Death and Rebirth

Two days after the fall of Riverdrown, the party and their fellow survivors near the bustling port city of Duskharbor. Iornas appears to Roach and urges the warlock and his friends to find the source of his power at the Heart of the World; from what he can gather, something is siphoning energy from it. He then imbues Roach with a strange light, before seemingly dying.

The party meets with Cadmus Boyle. When asked by Roach about the Heart of the World, the wizard admits to knowing very little about it, but says that the Mouse, a tiefling acquaintance of his in Duskharbor, might be able to assist them further. After anchoring, Taigus, Tingle, and Roach search a dockside tavern called the Sleeping Butcher for the Mouse, quickly happening across him and his docile companion Brass. The party notices that Brass is an Unscarred, like the ones they encountered in Aklier many weeks prior.

Initially wary of the party, the Mouse warms up to them after they mention Boyle. He introduces himself as Mezir, a master at stealing magical artifacts and relics, and claims to have found strange, stone doors beneath Dracen Castle - the same castle that the party owns the deed to. He tells the party that something ancient and powerful is rumored to lie beyond these doors, but he hasn't been able to open them himself to find out. The party offers their assistance to the tiefling and shortly sets out with him to the remote stronghold. Along the way, Roach notices the Mark of Asmodeus on Mezir's forearm, but chooses to keep the knowledge to himself.

Arriving at Dracen Castle, the party cuts through the Crimson Wolves stationed there and are led by Mezir to a deep cavern below the wine cellar. They soon come to a mound of collapsed rocks obstructing the cave tunnel. Brass lifts a particularly large rock to provide safe passage for the other party members, but is unable to pass through the mound himself without dropping the rock. Mezir promises to return to his metal companion in short order, then continues with the party to the stone doors; Roach is able to open them with Iornas's light, confirming that they have found the Heart.

The party walks into the teleportation field beyond the doors and are suddenly transported to a massive cavern with a colossal crystalline pillar occupying its center. Clinging to the pillar is a large, tentacled creature with a single, unblinking eye. It telepathically taunts the party, compelling them to engage it. The creature, referring to itself as an elderspawn, thrashes around Tingle, Mezir, and Roach and shows the young warlock a vision of the future in which Xauld has died and the creatures of the Far Realm have consumed the Multiverse. However, Roach overcomes this distraction and thoroughly incinerates the elderspawn with *hellish rebuke*, leaving it a smoldering heap.

Iornas reforms as a child, his memories and vitality having been restored in the absence of the elderspawn's psychic interference. The demigod warns the party of a dire future approaching and gives them a single-use artifact (a shard of the pillar) that can reverse the last 12 hours of reality. As the party leaves the Heart of the World, Roach feels a stinging sensation on his forearm and sees that an Asmodean Mark has appeared there, just like Mezir's.