Ash Breaks the Red Mirror

Once the charm broke, the room finally became a fight the party could finish. Darius pressed in with the direct force of someone who had woken into a nightmare and chosen a side. Dhaz kept pressure where the hags tried to slip away. Jonah moved through the damage with more healing, turning survival into a rhythm the others could keep fighting inside. Morgan came back from possession with apologies instead of excuses. He had tried to serve Jonah as food because the room had bent him into a weapon, and he knew the apology could not make that harmless. But saying it mattered. It marked the difference between Morgan as a person and Morgan as the banquet's instrument. The hags still had to die. Ash found the ending. In a burst of violence that seemed to slow the room around it, he killed the last two hags and broke the structure of the trap with them. The red mirror shattered, and in the wreckage of its glass another portal opened. The banquet was cleared. Not cleanly. Not without injury. But cleared. The party gathered what the room left behind: companions now folded into the active story, several strange pouches of puzzle tiles, and a route deeper into Gertie's maze. Dinner was over. The maze was not.