The undercroft was a burial vault before Doru. Bones of earlier priests still line the wall alcoves — men who lived and died in Old Barovia when the mist was only weather and the wolves only wolves. The chains at the center were set by Donavich himself, on the night his son came home wrong. He did what he could not do with his hands: he made his son wait. He has been waiting alongside him ever since. Every seal on that door is renewed daily, in blood that gets weaker every renewal. The stopping point is coming.

The undercroft is one room, low-ceilinged, damp. Bones of some earlier priest lie in the wall alcoves. In the center, chained to a stone ring, is a young man in a young man’s clothes, and he has been dead for a long time.

Sensory

• Old blood, dried but not cleaned
• Salt scattered on the floor in a circle around the chains
• The chains scratch against the ring softly, constantly