The Weight of Grief
The Stunorians begin the day expecting answers.
Instead, they find a stranger sitting comfortably at their breakfast table.
An older woman named Seraphine somehow entered Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion during the night and claims she was drawn there by the overwhelming grief surrounding the party. Calm, polite, and impossible to read, she reveals herself to be a fiend who feeds on sorrow—but insists that neither her nature nor her purpose are evil. While some members of the group are willing to hear her out, Marius grows increasingly suspicious as Seraphine argues that grief is a burden that should be removed, even from someone as monstrous as Strahd von Zarovich.
As tensions rise, an unsettling discovery at the front door only deepens the unease: a frozen corpse, torn apart during the night, has been left against the Mansion's entrance.
After Seraphine finally departs, the party turns their attention to a far more personal matter.
With a precious diamond in hand, they attempt to bring Celeste back from the dead.
The spell succeeds.
But the soul that returns is not Celeste.
The woman who awakens in her body calls herself Elena, a terrified druid whose soul should have been long dead. As panic spreads through the room, black corruption begins crawling across Celeste's flesh, transforming her body into something unnatural. Marius quickly realizes the horrifying truth: the souls Celeste consumed during her journey never disappeared. They remain trapped within her body, battling for control.
Before the party can find a solution, the corruption completes its work.
Celeste's body turns to black stone.
A prison filled with warring souls.
Further investigation reveals even more disturbing evidence. Alongside the druid's spirit lurks another consciousness entirely—a spider's soul, also consumed long ago. The question facing the Stunorians is no longer how to bring Celeste back.
It is whether anything inside that body can still be saved.
The revelation shatters Izek.
Already grieving his sister's death, he now learns that the woman he idolized carried far darker secrets than he ever imagined. Overwhelmed by grief and panic, he flees into the snow before Merlin tracks him down and forces him back to safety, locking him within the Mansion's prison cells for his own protection.
Meanwhile, the dead are finally laid to rest.
Ibrynn.
Karl Wachter.
Riley, the celestial druid.
And even the nameless corpse left at the Mansion's door.
With prayers, copper coins, and sacred flame, the party gives the fallen a funeral pyre. For once, the smell of death is replaced by something worse: the scent of burning flesh carried on the winter air.
Their mourning cannot last long.
Argynvostholt awaits.
Continuing west through the snow-covered wilderness, the party encounters a familiar revenant knight: Sir Stefan Alekseev of the Order of the Silver Dragon. Reunited with Lady Mirena after centuries apart, Stefan explains the curse that binds the order's warriors to undeath and reveals the guilt that still drives them to seek redemption.
Though less than impressed with several of Mirena's new companions—particularly Elrohir, whom he remembers as the warrior who once threw him off a bridge—Stefan reluctantly offers guidance. Discussions of aberrations, corrupted echoes, and strange transformations force Elrohir to confront uncomfortable questions about the darkness growing within them and whether that corruption might one day become a weapon.
By the end of the journey, the mists part.
At last, the ancient stronghold of Argynvostholt rises before them.
A ruined mansion looms above the valley, battered by time but still standing against the storm. Thunder rolls through the mountains. Wolves howl somewhere below.
And before the silent fortress waits a moss-covered dragon statue, gazing eternally toward the crumbling home of a fallen order.
The Stunorians have come seeking allies.
What they find inside may be something far older than that.
