- There is a locked door, which the priest agrees to open for us. This leads to the loft - where there are six bells. All are the same size, but different thickness - One of the bells is cracked - Orlan detects no magic on the bells - Kyo offers Graxen a gold coin, suggesting that he tap it against each of the bells to test the noise they make - Ringing the bells in the sequence of 1, 3, 2 then 6 causes the eyes to open and a mechanism to release the locked door to the cellar - The Alchemist excitedly runs into the cellar, followed closely by Steve and Ellette - There is a book on a pedestal, which he sprints towards. Ellette uses Misty Step to overtake him while Steve tackles him to the ground - The book appears to be a journal - Ellette recognises it as the journal of Strahd - The Alchemist is keen to read the book, believing it can help in the war against the Triton - Ellette and Steve both forbid him from reading it, with Ellette taking it for safekeeping. Kyo places it in his pack - Kyo attempts to talk some sense into the alchemist, urging him not to read the book - The Alchemist attempts to wriggle free from Steve's grasp, but remains restrained - Outside, the sound of the towering behemoth's footsteps draw closer - We head back up to the loft, to examine the journal in private - On the Taking of the Valley - We broke the last resistance in the pass at dusk. The mountain swallowed the echoes and gave them back to me like a pledge. I ordered the banners struck from the enemy keep and set our sign upon the highest stone. The men shouted as if I had given them spring itself. I gave them what mattered: walls that would not fall, fields that would be sown without tribute to another name. I slept in the unfinished hall with my cuirass for a pillow and woke with iron in my mouth. A country is not owned because ink says so. It is owned because its stone remembers your feet. - Binding - The peasants came at dawn with their quarrels and meat. The priests asked for permission to bless the gate. I walked the parapet alone, and the wind knelt. The wolves raised their heads and understood. I put my palm to the crenel, felt the rock answer from the roots of the hill to the river bend. I said aloud what was already true, that my own ear might hear it and be satisfied: “I Strahd, I am the land.” Nothing contradicted me that mattered. - Sergei - My brother arrived late by three days and an hour, laughing as if the world had not yet corrected him. His horse lipped the hand of a child who should have feared it. He placed a palm upon my arm and the anger that has lived there since our father’s last campaign paused long enough to offend me. The captains warmed to him with the eagerness of men stepping near a brazier after snow. He asked nothing but the room to be kind within my shadow, and they gave it freely. He is a better man. Better men require management. - The Blade of Morning - Pilgrims brought a curiosity wrapped in white cloth: a sword that burned without heat, dawn corked in steel. It trembled when I lifted it, as if light itself were uncertain. They took it back from me with the care of midwives and laid it in Sergei’s hand. It lay quiet there, like a hound finding its master after being lost. The hall breathed out. I closed my fingers on air and understood that certain judgments are rendered without appeal. If any blade is honest in these walls, it answers to his name before it answers to light. - Tatyana - A balcony. A girl at the rail. The arithmetic of years would not balance. She laughed and the courtyard leaned toward her the way a thirsty field leans into rain. I measured what I had purchased—passes cleared of raiders, roads steadied under a hard banner, villages that slept without counting footsteps in the dark—and none of it equalled standing where she stood and being seen while she looked. Her name would not pass my teeth; my heart learned it without permission and kept the beat. The heart is a faithful clerk. It remembers what the mind discards. - The Mists and the Curse - When the harvest was nearly in, the fog did not lift. It pooled in the ditches and climbed the hedges, breathed under doors. Messengers failed to return. Old women crossed themselves with both hands. Priests raised their books and found only blank pages. I took three riders beyond the forest road and returned with one horse alive. The mists knew my name and would not let it pass. I walked the galleries at night and felt the castle hold its breath for me, and for the first time I could not find a god I had not already outlived. A closed hand needs no blessing. - The Amber Road - There is a place in the mountains where silence is trapped in yellow stone. The guides would not cross the last ridge. I went alone. Doors opened as if they had been waiting to be asked by the right voice. The air was cold enough to cleave thought along its weakest line. Words were offered to me in a grammar older than prayer, and I agreed to them because they were true: strength in exchange for tenderness I could not afford, sight in exchange for sleep I no longer needed. The powers behind the doors did not lie. They spoke like ledgers. I signed where the lines compelled and left with a mind set in iron. - On Plate and Purpose - Armor that faces outward is theatre. I had the armorer engrave our word upon the inside of my breast, each letter cut deep enough to bite. I wear it until it bruises, that I be instructed when memory would rather be entertained. A man cannot put down what he is; he can only turn its edge inward. Our house is not paint upon a shield. It is the weight upon the ribs that makes a hand steady when it must be. - Eve of Vows - The keep smelt of plaster and new wine. Sergei rehearsed his promises in a low voice in the chapel; mercy has a sound. She passed with her women like weather changing the room. I counted the steps between the chapel and the little door that yields on the third push if the lock is coaxed—not because I intended mischief, but because numbers obey when gods refuse. I told myself that victory earns any price it can pay in full. The heart, being ill-bred, laughed. - Accident and Decision - The hour came and did not bring me what I had paid for. The sword that had never sat easy in my hand obeyed me, and I understood too late that obedience without consent is a kind of accident. Steel rang the chapel until the stones remembered it. Sergei fell as light falls—quickly, with a sound bone keeps. I had intended to correct an arithmetic, to take back what the world had spent wrong. Rage touched the edge and made the choice for me. When I could hear again, he was still, and the world had been altered to fit me. - Grief - She came into the courtyard like a storm that has forgotten how to rain. I spoke as a man speaks to a horse that will not be soothed. She stepped backward into the sky. The sky kept her with the greed of an old creditor. I do not remember what I said after, only that the mist was listening and I did not care. The stones under my feet swore themselves to me and I allowed it, because allowing is easier than weeping. - Aftermath - The peasants brought their shovels to a gate that speaks the language of rams. I stood on the parapet and the wind remembered its place. The wolves learned my whistle faster than men learn reason. The mist came to my hand; the sun did not. I walked the border of fields I had bought with other men’s sons and felt the furrows answer like a pulse. The land does not confuse love with pardon. It recognizes weight. I set mine down. The valley held it. I asked for no forgiveness I would not give. - Ledgers - Years turned like pages, and I wrote on each with the same pen. I made gardens that do not wither and set dogs to speak their hunger in the shape of men. I removed what stood where I intended to stand. I refined punishments until they stopped aspiring to theatre and served only to correct. Repentance is a word for men still bargaining with themselves. I keep books. I settle accounts. When I am opposed, I calculate. When I am obeyed, I build. - On Names - If these pages are in your hand, you found them where I left them or where the house spat them when it tired of the taste. Do not flatter yourself that understanding follows possession. If you must name me, do it properly and be done. The earth hears its own and chooses what weight to bear. The ground answers to truths spoken without tremor; the plate answers to the purpose engraved where the flesh can feel it; the heart answers to the name it chose and could not forget; steel remembers the hand that steadied mine. The rest is noise. - Orlan spots a woman walking in the streets outside, with white hair and a blue dress. She glances up towards the church belltower before running from the town - headed west - We move to follow this woman, who the Alchemist claims has been sighted around Barovia a number of times - The Alchemist follows us as we leave - His pockets jangle, but Steve confiscates these items in case they make too much noise - We follow the woman's footsteps, spotting something white hanging from a branch - This is an embroidered handkerchief with the letters I.P. in one of the corners - The handkerchief smells of a crisp, cold and earthy scent - almost minty - We next head north west, towards the ruins of Ravenloft - to see what remains now that the castle has been transformed into the giant creature's body - Along the way, we are attacked - ambushed by a Flesh Golem, two eldritch werewolves and four were ravens - During the battle, the Flesh Golem consumes Steve - Ellette severs the creature's fleshy arm, freeing Steve. Kyo heals her while the others finish the remaining monsters