With the doors sealed and the ritual advancing, Puck tried the only non-violent option left: telling Markos his daughter Gertie would die if the ritual finished. Markos wavered — the hesitation was real — and then the circle pulled him back. The window closed. Initiative rolled.
A guard hit Anar for thirty-four damage before he'd had a proper turn. He dropped to the floor, and what followed was not unconsciousness in any ordinary sense. It was a spirit-plane transit — he woke up watching his own body from the outside, the fight continuing around it without him.
Anar found them waiting: Elra and the others who'd come to this manor before and hadn't come back. They didn't say much. They pointed at the Far Realm crystals. Anar smashed all four, doing in death-adjacent space what the living party couldn't reach from the material plane.
When the ritual ended and Puck let the Disguise Self drop, it revealed he'd been wearing Markos's daughter's face through most of the fight — a calculated gamble that the illusion might stay the ritual or confuse the guards. Nobody confirmed whether it helped. The gamble was real either way.
After the ritual was broken and the room had gone quiet, the entity spoke to Anar alone. Not dramatically — just a whisper, audible to no one else. "I won't forget you, Anor. I'll always be here." That detail — the name — landed quietly.
Zala wanted the book. The party had it. There was a strength contest and she won. She committed to locking it somewhere it couldn't be used, said it matter-of-factly, and walked out with it. The party watched her go. Nobody stopped her. Whether that was trust or exhaustion was not established.
Cotton. Then, under it: three bundles of human skin and a five-pound bag of thumbnail-sized pearls. Penelope covered it before the others reached her. She is the only one who knows. The wagon stayed behind when the party left.
Someone asked Puck about the mentor. Puck said "Let's just say Fred" and redirected. The gnome bard they'd just met knew who was actually meant, and his reaction implied the mentor was gone — missing from the bardic college at Rift Canyon. Weeks away by boat. No plan.