The Waystone Inn squatted on the mountainside like a brooding toad, its windows dark save for a single candle flickering in the common room. Thalor, a broad-shouldered half-orc paladin in tarnished plate armor, pushed through the weathered oak doors first. The smell hit him immediately—lavender and rot, mingling sickeningly. Behind him came Mirael, a copper-haired half-elf ranger, her keen eyes already scanning the shadows. Zephyra the tiefling warlock stepped lightly across the threshold, her violet skin faintly luminous in the dimness, her curved horns catching the candlelight. The fourth member of their company, Kaelen, a wiry human rogue with silver scars across his dark skin, moved silently to check the barred back door.
The common room looked abandoned. Tables stood half-set with meals long congealed, chairs lay toppled as if their occupants had fled in haste. But they hadn’t fled—not entirely. In the corner booth sat the innkeeper, Marta, or at least what remained of her. Her skin had taken on a peculiar pallor, smooth and marble-like, her mouth frozen in an expression between peace and terror. Mirael knelt beside her, checking for a pulse. “She’s warm,” she whispered, her ranger’s instinct screaming wrongness. “But she’s not breathing.”
From the cellar door came a soft sound—almost like singing, but wrong. Discordant. Zephyra’s eyes began to glow as she readied an incantation, but Kaelen raised a hand. There, by the stairwell, stood a figure in an ornate coat, pale and beautiful, with eyes that reflected no light. “Welcome,” the figure said, their voice like wind through a tomb, “to the last gathering. You’ve come to witness the greatest gift—the end of suffering. The end of time.” The innkeeper’s corpse-like hand reached toward them. Two more figures emerged from the shadows, townsfolk in various states of the horrible transformation. Thalor raised his shield, divine light crackling along its edge.
But the truth crashed down on them then—the innkeeper wasn’t transformed. She was willingly standing with the figure, and her expression wasn’t agony but relief. The creature wasn’t stealing souls. It was offering escape. The battle was swift and brutal. Thalor’s radiant smite drove the creature back—a fey being, ancient and parasitic. But victory felt hollow. The innkeeper never fought back. Neither did the others. When the creature fell, its victims simply stopped moving, caught between life and death. Yet Marta’s last words, barely audible, were a whisper of thanks.
As they left the Waystone Inn at dawn, Mirael asked what haunted them all: “If they were happy, did we save them? Or kill them?”
💬 If they were happy, did you save them—or kill them? Would your party have fought, or tried to negotiate with the creature? Tell us in the comments! 👇