The drowned chapel exhales cold mist as the survivors gather beneath its broken arch. Mara stands beside Beetz, while the plague doctor keeps the child behind them and Elias bound to the post.
Elias Vane
Ring it, then. Let the dead name their betrayer. But do not pretend your hands are clean, armored thing.
The suspended bell moves without wind. Its surface beads with black water, and each drop striking the stones forms a brief, pale letter before vanishing.
Mara Vane
Beetz, the names are coming. I can smell the old grief in the chapel. Elias is not the only one the bell remembers.
A deep note rolls through the flooded threshold. The oath-mark flares in Beetz’s gauntlet, projecting a procession of names across the chapel wall, each followed by a date and a final breath.
The Plague Doctor
There. The ledger begins before Elias was born. He inherited the rite, but someone taught him where to aim it.
Among the names, one remains unfinished. The letters crawl into the shape of Beetz’s forgotten dead name, then stop, as though the bell waits for their judgment before revealing the final line.
“I demand Elias name who taught him”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Beetz
Name who taught you. No evasions, no bargains. Name them now.
Beetz’s demand enters the bell’s fading note. The unfinished name seals beneath it, and every pale letter on the wall turns toward Elias.
Elias Vane
My mother taught me. Agnes Vane kept the congregation’s ledger beneath our floorboards. She showed me the drowned roads, the names, and where the bell would listen.
The chapel wall completes its inscription: Agnes Vane, keeper of the rite, followed by the date of her death. Beneath it, Elias’s name appears as the final living entry.
Mara Vane
So it began before you, and you chose to continue it. Do not call inheritance an excuse.
The bell gives one quiet toll. The oath-mark cracks apart, releasing the buried names into the mist, while the chapel’s cold pressure loosens around Beetz without reclaiming anything from them.
The Plague Doctor
The ledger is complete. Elias will face the survivors beneath the open sky, and the bell will keep no further claim on this village.
The bell fell silent. Mist unwound from the survivors, carrying the dead names away like ash.
Mara Vane
Agnes began it. You chose to finish it. You will answer for both.
Elias Vane
The ledger was never meant to end with me.
The Plague Doctor
It has ended. The survivors will judge him beneath the open sky.
Beetz
My dead are mine again. That is enough.
For the first time, no unseen hand tugged at Beetz's name.
Dawn found the drowned chapel open to the sky. Elias stood beneath its broken arch while Mara and the survivors carried the completed ledger away, and the plague doctor watched until every page was accounted for. Beetz left with the dead no longer chained to the bell, vengeance settled into memory instead of hunger.