After learning that Charlie was only able to react so quickly to The Endling’s attack on Raesha Vicai due to an early warning from Calloway, your team escapes the burning city. Charlie is put into a bad mood seeing King Calcerio slain and her room trashed by Calloway, and she’s angered to find that her emergency diamond was swiped.
We meet some of the other refugees: a colorful changeling named Nox (colnz) and an old aasimar giving future readings named Seraphim (kemino). The Accountant alters his appearance to look like Seraphim and mocks him.
While this goes on, Xav scours the ship for Row with the help of Dreamer. All the while, Casper is constantly trying to get Dreamer’s attention through a series of meows. They ask Dreamer’s god, A’Lux for answers, and he reluctantly tells the pair that Row is likely safe. This doesn’t alleviate Xaveria’s fear, so Ren offers her his daughter’s stuffed owlbear as a replacement cuddle companion.
Charlie requests that Xaveria place King Calcerio’s body in her room, but the two of them find the room ransacked with a message written on the wall in blood. The message says that chains won’t stop Cayden Calloway, and that she “told Charlie so” about The Endling’s imminent attack on Vicai. Charlie is angered to find that the diamond she planned to use to save the king is also missing, and laments that there is nothing she can do for him until they make it to Jruska. She also grips ethereal purple chains in her hands and tells Cayden to patrol The Gate as punishment.
After finding her room a mess, Charlie visits the Accountant and asks if he’d be willing to spend some time with him playing instruments together, letting him know it typically is how she’s able to calm her nerves. As they play, Charlie apologizes for getting The Accountant involved and asks if he’s scared to die. When he denies it, she seems relieved, noting that he could potentially live significantly longer than a thousand years and not wanting to be the reason his life is cut short
Xaveria tries to get answers from the specter of Calloway that is following her, but the vision doesn’t seem inclined to respond to her questions. Instead, she seems to possess all of Xaveria’s other “friends” when Ren knocks at her door to retrieve the owl bear toy.
Days go by on the airship as the team flies north into a blizzard. In the night, The Accountant hears suspicious noises from the upper deck, so a few of them run up and find that Calcerio’s corpse and a number of the airship guards seem to have been afflicted by the twisting mass of red and black veins that they saw on the creatures in Raesha Vicai. They easily fend off the attack and throw the dead king overboard, worried it could happen again.
Row finally returns the next morning, carrying a note that was intercepted from the iron dragon, Feraghast, that was meant to go to the queen of the Everheir Empire. It informs the queen that he found another Shadowtouched, and details how to locate him. Fortunately, it wasn’t delivered.
Landing in Vicai, the team heads to the head mage’s tower with the writ of King Calcerio, and hands over the mysterious black pearl that they looted from an Everheir assassin. The mage tries to identify it, but it explodes in radiant light and knocks him unconscious. He refuses to try again, but gives a scroll to The Accountant to allow for another attempt.
The Accountant steps back and casts the spell successfully, fighting off the energy surge. He becomes surrounded by eight shadows, recognizing Feraghast, Scope/Kaleido, and himself. He learns that the pearl is called a Spirit Cage. They are, at face value, a soul that is trapped inside a prison instead of being allowed to enter the cycle of resurrection. Not just any soul in fact, but the soul of a powerful mage called a Divinae. The Divinae appeared as a physical embodiment of the cosmos, and have been extinct for tens of thousands of years.
Looking through the ledger, The Accountant is able to determine that these Spirit Cages work as amplifiers for the natural strengths of their wielder and grow stronger alongside them. There are eight in total, and bringing them all together would create a world ending weapon. The owlin student in the room seems terrified, since Queen Abzu in the Everheir Empire was trying to do just that. The Accountant suggests they throw the pearl into the ocean, but the student worries since even alone, the pearls are very dangerous weapons and need to be taken out of the hands of Everheir operatives.
The head archmage calls for his fellow mages to help secure the city since it seems they are at war, but Archmage Selune seems hesitant to go down into the catacombs to secure the city’s mythallar. She requests that the adventurers assist in cleaning up the mess made by Archmage Yore, promising them compensation. They also ask her to come to the bar, which she agrees to do.