Another chicken is caught, and the startling discovery is made of a hidden cache of weapons, jewelry, food and mining equipment in the old abandoned dwarven mines.
Ava and Esmund save the injured Verdict’s life. Many people are found. Many people are never found. Someone who should be dead makes her presence felt.
A Door is created into the Place Between, and an angel investigates. A giant egg is recovered. Seyfried and Ava are led back to the real world by an old friend.
An unnecessary surrender is given and an agreement made to return the Deeplurker to its home plane. Also it sucks out Xalati’s brain and many memories of Ixtalan, before showing its memories of the latter as she drowns. Good times.
Aureya’s kleptomanic tail is discovered. Salinger tells Xalati stories of Ixtalan. Esmund starts on the Door Jamb. Various weaving industries are restarted.
The Deeplurker drops a ton of lore on one of the least-equipped to understand it. Esmund seeks counsel from Kibeth, who has none but “just do it.” Aureya experiences a crisis of faith, and Kaisi gets an invite to tea on the other side of the temple desert portal. Kibeth’s forge wakes up. Salinger quiches Esmund the leader. The egg hatches.
Xalati and Ava have a philosophical tiff, interrupted by a quake. Later, the crew welcomes a baby (lizard)girl into the world. The walls around Shepherd’s End are completed.
Kibeth and Aureya sacrifice blood to Kibeth’s forge. It likes it. Esmund loses his temper at Kaisi and flees and engages in his favorite activity, self-flagellation.
Traveling to Myrwood, they come across their first signs of undead. Vathedrian shares the first two tenets of the Verdicts, against necromancy and chronomancy.
The survivors head back to Shepherd’s End on their own, while a team goes back to Myrwood. They find a green-glowing not-suspicious-at-all well and get attacked by undead (surprise).
The well square gets too hot and the team exits, finding a slightly calmer (for the moment) alchemist and herbalist neighboring shops. The calm doesn’t last long before something oozes in.
While Xalati distracts the undead, Aureya studies the well and starts a cleansing ritual. She has to get up close and personal with the corpse at the center of it, and sees visions of those involved.
Everyone has conflicting memories of Salinger, while he’s nowhere to be found. Cracks run through the sky. Research is done and people wander off separately, which is always a good idea.
Kaisi and Seyfried return nonchalantly, and the sky cracks some more while multiple memories nestle in. They travel toward the trainyard and find evidence of battle, as well as a bunch of undead and the undead Fabricator still there.
Survivors arrive, led by BRIGGS BRAMBLEHORN horn blast Aureya offers to remove the curse on Ava’s circlet, but Ava refuses, given the advantages it’s brought.
In which they find themselves suddenly in an alternate world, and then many alternate worlds. They make an unwitting trade and come back with a souvenir person.
Ixtalan is unhappy. Peach confesses her very obvious feelings. Esmund raids more of Maigran’s work, and the team strikes off toward the tower of the wizard Blue.
Leaving the survivors behind while messengers are sent to Shepherd’s End, the group travels to Esmund’s origin tower. Along the way, they get ambushed by Muna and other auronachus-folk.
Heading into the secret tunnel revealed by the puzzle room, they find the start of an enormous cavern complex with another puzzle room, dedicated to Kibeth. Starved duergar attack.
The Town Council tells Esmund the story of their founding and how they’ve carried the legend of the End of Days and the heroes who would come to save the world. A white pudding trapped in a ritual circle is found.
Esmund’s puzzle room is solved, Fayne the dwarf of the Maiden joins them, Ixtalan spies a raiding party of duergar in her scouting, and Kaisi frees the white pudding.
They defeat the raiding party, and afterward the white pudding raises undead and goes to wreak revenge on the underground dwarves. Peach solves her puzzle room.
The twins’ puzzle room takes far too long, and a sarcophagus dedicated to Shepherd’s End and Brunnhilde is discovered at the end. Peach receives a letter from Salinger from 900 years ago. Their memories of Salinger return.
They shelter for a while from the blizzard, then depart to the stone tower and confirm its haunted reputation for themselves. Magister Desmun’s return is welcomed.
They bury the fetal Esmunds, live Esmund has another breakdown and then figures out a bunch of impressive things, including redirecting Tears to the Place Between and what Memento and the White Tower are doing to reality. He then offers to return Ixtalan back to sender.
Esmund realizes the crystal matrix holds a reflection of Salinger and draws him forth again, weak and reeling from strange experiences, then immediately experiences Paradox again. Ixtalan takes Esmund up on his offer, but they forgot to get Xalati’s consent. Ava decomposes the fetal Esmunds.
They arrive back at Alinge’s Pass and find it’s the start of the Maiden’s Blessing, the festival to secretly gift someone without them knowing. They realize they’ve lost several weeks in timey-wimey stuff.
They stealthily and not-so-stealthily gift each other. Esmund is dragged out of his study and complains about it. Sal feels off, but does finish the dance he’d asked Peach for before his disappearance. Kibeth and Esmund brainstorm a flying train.
Coming across halfling-sized purple humanoids, they not-so-quickly realize they’ve stumbled into the Feywild and make a deal with a trustworthy guy to send them rapidly to the city of Lux.
They follow a strange red-headed man to a place of safety built from a halfling’s memories, who says korreds are known liars. Ixtalan invites Albrecht to return with them. Aureya discovers bad things said about her in Salouis’ journal.
They follow Ava’s summoned fairy to an exit back to the Prime, before Albrecht kills it. They encounter a genasi couple heading toward the Temple of the Maiden Thrice.
They defeat the first wave of insects, and in trying to get the jump on the second group, trigger an avalanche. Peach and Salinger Dimension Door out of the way and end up in the Place Between.
Aureya finds a room with an enemy of the Abyss. The Harbinger and a shadow-serpent greet Salinger like acquaintances. Sylas shows up like a bad penny. More fighting.
Aureya shows up to her friends in a rather different format than expected. Sylas does not make friends with Peach and Sal, but does eventually offer to lead them back to the Tear to the Temple.
Everything comes to a head. The truth of Aureya’s origin is discovered. Sylas explains himself a fraction more. The Shepherd’s End and Myrwood survivors come to the rescue of their rescuers. The Between team makes it to the Temple, and Esmund makes a fatal mistake. The world breaks.