The Children Wave From the Window

The house had drawn a crowd by the time the party came back out. Commotion had gathered around the old dwarven building, the kind of public attention that arrives late but still wants to know whether the danger is over. DC Lawman and Kyle Lawman were there, waiting with Lawful presence and the practical question hanging between everyone. Had they found her? My Alchemical Romance brought Tallulah out alive. Lawful accepted custody. The Lawmans thanked the party, and the result settled into the cleanest possible shape the mission could have taken: the killer captured, the party alive, the city given a prisoner instead of a body. It was not painless. Ash was changed. Dhaz had lost a vial. The haunting beneath the house still left more questions than answers. But Stormcall's immediate murder crisis had been contained. Then Dhaz looked back. In an upper window, four ghostly children stood no longer swallowed by shadow. They stopped their game long enough to wave down at him, then returned to playing. Not gone. Not free in any simple way. But no longer black-eyed things lunging out of the dark. Lawful gave the group enough return fuel to reach Point Pringle in time for the funeral. That small logistical mercy mattered. The party had come to Stormcall through Point Pringle's instability, detoured through murder, Flesh operations, Sonar, and a haunted basement, and now had to carry all of it back into a city already waiting for grief. Stormcall had ended in success. The cost was coming with them.