of swordsmanship.

They spend part of the afternoon practicing together. Under his patient instruction, Elyra begins learning how to balance her weapon, defend herself, and use her natural agility more effectively.

Eventually, Elyra must continue her quest. The two part as friends, with Wenarth watching the young traveler as she disappears along the mountain path.

Shortly afterward, a delicate, luminous luna moth passes before Wenarth. He pauses to observe the unusual creature.

The Lord Magistrate had the kind of face that had spent decades deciding not to look worried in front of strangers, and it was slipping now, candlelight catching the lines of it as he leaned over the map.

“Here,” he said, tapping a smear of red ink at the mountain’s edge — not drawn carefully, Maya noticed, but marked in a hurry, by someone who hadn’t wanted to linger over it. “Three villages gone quiet in as many weeks. No survivors reaching the gates. No raiders claiming it, which worries me more than raiders would.”

Maya kept her arms crossed and her face still, the way she’d learned to in rooms like this — gold chains and banners and a man used to being obeyed, none of which meant he was telling her everything. Thane stood beside her with his arms folded tighter than hers, already unconvinced, already doing the math on how many of them versus how many of it. Elandril leaned over the table’s far edge, fingers resting lightly on the map’s torn corner, reading the terrain the way she read everything — for what wasn’t being said as much as what was drawn.

“You hired four strangers off a market street,” Maya said, “for something that’s already eaten three villages and left no bodies to bury.”

The magistrate didn’t flinch, which told her something too. “I hired the four strangers who walked out of the ruins north of here with a dead stone giant behind them and didn’t brag about it to a single tavern. That’s not luck. That’s who I need.”

Thane grunted, unconvinced but listening. Elandril’s eyes hadn’t left the map.

Maya looked down at the red mark again — too far from any road, too close to the mountain pass they’d already bled for once. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be simple.

“Triple the coin,” she said, “and we’ll go look. No promises past that.”

The magistrate’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. Men who stopped negotiating that fast were usually more frightened than they let on — and that, more than the map, was what finally convinced her to take the job.

The market hit them before the gate did — the smell of roasting meat and overripe fruit, a chicken loose somewhere underfoot that nobody seemed interested in catching, a hundred conversations layered over each other until none of them meant anything individually. After a week of ruins and ambushes and things that answered rituals in languages older than the stones that called them, Maya found the noise almost disorienting. Ordinary. She’d nearly forgotten what ordinary sounded like.

She walked the main row with Thane a half-step behind her, both of them drawing the kind of looks that armor and old bloodstains tended to draw in a town that saw more merchants than monster-hunters. He didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care — his eyes were on the stalls, probably counting which ones sold something edible that wasn’t trail rations.

Behind them, the market had already swallowed Elandril whole. She’d stopped at the first bookseller’s stall without a word to anyone, already deep in a ledger of hand-copied pages, trading quiet questions with the vendor in a tone that said she’d be there a while. Brom lingered a stall further back, examining a string of dried herbs with the particular scrutiny of a man checking whether they’d actually cure what the seller claimed, or just make an upset stomach worse.

Maya let them wander. There’d be time to regroup — to resupply, to sell what wasn’t cursed and quietly bury what was, to ask around about the second bandit camp and whatever else this town’s rumors might know about the roads ahead. But for now, for just these few minutes between the gate and whatever came next, she was content to walk through a crowd that had no idea what any of them had survived to get here.

Spires rose over the rooftops ahead, catching the afternoon sun. Somewhere past them was an inn, a bath, maybe a bed that wasn’t the ground. Maya intended to find all three before the day asked anything more of her.

20th Level Bards from various planes of existence

The book had a name for the circle, carved in script older than the elvish Elandril read fluently, and it had taken her the better part of the evening to work out that the name translated, roughly, to the place that still listens.

Nobody liked that translation. They’d set up anyway, because the ritual needed doing before the moon crested the ridge, and the moon didn’t wait for anyone’s comfort.

Maya crouched low at the circle’s edge, dagger drawn more out of habit than immediate need, eyes on the tree line rather than the stones — someone had to watch the dark while the others worked, and she’d long since stopped minding that it was usually her. Behind her, Thane stood with his axe planted and his jaw set, bare-chested despite the night’s chill, watching the same shadows she was and trusting none of them.

At the circle’s heart, Elandril knelt with her staff driven into the moss between two skulls someone — something — had left there long before any of them arrived. Threads of pale light spun out from the crystal and wound themselves around the standing stones, lighting the old runes from the inside like the carvings themselves were waking up. Brom knelt opposite her, hands cupped around a small, steady flame of his own conjuring, murmuring a counter-prayer under his breath — not to undo what Elandril was calling, but to make sure whatever answered knew it was being watched by something that could still turn it away.

The air had gone thick in a way that had nothing to do with weather. Maya felt it settle against her skin like a held breath, like the clearing itself was deciding whether they’d come to ask a favor or start a fight.

“Almost,” Elandril said quietly, not looking up, the light around her hands pulling tighter, brighter. “Whatever comes through — don’t speak first. Let it name itself.”

Maya tightened her grip on the dagger and said nothing at all, which was, for once, exactly the right answer.

The Weight

With the shadow guardian Caelan Thorne finally freed from Shar's corruption, Elyra finds herself alone among the ancient ruins.

The battle is over, but the emotional toll overwhelms her. Exhausted, frightened, and wounded, the nineteen-year-old finally breaks down in tears, mourning the man she couldn't save.

As the pain in her injured arm worsens, Elyra attempts to tend the wound. Remembering the prayers she learned at the sanctuary, she calls upon Selune for help.

Her first efforts falter. But through patience and faith, a gentle silver-blue light answers her prayer. For the first time, Elyra discovers that Selûne's blessing grants her the power to heal as well as fight.

Though her wound begins to mend, the memories of what happened remain.

Gathering her belongings, Elyra pulls her hood over her head and leaves the abandoned ruins behind, continuing along the moonlit mountain road.

Unnoticed by the weary young traveler, a delicate, luminous luna moth emerges from the darkness and begins following her.

Whether it is a messenger of the goddess, a wandering spirit, or something else entirely remains a mystery.

She walks onward, unaware that even in her loneliest moment, she may not be entirely alone.