Ascent from the Great Ruins
The party emerged from the Great Ruins to find the world around them already beginning to change. The oppressive heat that had smothered the Samitran desert had broken, replaced by a cool and calming breeze that swept across the landscape. Where there had once been nothing but cracked earth and dry riverbeds, water now flowed freely through the sand, catching the light like veins of silver threading through the dunes. Zara, the leader of the Shattered Will in Shavalin, had already fled up the shaft ahead of them, vanishing into the desert before the party could give chase.
The Waters of Shavalin
When the party made their way back down the mountain and recovered their camels from Sabra’s friend Dahlia, they rode into Shavalin to find the city transformed. Children ran through the streets with buckets, laughing and bewildered, trying to collect water that had not touched the ground in twenty-five years. Generations had grown up knowing only the dry heat, and now rivers ran through what had been sand dunes, leaving the citizens of Shavalin utterly gobsmacked. Even more striking was the absence of the Shattered Will, who had abandoned the city entirely and fled en masse toward the mountains.
Audience with Queen Sanai
The party made their way to the palace, where Queen Sanai welcomed them into the royal halls with open arms. She embraced her daughter Sabra warmly, her gratitude for the party’s efforts evident in every word she spoke. When Sabra attempted to return the family heirloom that had granted them access to the Great Ruins, the Queen refused, insisting that Sabra keep it, for she believed it would continue to protect her on the road ahead. Sanai also shared a troubling piece of intelligence: the Shattered Will forces had been seen heading toward the Volund Etherium, the great mountainous region to the north and east.
Counsel at the Embassy
While in the city, Krish slipped away to the Dhruvian embassy to visit his cousin Rajendra. He shared the news of the water’s return and handed over his excess water tokens, which Rajendra tucked away with a knowing nod. But Rajendra’s tone grew serious as he warned Krish that the rulers of Dhruv were growing uneasy about the party’s mission, fearing that gathering so much power in one concentrated area could prove disastrous for the world. He urged Krish to keep the Harmonics secret and safe, and added that word of Seradin’s atrocities in the Dhruvian village had finally begun to spread beyond its borders.
Preparations in Shavalin
Vien spent time at the Shavalin library with the scholar Xander, who confirmed that the wind currents had shifted dramatically since the water’s return, all of them now blowing from the direction of the Volund Etherium. Xander also shared his favorite Shavalin cookbook, and Vien threw himself into learning the local culinary tradition, which turned out to be defined almost entirely by an extraordinary love of peppers. He prepared a traditional dish for the party and even presented it to Queen Sanai herself, who tasted it, declared it not nearly spicy enough, and offered him several tips on how to use more peppers. It was, by all accounts, a warm and memorable farewell from the city they had helped restore.
For the journey into the mountains, Queen Sanai bestowed upon the party a remarkable gift: a sturdy chariot pulled by two large goat-camel hybrids, creatures the locals called gamels. The two animals were named Huginn and Muninn, and they were said to be the finest gamels in the kingdom. Krish, who had confidently declared that he had driven camels since his youth, took the reins and showed Vien how to drive them. Passing the reins over to Vien, he immediately sent the chariot lurching and jerking across the celebration platform in front of the Queen and her entire court, like someone learning to drive a stick shift for the very first time. Vien quietly used his spiritual gifts to soothe the gamels and smooth over the chaos, and the party managed to depart Shavalin with at least a shred of dignity intact.
The Long Ascent to Dextrin
The road into the Volund Etherium was long and relentless, the terrain rising steeply in every direction no matter which path they chose. The party traveled through the first day without incident, and when they woke the next morning, they found themselves firmly in the mountains, the air thin and the ground rocky beneath the chariot wheels. Krish and Quinlan both noticed strange shapes flitting above the clouds, moving in ways that no bird ever would, unnatural and erratic against the pale sky. The party pressed on, eating their spicy Shavalin leftovers during a midday break, when the wind suddenly and completely died.
Ambush on the Mountain Path
Into the silence stepped Colton, still wearing his burned and tattered robes, with a single Shattered Will cultist at his side. He looked at the party with barely concealed fury and declared that they were never supposed to have walked out of the Great Ruins, that he had counted on the desert to finish what he could not. The fight that followed was fierce and immediate. Vien unleashed a torrent of fire that scorched Colton badly and reduced the cultist to ash, while Krish drove forward with his blade Silence Bane, landing blow after punishing blow.
Colton proved a slippery opponent, phasing in and out of reality to avoid the worst of the damage, his form flickering like a candle in the wind. Quinlan hammered him with crackling lightning from his glove, and Krish began targeting Colton’s mental focus directly, using a crushing technique designed to drain his ability to keep phasing. The battle wore on, and Colton managed to drive his spear into Quinlan with enough force to drop him to the ground, leaving the gamels to wander over and lick him with apparent concern while the fight raged on around him.
In the end, it was Krish who landed the decisive blow, a crushing strike that stopped Colton’s phasing cold and left him bleeding and exposed. Rather than face the consequences, Colton smashed a glass vial against the ground, and a thick plume of smoke swallowed him whole. When the smoke cleared, he was gone, and the wind picked back up as if it had been waiting for him to leave. The party found the shattered vial on the ground, the only evidence that the confrontation had ever happened.
The Muted Herald’s Rebuke
Far away, in a dark chamber lined with curved panes of magical glass, the Muted Herald stood watching. Two of the panes — the ones that had once shown clear images of Samitra and Galatea — now flickered and stuttered, their signals unstable. Zara and Colton knelt before him, and he addressed them both with cold, measured disappointment. He told Zara that she had mistaken restraint for control, that she had believed discipline could be imposed upon something that could not be contained. He turned to Colton and told him plainly that he had not failed because the party interfered — he had simply lost.
The Muted Herald turned his gaze to the pane showing the Volund Etherium, where the air currents churned in wild, chaotic patterns. He observed quietly that the sky would not yield as easily as the sand had. Then he ordered both of them to go to the mountains, to watch, and to do nothing until they had truly understood the nature of their failures. Colton protested that if the party reached the Harmonic first, all would be lost, but the Herald’s response was chilling in its calm: hopefully, by then, they would have learned something. The chamber faded to darkness, and the mountains waited.