Hypnotic Pattern at the Banquet

The banquet room changed from grotesque to dangerous all at once.

A hag's magic bloomed through the chamber in a Hypnotic Pattern, and nearly the entire group went still inside it. The fight did not stop because the party stopped. It became worse. Incapacitated bodies are easy things for nightmare hosts to arrange.

Jonah came back first through pain.

Psychic damage woke him out of the pattern, and the room immediately needed him to be more than awake. He healed where he could, carried Spirit Guardians into the pressure, and layered Sanctuary around survival instead of pride. The hags answered with nightmare touches, tearing into the people who could least afford another cost.

Ash was one of them.

The banquet did not create his old injury, but it knew how to press on it. Already carrying the mental trauma from Tallulah and Solar, already exhausted, Ash was hit hard enough that the injury rules became part of the story again. The overkill did not replace his deeper Wisdom and Charisma trauma. It added to the spiral: more exhaustion, more compromise, and a minor injury that cut his movement until a long rest or stronger restoration could undo it.

Gertie's realm was proving a point.

It did not need to kill the party to change them. It only needed to keep finding the places where they were already cracked and make the next room ask for payment there.