#iamthenight

@monsters-fear-me

You run because you believe distance is safety. You hide because you believe silence is mercy.

Barovia has taught me neither is true.

I have watched your footsteps fade into my woods, as if the mists might swallow what belongs to me. I allowed it. Not out of weakness—never that—but because fear ripens best when it is given time.

Do you understand what you are now?

You are not fugitives. You are not heroes. You are interruptions.

Temporary distortions upon my land… already correcting themselves.

The wolves remember your scent. The trees remember your passage. The dark, most faithfully of all, remembers your name.

And I— I remember everything.

Do not mistake my patience for absence. I am in every corridor you dare not walk, every reflection you refuse to meet, every breath you take before sleep claims you and pretends it is mercy.

You have stolen nothing from me that I cannot reclaim.

You have only delayed the moment I decide how.

—Strahd von Zarovich

In my own castle. In my own halls. At my own wedding.

Marius, you worm, you took her from me before the ceremony was even complete. With your bare hands, no less. No blade, no arrow, no poison—just raw, crackling magic. A pathetic little cantrip, unworthy of the act. And yet, Marius, you reached out and touched her. Her skin burned. Her body seized. And before my very eyes, she was gone.

And your little band of fools—running like frightened children, as if Castle Ravenloft does not know their every step, as if the night itself does not whisper their whereabouts to me. As if you did not just sign your own death warrants in lightning and ruin.

Did you think you could simply leave? That I would let this insult pass?

I sent the Vrocks after you, their shrieks a wedding chorus of their own. They will find you. They will bleed you. But that is not the worst of it, is it?

One of your own already bends the knee.

Your so-called paladin of Tyr, stands at my side now. You thought he would be your salvation. How wrong you were.

Run if you like. It makes no difference. I am the land. I am the night. And you—