In a mysterious and ever-shifting inn, multiple groups of adventurers face deeply personal and surreal trials that blur memory, identity, and reality.
The Glass Hall reflects haunting alternate versions of the characters — not illusions, but possibilities. St. Amou confronts a sinister version of himself and destroys it, shattering the mirrored illusions and revealing hidden truths among the group.
The Withering East is a decaying library where cursed books show alternate lives, humiliating deaths, and hidden regrets. Nikoko burns away his “better” selves, Sir Patsir duels a ghostly critic of his vanity, and Pando destroys a prophetic scroll, denying fate.
The Sunken Kitchen feeds on guilt. The trio faces shadow-crows and twisted versions of themselves. Koump’aros must confront a reflection that knows his darkest secrets. The group ends the threat by destroying a memory-manifested echo, but trust begins to fray.
The Forgotten Stage tests Gleg the Brewmaster alone. He becomes the unwilling lead in a puppet show mocking his failures and secrets. Defying the narrative forced upon him, he destroys the stage and accepts his true role: not just a barkeep, but a guardian.
Throughout, an unseen entity watches, whispering one word into the very structure of the inn: “Soon.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Glass Hall
(Kostanto – Gogos – St. Amou)
The corridor was crystalline, impossibly long, reflecting not just light — but memories.
Kostanto marched forward, sword drawn, steps precise.
“These are illusions.”
Gogos stopped at a panel. “No… they’re reflections. Of us.”
Each mirrored surface didn’t show them as they were — but as they could be.
Kostanto, bloodied and crowned. Gogos, chained to a thousand masks.
St. Amou… as a deity, surrounded by machines pulsing with suffering.
Kostanto, bloodied and crowned. Gogos, chained to a thousand masks.
St. Amou… as a deity, surrounded by machines pulsing with suffering.
He whispered, almost reverently, “I saw this once. In a dream. Or a lab.”
Suddenly, a figure stepped from the glass — a duplicate of St. Amou.
Except this one smiled.
Except this one smiled.
“Let’s begin your dissection, shall we?”
The Withering East
(Pando’ Spiros – Nikoko – Sir Patsir’ I.0.)
This wing was a rotting library, its walls dripping with mildew, its books whispering in foreign tongues.
Nikoko picked up a tome. The cover read:
“The 1000 Failures of Nikoko the Gaslord.”
“The 1000 Failures of Nikoko the Gaslord.”
He dropped it. “Haha. Funny.”
Sir Patsir flipped a book open — and gasped. It showed him dead. Over and over. In the mouths of beasts, by friendly fire, slipping on a banana peel.
“Okay that one’s just rude.”
Pando, however, found a map… drawn in blood. It matched the glowing floor map from the main hall — except this one had red marks. X’s.
Places where someone had already walked. Recently.
Places where someone had already walked. Recently.
“We’re not alone in here,” he said.
Just then, a shelf groaned open, revealing a staircase downward — carved in bone.
The Sunken Kitchen
(Pitoros – Koump’aros – Nikiforos)
They descended into the kitchen, where time had rotted everything.
Pots floated in midair. Stew stirred itself. The meat screamed softly.
Nikiforos muttered rites under his breath. “This place feeds on sins.”
Koump’aros stepped into the cold chamber — and froze.
Inside the walk-in pantry stood his own body, mutated and twisted, whispering something to a reflection of Nikiforos.
Pitoros scanned it, pulling out a small scanning crystal. “These aren’t ghosts. They’re echoes. Memories made physical.”
Nikiforos: “Then let’s silence them.”
Suddenly, the stove exploded, and a swarm of shadow-crows burst from the pantry, clawing at their eyes with screaming laughter.
The Forgotten Stage
(Gleg the Brewmaster)
Gleg lit the oil lantern and walked onto the abandoned stage, curtains billowing without wind.
He looked around. “Alright, my old girl. Show me what you’ve got.”
Spotlights blinked on. He froze.
The audience was full of mannequins, clapping slowly, rhythmically.
A voice echoed from the rafters:
“Tell us a story, Brewmaster.”
“Or become one.”
Behind him, the backdrop fell away, revealing a puppet theater — where ten small dolls stood.
Each looked exactly like… his companions.
Each tied to a string.
One was already missing.
Cutaway: Somewhere Else in the Inn
A shadow moved through a deeper corridor. It had no face, but it wore a familiar cloak.
It passed through doors that didn’t exist moments before. It watched the groups. It listened.
And it whispered a single word into the wood, into the stone, into the mind of the Inn:
“Soon”
Trial of the Sunken Kitchen
(Doc Pitoros – Koump’aros – Nikiforos)
The shattered stove hissed as smoke filled the air, and the shadow-crows circled in a frenzied blur. Nikiforos held up a dark relic, muttering incantations, but they laughed at him — not mockingly, but as if in on a joke he hadn’t heard yet.
Nikiforos: “They mock the power of my order. They’re not just shadows…”
Koump’aros, blood seeping from his claws: “They’re feeding off guilt. Mine.”
He stumbled back toward the cold chamber, staring at his twisted reflection trapped behind the icy glass. The thing inside was twitching, eyes glowing. It hissed his deepest secrets:
“You betrayed the code. You served the hunger.”
Pitoros, struggling with the birds clawing at his eyes, pulled a blade from his coat — not a scalpel, but a bone dagger, sharpened on the battlefield.
“No more games!”
He leapt toward the pantry and shattered the mirrored glass, drawing blood. The echo of Koump’aros let out a horrible screech, and the shadows collapsed into smoke, vanishing like scattered ashes.
The room dimmed.
Nikiforos turned to Koump’aros.
“That… thing… it knew you. More than you’ve told us.”
Koump’aros just stared at the broken glass, muttering:
“We all wear masks. Mine just bleeds.”
Pitoros wiped his blade, then pointed at the bloodstained door that had just creaked open.
“One trial down. Who’s hungry?”
Trial of the Glass Hall
(Kostanto – Gogos – St. Amou)
The duplicate of St. Amou, born from the glass, grinned wider than humanly possible.
“You abandoned progress for obsession. Now look at you: forgotten by the labs, feared by the gods.”
Amou’s hand trembled. The clone looked like him — but its movements were smoother, more intentional.
Gogos, circling it cautiously: “This place… it doesn’t just mirror. It manufactures.”
Kostanto, raising his sword: “Falsehoods deserve steel.”
He lunged.
But his blade stopped inches from the glass-Amou, frozen mid-swing — caught in a mirrored wall that had suddenly appeared. It didn’t reflect him — it showed Kostanto on a throne, surrounded by chained lawbreakers.
He blinked. “I… I have never sought that.”
The mirror disagreed.
Gogos stepped forward, now staring at himself, except the version wearing all his masks at once. The many-faced man. Shifting, twisting.
“You don’t know who you are,” the reflection said.
“But you do know who you want to beat.”
“But you do know who you want to beat.”
The clone of Amou, meanwhile, stepped behind St. Amou, whispering:
“Why not embrace me? We could reshape the world with fire and code. We should have.”
Amou turned — and plunged a wirelike blade straight into its chest.
“I don’t need another me. I need me to remember why I began.”
The clone collapsed into liquid mercury — screaming in a pitch that wasn’t sound but math.
The mirrors cracked — all of them — and as they did, each character saw a flicker of something they didn’t want the others to see:
- Kostanto glimpsed a child’s face — perhaps his own — crying as a gavel fell.
- Gogos saw himself, face gone, applauded by a crowd wearing his stolen ones.
- Amou saw a lab exploding… and laughing.
Then the hallway breathed. Walls melted, forming a curved path ahead, illuminated by a flickering neon sigil:
“Truth has a price.”
And the door opened.
They walked through it in silence.
Trial of the Withering East
(Pando’ Spiros – Nikoko – Patsir’)
The bone staircase groaned under their steps, descending deeper into a cavernous archive. No torches. No lanterns. The books themselves glowed — faint, pulsing like open wounds.
Nikoko hesitated.
“I don’t like libraries. They remember too much.”
Sir Patsir flicked dust off his shoulder.
“They better not have anything on me. I haven’t signed any publishing rights.”
Pando didn’t speak. He followed the blood-stained floor map, which matched his earlier find, guiding them between bookcases labeled not with genres… but with names.
They passed one marked:
“The Lives He Should Have Lived – Gaslord Nikoko”
Nikoko scowled and spat on the binding. “Shove it.”
The bookshelf opened by itself.
From the shadows emerged three versions of Nikoko — each tall, regal, powerful.
One wore a golden laurel. Another commanded ghostly knights. The third held a scepter of ale and flame.
One wore a golden laurel. Another commanded ghostly knights. The third held a scepter of ale and flame.
“You chose the bottle,” they said in unison.
“You could have been any of us.”
“You could have been any of us.”
Nikoko took a long drink from his flask. Then he threw it into the closest doppelgänger, which ignited in a burst of cursed fire.
“I am one of you,” he muttered. “I’m just the one who survived.”
Sir Patsir was staring at a narrow shelf.
Each book’s spine read:
“The Death of Sir Patsir I.0.”
One showed him eaten by gremlins. Another trampled by a donkey. One slipped on a banana peel, cracked his neck mid-duel.
Pando laughed. “That one’s poetic.”
Patsir: “This is slander.”
But as he opened one, a ghostly duel erupted from the pages, a mirror-knight mocking him, sword flickering.
“You fight to impress, not to protect,” it hissed.
“That’s why you always die.”
“That’s why you always die.”
“SHUT. UP.”
He fought back — sloppily at first, but then, surprisingly deft. As he impaled the phantom on a rack of dusty cookbooks, it whispered:
“You could be better.”
“I will be,” he muttered, breathing hard.
Meanwhile, Pando had followed the red X’s on his map to a pedestal, holding a sealed scroll titled:
“Chapter 99: The General Who Couldn’t Win.”
He didn’t hesitate.
He burned it.
The walls began to shake, the bookshelves screaming in dozens of voices, angry at truth denied.
The staircase back up opened again — bones grinding open with slow, painful creaks.
As they escaped, Nikoko looked back once. The glowing tomes dimmed… except one. It had no title. But it was pulsing red.
It would be back.
Gleg’s Trial on the Forgotten Stage
(Solo Trial – Gleg the Brewmaster)
Gleg stepped through the crooked door with one hand still holding his tankard. The room beyond was black velvet — endless, yet somehow enclosed. Then with a single flick of light, a stage came to life beneath him.
Curtains parted.
He was suddenly dressed in motley, a jester’s garb. A spotlight blazed overhead.
A voice echoed from the rafters — his own voice, but twisted:
“Ladies and gents, welcome to The Tragedy of the Brewmaster Who Stayed Behind!”
He squinted into the darkness beyond the footlights, where shadowy audience silhouettes clapped rhythmically.
“Aw, hells,” Gleg muttered, “Not another dream-drama. I barely made it through Goblet & Guilt: The Ale-Hamlet tour.”
A marionette dropped from the ceiling — a wooden puppet shaped like Gleg, with a flask for a heart and blank coin eyes.
It began to dance, strings jerking violently.
“He served them ale, he served them lies,” the puppet sang.
“He saw the truth and turned his eyes!”
“He saw the truth and turned his eyes!”
Then came the other puppets.
- One shaped like Nikiforos, whispering secrets.
- One like Koump’aros, half-mutated.
- One with a hundred masks, laughing.
“They all came to the inn…”
“And he let them in…”
“He KNEW the game would soon begin!”
“And he let them in…”
“He KNEW the game would soon begin!”
“ENOUGH!” Gleg shouted, and his tankard turned into a club, heavy and metal.
He leapt off the stage, smashing the puppets mid-dance. Splinters flew like teeth. The curtain caught fire, revealing not ropes but veins holding the marionettes aloft.
A final voice came from the flames, low and clear:
“You were never just a barkeep, Gleg. Why are you really here?”
Gleg stood alone now, stage crumbling under his feet. He whispered:
“To keep the door closed. But it opened anyway.”
Suddenly, silence.
Then, a trapdoor below him opened — not down, but inward.
He stepped through it.
