Leaving for Khazan's Tower, the Pack restructured their wagon equipment and tactical positioning now that Ezmerelda was in tow. Atlas wanted more insight on The Abbot, so cast a Sending spell to him, inquiring if he had known about Ireena Kolyana and her new fate. The Abbot responded that he had not heard of her but would "deal with the situation forthwith". Now out of Sending spells and worried that they had just killed Ireena, they continued on to the Raven River Crossroads, where they set up camp. Ezmerelda convinced the party that a small fire could liven their spirits, and Ghalwin played a little ditty around the fire.
That night, Shakti considered praying to Mother Night but found she couldn't get her fight with her brother out of her head. Meanwhile, Ghalwin and Atlas discussed luck and divinity while on watch. Looking to guide the paladin through his recent relationship with Yrrga, the cleric decided to give him some hard truths. He told him that his "luck was shit" and that he had not found success on his current path. Ghalwin rebuffed that they had found the spear that they were looking far, and grew heated, claiming he was the only one trying to do anything to help Barovia. After Ghalwin had a short power walk, the two reconciled: Atlas did not want to lose his friend to the darkness of the land.
Late into their second shift change, the Tome of Strahd flipped open next to Atlas and gave him a vision from over a century ago. As "Vasili von Holtz", Strahd had visited the newly-arrived angel and was quickly revealed. However, he defeated The Abbot in combat and subdued him temporarily with vampiric charm, taking him to the Amber Temple. At some point, The Abbot broke the charm, but Strahd had already guided him to an amber vault. In the vault were two sarcophogi displaying the names Delban, the Star of Ice and Hate and Khirad, the Star of Secrets. A third had already been destroyed, with the name Vampyr, Lord of Blood and Death, and ambient swirling shadow surged from the broken tomb into The Abbot.
Atlas told The Pack everything about his vision. Shakti determined that this encounter had left The Abbot's memory corrupted, and the name "Vasilka" likely was a subconsciously subverted form of "Vasili". With little more to go on, the party carried on in the lowest mist cover they had ever seen in a Barovian morning, with hundreds of feet of vision. While this clarity gave a sense of safety, they found it also posed a very real danger: Atlas and Shakti spotted a massive predator flying towards them at terrifying speed. A Roc swooped down before they could fully get their carriages off the roads, aiming for Ezmerelda's wagon. Ghalwin attracted its attention away from Ez, and it picked up him and Verity. He misty stepped from its grasp, hitting the ground with force, and waited a while before dismissing his elk. Shakti had heard of rocs, and knew that they were typically migratory with a changing hunting radius: this one had likely been trapped within Barovia hundreds of years ago, only leaving its mountain nest when visibility was high.
They quickly got moving, and Atlas contacted The Abbot again; thankfully, the corrupted deva seemingly had forgotten their conversation the night before. The Pack continued along a dirt trail to a bridge of land, and as the bright day turned into a misty, cold night, they found Khazan's Tower on the middle of a connected island. Shakti scoped out the tower with a Barn Owl familiar, finding it had a hole blown open that had been recently protected by tripwires. There was an elevator system, with a blocked fourth floor, that seemed to be pulled by four Clay Golems on the base floor. Khazan's Tower Door possessed a circular intricate symbol with detailed writings, which Atlas determined to vaguely resemble a humanoid dancing.
Ezmerelda and Ghalwin went to the tower; Ghalwin was hesitant to let Ezmerelda ahead, which the Vistana found a bit cowardly, and she approached the door. She found that there was an antimagic field around the tower, and a magic door. Ghalwin pulled off the dance with aplomb, and the door opened, revealing a room of detritus. The clay golems inside did nothing to harm the party as they entered, and Atlas found that he could get them to pull the elevator chains on command. They were pulled up slowly to the fourth floor with tense initiative, burning spells of buffing, but found that no danger awaited them.
Upstairs, they found a lot of evidence that Rudolph had stayed here, but he was not around. Shakti, Atlas, and Ezmerelda brought the carriages around the back of the tower, leading Bagel and Lox inside, while Ghalwin investigated the room with his True Seeing. He found pages from van Richten's Journal, and learned that the vampire slayer's beef with the Vistani ran deep. They had taken his son Erasmus after van Richten had failed to heal one of their kin. Enraged at learning what they had done, Rudolph followed, but was beset upon by a horde of undead controlled remotely by a Lich. Though he did not understand why, the Lich gave him power over the horde as well as magical effectiveness against undead, and he marched to retrieve his son. However, the Vistani had already sold Erasmus to a vampire named Baron Metus, and in response, Dr. van Richten slaughtered all except one.
Over the next two hours, Ghalwin cooked a fantastic meal using herbs from nearby medical kits as they waited out the growing rains and mists. From a window, Shakti spotted a figure hobbling towards the tower: it was van Richten. Ezmerelda turned invisible, clearly not ready to face him yet, and Atlas flew down to heal the monster slayer. Ghalwin joined him, and though Rudolph was initially suspicious of Atlas's vampire-like appearance, he realized he had to trust his fellow cleric. He had been out collecting information when he was ambushed by a small pack of werewolves; though his horse Drusilla was killed in the skirmish, van Richten barely escaped with his life. Out of magic and nearly out of blood, he told The Pack that he was expecting them to have followed his trail, and he was right.
The Pack and Ezmerelda emerged to defend the tower, with Rudolph in the tower above armed with a light crossbow and silvered bolts. Emerging from the mists were a litany of wolves, dire wolves, and werewolves, headed by Kiril Stoyanovich. The wolfman roared with fury and surged forward; they had no time to talk!