RAVEN’S GAMBIT | Episode 83: Ashes and Echoes
The vault fell deathly silent, save for the high whine of pulsing energy ebbing from the jeweled skull as it slowly settled into dormancy once more. Thog held Elowyn to his chest, her breathing ragged but steady, the heat of Wave still pulsing faintly in her hands.
Tessa knelt by Thalia’s bow—split down the middle, run through with creeping black veins. Beside it lay only her cloak, empty. The vine-stitched fabric still twitched, as if touched by wind… though there was none.
“I saw her go,” Tessa whispered. “Just—light… then dust.”
Sir Cedric stood, splattered in ichor and dust, staring at the glittering remnants of the treasure strewn before them. The demilich’s gems no longer pulsed with soul-energy; the glow had bled out with Thalia’s sacrifice.
“It’s done,” Elric said quietly, voice hollow. “The trap’s been sprung. The construct’s fed. We were bait… and we lived.”
“No,” Cedric said, stepping toward the bier where the skull once hovered. “We endured.” He raised his sword, struck the dust-laden bier once, twice—then turned away. “We leave this place with nothing but memory and scars.”
But as they turned, a sound stirred behind them—a faint, reverberating laughter. Faint, cold, echoing from nowhere.
Elowyn froze. “That wasn’t the skull.”
“No,” whispered Tessa, her face gone pale. “That was… elsewhere. Watching.”
From deep within the tunnel behind them, a wind rose—unnatural, shrieking, impossibly cold. The wall to the vault began to shimmer.
“We’re not alone,” Elric muttered. “Something… left behind more than just that skull.”
The gems on the floor glinted—one, then two, then eight at once. Flickers of faces formed within, then vanished.
“Don’t touch a thing,” Cedric growled. “Out. Now.”
As the party fled the vault, the mithral doors began to creak shut behind them, stone groaning, metal screaming. A final gust of wind scattered the remaining ash of the false Acererak into a spiral—and for a heartbeat, they all heard a voice in the back of their minds.
“Your souls… are not yet your own.”
Darkness swallowed the vault.
The survivors stood alone in the dim corridor of the Tomb, battered, silent, and terribly aware…
…that survival is not the same as escape.