As I traced Salem’s shadowed streets on faded maps, unsettling certainty grew: finding the Prophet was merely prologue to darker truths awaiting our return to Blytmoast.

Inside a cramped, shadow-cloaked shop, Lyemirror directed Kirby toward a twisted wand of dubious origins. Her whispered tales of dark enchantments enthralled my child; Kirby’s touch sent ripples of potent magic.

I gazed into Salem’s rain-darkened streets, sensing the elusive Prophet awaiting us—a keeper of answers to questions I feared to ask. Each crisis endured was mere prelude to the storms ahead; the unraveling had barely begun.

Rain lashed the windows as Scourge Lyemirror traced eldritch symbols upon sodden earth, chanting, "Invocare eques umbrae." Mists yielded a spectral steed, pride extinguished, bound in shadow. As we departed toward Witch City, oppressive fog embraced us, foretelling darker rites—and inevitable peril ahead.

The consequences of this journey were far more profound than I understood when I first began to recount this tale.

This call to misadventure came not as a grand epiphany but as a slow, creeping realization, like a centipede crawling between the sheets.

I’ve made an effort this year to be more engaged in my children’s lives.  One may think of this as something akin to a New Year’s...