The procession climbs from the tower's depths into the circular chamber. The raised skeleton leads, black radiance sealed beneath his ribs, followed by five newly raised undead and the ritual survivor.
The banished script has left pale grooves in the stones, each one whispering fragments of binding names. The knowledge remains, but broken into pieces that rearrange whenever Lushion looks away.
The Ritual Survivor
It is gone from the passage, but not from the tower. You drove it out of the vessel, not out of the place.
The raised skeleton stops beneath the sealed doorway. Dust trickles from above, and somewhere beyond the stone, the buried bell gives one muted knock despite its bound clapper.
The Ritual Survivor
The bell heard the banishment. If it rings again, the thing may find another road upward.
The five undead remain motionless around the chamber, awaiting command. The raised skeleton turns his skull toward the eastern ruins, while violet residue gathers beneath the threshold like wet ink.
Behind them, the stairwell darkens over the empty circle. The ritual survivor holds the black book close, and its cover now bears a second shifting symbol, shaped like a closed eye.
“I decide to use dark magic to destroy both the bell and the book.”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +0)
Lushion raises the Staff of Dark Rituals. Protective Warding circles the chamber, while the Robes of the Defiled calm the undead into perfect stillness beneath his command.
The ghosts crowd his sight with accusing whispers. Paranoia makes every living presence beyond the stones a hunter, and Curiosity strains toward the book's shifting symbols even as he condemns them.
Forbidden Knowledge gives him the rite's exact severing order. Dark force pours through the staff, consuming the black book's closed-eye mark and reducing its pages to silent ash.
The Ritual Survivor
No. That book was the only record of what happened here.
The spell reaches through the tower. The buried bell fractures beneath the earth, its bronze body collapsing inward without another sound, while the violet residue gutters away.
The effort succeeds, but the ghosts seize Lushion's concentration for one terrible instant. His composure breaks visibly, and his grip falters before Protective Warding restores the silence.
The Ritual Survivor
Then it is finished. Nothing below can call upward now.
The black book crumbled into ash between Lushion's hands. Beneath them, the buried bell gave one final, broken groan and fell silent.
The Ritual Survivor
The record is gone. But so is the voice that used it.
Lushion Everstar
Some knowledge deserved to end with the thing it served.
The raised skeleton stood beneath the sealed doorway, still and obedient, while the violet residue faded from the threshold.
The Ritual Survivor
Then let us leave this place behind.
Lushion Everstar led the survivor from the ruined tower, with the undead vessel following in quiet submission. The bell was buried, the book was ash, and nothing below could call upward again. They carried the cost of the ending with them, but the ritual was over, and the night at last belonged to the living.