An Account of how Gwinch, Kishi, Bo-Jing, and Salt answered the call of a friend and made their descent beneath the Monastery of the Two-Fold Path in Khanbaliq
The Summons
Ten years after his exile—and his eventual acceptance—Gwinch had settled into something like permanence. In Pasar, he was no longer an outsider but a fixture: Abbot of the Two-Fold Path, respected, careful, and largely removed from the kinds of dangers that had once defined him.
Then the letter came.
It was from Kafka Tamura, a former student who had followed him from Zipang to Khanbaliq—earnest, observant, and marked by a seriousness that had always suggested future responsibility. Gwinch had sent him north for precisely that reason: to restore the monastery that had once been corrupted by apostate monks and slavers.
Kafka had succeeded. The Black Flower gang was gone. The monastery stood again, at least in spirit.
But not in peace.
“Master, we have discovered something beneath the monastery.
It should not exist beneath Khanbaliq.
We fear we have opened a door that was meant to remain closed.”
Gwinch read the letter, understood what it implied, and chose to go.
At the same time, far to the west, the Crimson Reprieve crossed the ocean under new ownership. With Acererak destroyed and Captain Hu laid to rest, Bangqiu claimed the ship. Against all odds—and with more than a little luck—the voyage ended at Jade Harbor.
There, the party rested.
Salt shed the last of her homespun garments and stepped into something new—silk, color, and confidence shaped by everything she had become. Bangqiu hosted them for a final stretch of calm before their paths diverged.
Then Lao Ren gathered the Clever Ones, traced his careful geometry, and returned them to Banua.
What they found was a world that had already mourned them. Bo-Jing’s wife—and much of the Naran Horde—had assumed his death. His return brought not conflict, but relief. The interim khan stepped aside, and order reformed itself around him.
In the quiet that followed, Salt and Nekhil married without ceremony.
Then Kafka’s letter arrived.
The Gathering
And so they came together again at the ruined monastery outside Khanbaliq:
Gwinch.
Kishi.
Salt.
Bo-Jing.
Nekhil.
Ryu.
Wu Jin Fen.
QiGongJin.
Kafka—and the young monks who followed him.
Kafka explained what he could.
At first, it had seemed mundane: missing food, unseen intruders. Then passages sealed themselves only for others to open. And finally, something deeper—evidence of a cult older than the Black Flower gang, older than the Two-Fold Path, perhaps older than Khanbaliq itself.
Something below had been disturbed.
I. The Whisper
Gwinch began with caution.
He staked out the main entrance, a stone platform along the foul canals of the city. There, amid the slow black flow, he heard it:
A whisper.
Not wind. Not water.
Something within.
The party chose the smaller entrance—through the monastery cellar—and descended.
Wu Jin Fen heard his name first.
Ahead, six ash-wights stood chained together, their forms barely holding shape. When Ryu turned them, they did not scatter. They drifted—purposefully—toward the source of the whisper.
The party followed.
They saw the idol beyond a collapsed wall: a four-armed figure of black stone.
As the wights approached, the chamber woke. Stone ground against stone.
The guardians rose.
The party withdrew—not in panic, but in discipline—taking shelter in a chamber of four sealed sarcophagi. They did not open them.
When they returned, the wights were gone.
Only chains and ash remained.
And the sense that something had noticed them.
II. The Invisible Man
Salt and Wu Jin Fen returned to the surface. The rest pressed on.
Gwinch and Bo-Jing led the pursuit.
The corridors narrowed and twisted. Doors opened and closed where none should exist. Always ahead: footsteps.
Measured.
Deliberate.
And beneath them—the sound of stone moving.
The unseen figure drew them forward into danger.
Three coal-black hounds emerged, their breath burning in the confined space. Kafka did not meet them head-on—he moved along the wall, over them, striking at the invisible man as he opened yet another hidden door.
Bo-Jing held the line. Gwinch finished the work.
The hounds fell.
Beyond, an ogre mage revealed itself only briefly before retreating deeper.
Ryu, spent, was escorted back to the surface.
The rest continued.
III. The Ogre Mages
They found the ogre mages in a chamber of strange normalcy—seated around a game, as though they belonged there.
The illusion ended quickly.
Cold filled the room in sudden, devastating bursts. Several of the young monks nearly died where they stood. But the creatures faltered when pressed.
One by one, they were forced into the open.
Their tricks failed. Their disguises failed.
Gwinch and Kafka turned the fight with patience and positioning—drawing one into the corridor, isolating another.
Only one escaped, dissolving into mist with its treasures.
Gwinch returned to the surface with a simple truth:
The dungeon was not empty.
It was defended.
IV. The Idol
They returned stronger.
Salt and Nekhil.
Kishi.
New initiates.
The ash-wights came again.
This time, the truth emerged: they were not evil, but bound. The magic that judged wickedness struck the new recruits instead.
Impostors.
Dragon Claw agents, hidden among them.
Kafka executed the last without hesitation.
Salt held the wights. Their chains held the rest.
They reached the sarcophagi again. Kishi confirmed their fears: a priest of the ancient cult of Duvan’Ku lay within.
They left it sealed.
At the idol, blood was offered.
The idol responded.
A hidden door opened.
Within: a basilisk—and a sword.
The creature died quickly.
The sword spoke.
It named itself the relic of Makurian, a hero who had failed to destroy the cult centuries before. It had waited.
It chose Gwinch.
V. The Destruction
The sword gave Gwinch more than purpose.
It gave him leverage.
He lifted one guardian from the ground—separating it from its twin. A monk baited the second.
The collision ended both.
The idol remained.
They removed it—not through ritual, but through effort. Out of the chamber. Into the sewers. And finally, into the daylight.
Where it was broken.
VI. The Door Beyond
Only then did they understand what the ogre mages had guarded.
Not the idol.
A door.
Beyond it lay something stranger than a dungeon.
A place where time itself could be crossed.
The monastery was reclaimed.
But not emptied.
Because beneath it still lay doors unopened—
And paths that did not lead merely downward,
But elsewhere. And elsewhen.
