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Annabella worked the Three Stags as a front. She paid for genuine statue pieces, kept bats, and watched the newcomers. A note in her room said to keep watching, and that the wolf may be useful.

When Outskirt turned, Grimm saw her dagger Quasimund in the neck. His forearm bore the mark of Sathmog. She fled south. Six cultists covered her retreat.

On the road to the temple, ragged deserters said the priestess had come back raging mad, thrown one of them down the hatch, and left again. That was Annabella. Dennis later named the Truth Society a cult, and her the one who betrayed him. She is still out there.

At Fort Malus, Ossiar claimed to be seeking his captured travel companion Blutuld and stayed with the party while they mounted their rescue. After learning that Blutuld was dead, Ossiar fled when Arcturus demanded that his arm be checked for tattoos. Arcturus killed him, and the party found Sathmog's mark on his forearm.

On the bridge toward the Temple of the Purple Flame, Shanna lost her footing and saw her brother falling from a tree. Nothing in the Vale explained it.

At the tree line before Fort Malus she had another. A boy hidden behind a woodpile, watching the barn. Three big men with fresh red octopus tattoos stand with Da at the door. A knife hilt catches the sun. The men have not looked his way. Not yet.

At Fort Malus, Kaelen found a polished green dragon scale that was cold in her hands. When Shanna held it, it felt warm, and she saw the reflection of a reptilian eye blinking at her before it disappeared.

She does not know what the visions or the scale are asking of her.

Four true fragments of a sacred statuette open the crypt of Um-Durman, the Dragon Emperor's blade of life, somewhere beneath the Vale. Dranath named that. Astara said the pieces sing faintly to their kin.

The party took one true fragment from the wight's tomb at Riddermound and showed it to Astara. The statue base from the dead courier in Drakmar Pass was a fake. Annabella had been buying genuine pieces. Grub later stole the false statuette and brought it back.

At Fort Malus they recovered a second true fragment from the Heirs' chest. Arcturus joined it to the first, and the two pieces fused together with a grinding noise.

Two true pieces are still out there.

Astara, asked for answers he did not have after Blackridge, remembered an old belief: an Oracle somewhere in the Vale. That was the 8th of Coalfrost. A child had gone missing three days earlier, on the 5th. Some whispered of sacrifice.

Oak Sage, in the Iron Forest, spoke of the oracle not far from there, among other old names: the dragon empire, the lich priest, the orcs.

After the fall of Fort Malus, the party set out for the Oracle Cave.

Lou's brother Dennis left Outskirt more than a year ago for the Temple of the Purple Flame. The party found him in the portal chamber, twisted, milky-eyed, and unmarked by Sathmog. He knew Lou's name one moment and tried to stab him the next.

The bone mask calmed him enough to walk. He mumbled that Annabella had betrayed him, and that the Truth Society is a cult. Years earlier he refused to pledge to Sathmog and was pushed into the portal. A shard of his soul stayed in the city on the other side.

Hafarmal says the portal is fueling what is left of Dennis's life. Distance from the temple makes him lethargic. Closing it now could kill him. The shard has to come out first. Oak Sage gave the party amber, the only way Hafarmal knows to carry a soul. Dennis was last left at Hafarmal's hut.

A meteor shower tore across the Vale the night the party left Riddermound. East of Outskirt they found a crater and a black stone streaked with yellow and violet, humming when touched. At the rim lay a beast husk, not burned, drained. Grub pried the shard free.

On the road from Blackridge, Arcturus pushed blood and will into the stone. He saw a dying vixen. She spoke of the thing that fell from the sky, that drank without hunger, that killed without need, and begged him to keep her pup safe. Anser would not leave him after that.

When the wellspring's corpse circle broke, a half-rotten treekin floated up with another meteorite in its back. Lou would not touch it. It was like the one Arcturus already carries. What the stones are, and what they want, is still unknown.

Kaelen, scouting the Temple of the Purple Flame, saw cultists dragging Alfilia northwest, barely clothed and chained, toward Mirror Lake. The party later told Tylos. He said Serenya would not be happy, though the Heirs do not see eye to eye with Alfilia.

That sighting fits what they overheard in Quasimund's barn: a package had left the temple toward the isle, and the Keepers armor was still there. They found that plate in the barn. The isle is in Mirror Lake. Alfilia was the package.

Nobody has gone after her.

Ukka was waiting to die in Blackridge. She took a bargain from Ix. Her axe changed. She walked out of the loop with Grimm and left him in the rain.

On the road back, the party found a trapper named Branik, chest split, head taken with a clean axe stroke. They wondered if she had already passed that way.

In Outskirt, Grub pressed the stolen false fragment into Shanna's hands and warned her. Maladûk is dead. Ukka killed her. Ukka is gathering what is left of the clans, not to fight cultists, not to find the statue. She wants the old ways back, before the mist, before the monsters, before kin. She means to take the Tower of Sighs first. To get there she has to go through Outskirt. When the snow melts, the troops move. Expect no mercy.