Episode 10 Synopsis

A memory from roughly twenty years earlier shows Bjorn as the proud chief of Norn and the lover of Byor Kavaar, chief of the Shadowclaw clan. Magda Navaa warns him that a cult has taken his sister Ingrid and that strength alone cannot break the Chain, but Bjorn leads his warriors out anyway. He later awakens wounded to the burned ruins of Norn. In the present, Phineas Moon refuses Torin's offer to prolong his life and dies beside the Panthex. His departing soul enters Vyr's Ix Crystal without her calling it, and Torin gives him a funeral rite while the Panthex remains at the grave.

The exhausted party marches through the night to Velkommen and shares hard truths while recovering at Ma Pie's longhouse. Bjorn admits that Norn's warriors used mushrooms to trade sanity for strength and apologizes for turning on Brill, while the others debate secrets, trust, and how to restrain him during future rages. Helena and Vyr examine the jeweled scroll and discover a map to a cache south of Andros Port bearing the phrase "life without death has no meaning." Their rest is broken when the Raven, a Shadowed Dawn mercenary, brutalizes Ma Pie and several villagers while hunting the companions. The party escapes through an aquifer grate, then ambushes and defeats the Raven. They confiscate her weapons and gold but keep her captive in hopes of confronting her employers. Ma Pie dies before morning, leaving Velkommen's welcoming spirit diminished.

The companions return to Gavra with the Raven and reunite with Aggie, Zandra, and the Dread Stalkers at the Blooming Petal. Madame Iris warns that the Shadowed Dawn stands above the thieves' and assassins' guilds and that killing one Raven would only create another. At midnight, Whisper leads the group through the fountain entrance into Gavra's undercroft, where Old Maggie and other Stalkers confront him for returning. A powerful Shadowed Dawn figure known as the Lion intervenes. He says fear, contradictory political decisions, attacks on Piln, an embargo on New Norn, the Shattered Isles' silence, and an armada bound for the Maelstrom are all signs that Scarsden is being manipulated. The Lion offers to conceal the party's survival and eventually procure the Maelstrodomus if they disappear, travel to the Shattered Isles, and stop Yore and Gander's operation. The episode ends as his agents hand the party dark cloaks for the false funeral that will mark them dead.