The party returned from the Nine Hells to the Naked Maiden tavern, battered and exhausted, each carrying the weight of what they had witnessed in the depths below. [[Grom]], despite his relief at having finally rescued [[Syllin]], found no peace in sleep. His mind dragged him back to the fires of the Hells, where the distorted face of [[Bakorda]] haunted him relentlessly, her voice asking why over and over again as tears streamed silently down his face. He turned away from [[Cub]] so his companion would not see his grief, but the guilt was a living thing, clawing at him through the night. [[Cub]] knelt beside the sleeping [[Syllin]] and began a careful examination, noting with quiet wonder how her skin had grown more tangible and warm, and how the washed-out, desaturated gold of her hair had returned to a gentle sheen. As he worked, he became aware of something extraordinary — a pulsating divine magic emanating from her body, weaving itself around him like a protective cocoon. It was not threatening. It felt like warmth, like relief, like something ancient and good reaching out to touch him. Elsewhere in the tavern, [[Grumthar]] felt it too — a cooling, motherly comfort that he could not name or explain, settling over him like a hand placed gently on a shoulder. [[Cub]] sensed that beneath the soothing surface of this divine presence, something was hidden behind a veil. He called out to [[Grom]], who woke from his tormented half-sleep and crossed the room to stand beside him. [[Grom]] drew his viol and began to play a haunting tune, pouring his bardic magic into the music to bolster [[Cub]]'s efforts. With that support behind him, [[Cub]] pressed forward, pushing through the veil with focused intent, and the world around him dissolved into vision. He fell through the sky of a distant world, plummeting past clouds and atmosphere until a vast forest rushed up to meet him. At its heart stood a great tree, its bark laced with veins of silver and gold, radiating quiet power. But beside it moved something terrible — an enormous creature of inky black skin, hundreds of feet tall, its very footsteps killing the earth beneath it. Everywhere it walked, life withered and died. Against this creature stood a radiant female entity ([[Therynn]]), her body draped in living leaves and plants, her silver hair flowing like light itself. She was blinding to look upon, a being of pure divine power, and she fought with everything she had. But the creature was relentless, and as [[Cub]] watched in horror, the divine being's power was torn away from her, stripped piece by piece until she shrank to the size of a mortal, her hands raised uselessly against the dark. In her eyes, [[Cub]] recognized something achingly familiar — the eyes of [[Syllin]], wide with terror and despair. The creature seized her, opened its gaping maw, and swallowed her whole. The sound of shattering bones and a silenced scream echoed through the vision as the great tree's golden veins began to dim. The creature's roar shook the vision apart, threatening to hurl [[Cub]] back through the veil. But [[Cub]] held his ground, understanding now that what he was witnessing was a residual fragment — a memory of something catastrophic, lodged deep within [[Syllin]]'s mind like a wound that had never closed. He prayed silently to his goddess Zotia and channeled a surge of divine restoration into [[Syllin]], pouring it through his hands and into her. In the vision, roots of lush green erupted from the earth and began to cocoon the dark creature, climbing its body as divine light blazed outward. [[Grom]], watching [[Cub]] sway and bleed from the nose, gritted his teeth and kept playing, his music weaving through the room like a lifeline. [[Cub]] cast the restoration a second time, and the cocooned creature shattered into dust of dark and divine energy that rained down into the earth. He was snapped back into his body like a cord pulled taut, gasping for air, his hands still resting on [[Syllin]]. [[Grom]] caught him before he could slump to the floor, holding him upright with quiet steadiness. [[Syllin]] exhaled a long, slow breath, her body fully relaxing for the first time, her lips settling into something close to a serene smile. A wave of golden energy pulsed outward from her sleeping form, washing through the walls of the tavern and touching every member of the party, lifting the bone-deep exhaustion of two days without rest as if it had never been. [[Grom]] looked at [[Cub]] with something new in his eyes — a deep, unspoken respect. He told [[Cub]] plainly that he was a master of his craft, and [[Cub]], still wiping blood from his nose, grinned and asked who the worst healer was now. [[Grom]] laughed his low, creepy laugh, slapped [[Cub]] on the shoulder, and returned to playing his viol, content and quietly joyful. [[Cub]] settled in beside [[Syllin]] to begin crafting more potions, keeping watch over her as she slept. In another room of the Naked Maiden, [[Grumthar]] had been fighting a different kind of battle. [[Ayshra]] had found him rigid with tension on the edge of his bed, his fingers white from pressing together, his body still convinced it was in the Hells. She guided him gently to lie down and worked her soothing hands across his shoulders, coaxing the knots of stress apart one by one. She asked him to name five things he could feel in the room, anchoring him to the present, and slowly the shields of trauma began to crack. When [[Ayshra]] told him that what he had witnessed in the Hells — Sela being cast into the fires — was likely real, the fragile peace [[Grumthar]] had made with her loss shattered completely. A roar tore out of him, raw and thunderous, echoing through the hallway and startling [[Saszotah Sseth'kaar (Sasz)|Sasz]] from their own private breakdown in a nearby room. The mysterious divine warmth from [[Syllin]]'s healing washed over [[Grumthar]] in that moment, briefly softening the edges of his grief, and [[Ayshra]] looked around the room in confusion, sensing a power she had never encountered before. [[Saszotah Sseth'kaar (Sasz)|Sasz]] had retreated to their room in a fury, throwing furniture and hissing about the madness of following a group that seemed determined to drag them into every corner of catastrophe. The roar from [[Grumthar]]'s room snapped them out of it, and they straightened themselves up just in time to hear a whispered voice from the Hells offering deals, and to glimpse at the edge of their vision an enormous five-headed creature that swept away before they could fully look at it. The divine comfort that followed felt deeply wrong to [[Saszotah Sseth'kaar (Sasz)|Sasz]] — something that should not have been able to reach them — and they bolted into the hallway to find [[Grumthar]] and [[Ayshra]] already there. [[Tarnik]], meanwhile, had been sitting alone in the Temple of [[Aria, Goddess of Birth and Death|Aria]], wrestling with the shifting currents of his faith. A soothing, motherly presence had settled over him briefly, easing his tension, before it twisted into a sharp psychic pain that thrashed through his body. He interpreted it as his deity [[Gonosh]] reaching out to punish him for his wavering devotion, and when it finally faded, he left a donation at the tithing station and stepped out into the morning air. On the temple steps, a bright red-haired girl of about eleven or twelve appeared and fell into step beside him, speaking in riddles about worry being the worms of life and asking cheerfully if she could keep him company. As they walked through the morning crowd toward the Sag Dog Tavern, [[Tarnik]] noticed that not a single passerby glanced at the child — every gaze slid past her as if she were not there. When they reached the tavern door, he turned to thank her, and she was simply gone. Narzag had taken a room at the Sag Dog Tavern and fallen into a deep, satisfied sleep, replaying the memory of destroying devils in the actual Nine Hells with quiet pride. In his dreams, pixies led him through a vast forest to a great crack in the earth where a dark disease was consuming the roots and flowers, fighting against the faint glow of nature's resistance. He saw his deity [[Millie - Goddess of Beasts|Milithara]] in the form of a great wolf, and witnessed two undead figures — one long-haired, one skeletal — extract a broken artifact from a crater of ancient bones before vanishing. He tried to mark the skeletal figure as his quarry before the vision swept him away, and he woke feeling strangely rested and renewed. [[Tarnik]] fell into an exhausted sleep in his room, his armor clanging to the floor in pieces as he walked toward the bed. His dreams were a cascade of fractured realities — a world where all races lived in harmony, the red-haired girl comforting a newborn orc while its mother remained unaware of her presence, and then a shattering mirror of alternate paths showing Volanthi, a transformed Luna, a lion-like warrior falling dead to a skeletal figure, and a great battle against a colossal demon alongside a skeletal dragon. Somewhere deep in his sleeping consciousness, a quiet certainty settled over him: he was exactly where he needed to be. [[Ayshra]] led [[Grumthar]] and [[Saszotah Sseth'kaar (Sasz)|Sasz]] up the stairs to Krynvia's quarters, where a young black-haired girl playing with dolls ran to fetch her mother. Krynvia appeared in her human form, composed and knowing, and confirmed what the divine pulse had already suggested — that [[Syllin]] was a missing piece of a great and ancient puzzle, a raw divine power that had been hidden within the young elf for some time. She told [[Grumthar]] plainly that his team had swung the pendulum of the war against [[Anam]] back in their favor by rescuing her, and that [[Syllin]]'s power, though dormant and unformed, would be essential in the battles to come. She advised them to keep [[Syllin]] close, to protect and train her, and to trust that [[Cub]] was best suited to help her begin to understand what she carried within her. When [[Grumthar]] asked about their next destination, Krynvia confirmed that the [[Prismatic Forest]] awaited them, and that when they were ready, she would show them the way. With that, she dismissed them, and the party began to gather itself for whatever came next.