The party gathered themselves at the foot of the Dagger Reach mountains, taking what rest they could in the shadow of Castle Dracula looming impossibly high above them. Wounds were tended, armor was mended, and spirits were steadied as best they could be before the final ascent. Mike, remade at the Shrine of St. Vanessa and now carrying a spirit both cleaner and more fragile than before, rested alongside his companions. The curse of endless rebirth had been washed from him, and everyone understood, without saying it aloud, that if he fell again, the mountain would not give him back a second time.
As the party gathered their belongings and prepared to move, an unexpected visitor appeared at the crossroads: Victor, the estranged son of Count Dracula himself. The party confronted him about the reputation that had dogged their every step through Wachovia, and Victor explained plainly that turning his back on his father had earned him the contempt of his entire kind. He laid out the two paths before them — a direct climb to the front gates through the courtyard, or a winding route beneath the cliffs that led through the dungeons and catacombs. He warned them gravely that the castle was an extension of Dracula himself, meaning the Count would sense their presence no matter which path they chose. After some debate, the party agreed to approach the front gates directly, and Mike transformed into a raven to fly ahead as a scout, clutching a speaking orb in his talons so he could relay what he saw to those below.
Mike swept over the storm-lashed walls and found the inner courtyard utterly empty — not a guard, not a soul, not a flicker of movement. He descended, shed his raven form, and hauled open the massive, rust-slicked gate with considerable effort, the iron groaning as though it had not moved in centuries. The rest of the party filed through before the gate crashed back into place behind them. The moment they crossed into the courtyard, a dark and suffocating presence washed over them — not their own fear, but something older and heavier, the collective dread of an entire realm pressing down upon their shoulders. A torrential rain began to fall, lightning split the sky, and cold fog curled around their boots like grasping hands as they stared at the keep's main doors, which stood open, spilling warm and unnatural light into the storm.
Inside the main hall, four stone gargoyles perched overhead, their wings twitching and claws flexing in the torchlight, but they allowed the party to pass. Haunting organ music swelled from somewhere deeper in the castle, mournful and triumphant all at once. Mike channeled the wild energy of the natural world and transformed into a massive rhinoceros, his hide shimmering with a slimy sheen and bristling with sharp, poisonous thorns — a living shield for the group. The rest of the party clambered onto his back, and the thorny slime rhino lumbered westward toward the music, while Greg, the sentient suit of armor, quietly peeled away from the group to investigate a decorative suit of armor standing in an alcove, leaning against the wall beside it and attempting, with great sincerity, to strike up a conversation.
The dining hall was a chamber of impossible elegance — three crystal chandeliers blazing overhead, marble walls, and a long table draped in white satin and laden with roasted meats, fruits, vegetables, fine china, silver cutlery, and crystal goblets filled with an amber liquid that smelled of honey and memory. At the far end, a caped figure sat at a massive pipe organ, playing with raptured ecstasy, his back turned entirely to his guests. Without missing a single key, he welcomed them as honored guests and invited them to eat. When Sybil pressed him on their purpose and his intentions, he challenged them to find him — and then vanished in a gust of wind that slammed the dining hall doors shut and plunged the entire castle into darkness. The torches died. The feast sat untouched in the black.
The party lit what torches they had and pressed on, but the castle fought them at every turn. Illusions twisted the corridors, sounds shifted from one direction to another, and the halls seemed to loop back on themselves. Mike closed his eyes and reached inward, following the pulse of magical energy that saturated the castle like a heartbeat, and traced it back to its source — the organ in the dining hall. One of the party pressed a hidden pedal, and the entire instrument shifted on its base, revealing a secret stairway descending into the dark below. Mike shed his physical rhinoceros form and became something ethereal, a translucent spirit-rhino drifting silently through the stone as the rest of the party descended the stairs in careful order.
The stairway opened into an enormous, cathedral-like hall of shadow and silence. Empty iron sconces lined the walls like hollow eyes, thick ancient cobwebs draped from a ceiling too high to see, and dust drifted through the air like falling ash. At the southern end, atop a marble dais, stood a high-backed wooden throne carved with snarling beasts and curling vines — and rising from it was Count Dracula himself. He was tall and regal, pale-skinned and sharp-featured, his dark elegant coat trailing behind him like living smoke. He moved to the shattered west window, the stormlight outlining his face, a goblet of swirling blood held loosely in one hand, and without turning to face them, he spoke — smooth, cold, and ancient — welcoming them and asking what judgment they had come to seek.
Sybil spoke for the group, proposing a straightforward alliance: they would retrieve the stolen Bloodstone from The Belarch and return it to Dracula in exchange for their freedom from Wachovia. Mike, drifting in spirit form, deduced aloud — loudly — that Dracula had been unable to retrieve the stone himself despite centuries of trying, and that the Count and the Belarch were locked in a stalemate neither could break alone. Dracula confirmed it without embarrassment. He explained that the Belarch commanded holy power that kept him at bay, and that the Bloodstone amplified the Archbishop's abilities and granted him dominion over the spirits of the realm. He also revealed that the stone, if used, could purge the Blight — but doing so would release his wife's spirit from the Blightoak rather than resurrect her, and that he had spent centuries unable to find a way to bring her back.
Mike stepped forward and offered something Dracula had not expected: a chance. He proposed that if the Bloodstone were recovered, he might be able to combine his own regenerative connection to the Blightoak with Dracula's knowledge of the stone to attempt a true resurrection. Dracula, after a long silence, agreed to try. A deal was struck — the party would travel to Ashgrave, where the Belark was reportedly waiting to perform a ritual with the stone, retrieve it, and return. Greg received a suit of oily armor from the castle's collection as part of the arrangement, and then Mike pressed a magical sigil into the stone of the courtyard to mark it as a fixed point they could return to. Then, with a flourish of his arcane focus and a surge of blue light that swelled into a blinding white flash, the Traveler tore open a rift in space, and the entire party was swept away into the unknown, bound for Ashgrave and the confrontation that awaited them there.
