extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances

[singmod]

MAY 2026 FINALE EVENT — PART TWO

Ending Pathways

Of Nature’s Design — The Long Dark.

Of Interloper’s Design — The Light at the End of All Things.

A CHOICE MADE

WHEN: May 1st.
WHERE: Blackwood.
CONTENT WARNINGS: blood, blood magic, intentional self-multilation/harm of hands/wrist/arms.

There isn’t much time. Enola waits with a steady patience, but there’s a strain in her eyes. The Darkwalker looms behind her in the abyss — grinning skeletal jaws leering upon you. But it too is patient, awaiting your decision. It’s now or never.

There are only two pathways.

You need to make your choice: to help Enola in banishing the Darkwalker and saving her world, or allowing the Darkwalker to be released and letting nature take its course with the Quiet Apocalypse.

Banish

You step forwards to Enola.The banishment glyph hovers in the air before you, her hand is still raised, blood drips from her palm. When you catch her eye, she is grateful and relieved that you will stand with her. But she is sorry, too. Of course, she stands by her choices but she is still sorry for the hurt it’s caused. She’s sorry for the loss, the suffering. Her eyes are full of too much, but she straightens — there is work ahead to be done.

She tells you softly to press her palm to hers, and it will hurt but only for a moment. You do so, raising your palm to press it to hers — the light of the banishment glyph between you.

For a short, sharp shock of a moment, the light sears and burns — branding the skin of your palm with the banishment sigil. You feel the white-hot pain of it, enough to make you gasp.

Enola’s eyes close briefly. She blows gently against her own palm, but you feel it against yours: a soft balm, and it lessens the sharp burning pain into a dull throb of split, bleeding skin.

When you pull your hand back, your palm is carved into with the banishment sigil and blood begins to weep from it.

“Go to the cairns.” she tells you. “Press your hand upon the stone. Keep it there and don’t let go.”

She reaches for you with her other hand. Grasps your forearm, your shoulder, a touch to your cheek — if you allow it.

“We are all connected.”

Release

For those who choose not to take Enola’s side, they will need to find their own way to draw blood. Enola is disappointed in your choice, but will not actively stop your decision to side with the Darkwalker and choose to release it. She understands your reasons, whatever they may be. However, she will not help you with your choice.

The Darkwalker does not require such an intricate design, it only requires one cut. Take a knife, or whatever sharp instrument you can and draw it against your skin — your hand, wrist or arm may work best.

Let your blood fall upon the snow — a simple sacrifice, almost crude in its way.

The Darkwalker makes a low sound, like a clicking inhale of breath. The ground trembles before your feet, and you find the rock beneath the snow cracks and gives way a little below you. You will not sink beneath the earth, but you are cemented in place — as if your very blood has anchored you there.

You feel your limbs lock up, an unseen force grabs you by the hand and yanks it forwards. A shimmer of sickly-green light passes over your eyes and a sensation steals the breath from your lungs.

You feel cold, hollow — you are millennia of hunger slumbering under the earth, restless and unending. You are horror, ancient and unknown. You are the ending of all things.

And so it begins.

OF INTERLOPER'S DESIGN

WHEN: May 1st.
WHERE: Blackwood.
CONTENT WARNINGS: blood; themes of body horror.

The Darkwalker does not wait. It begins the pull of Interlopers who have chosen to release it, and it does not take from you gently for it does not know of such things. The hand you have yanked towards it ignites like a lightning bolt: sickly green light jolts up your wrist and arm like you have begun to crack open like porcelain — the shock of it is cold and brutal.

Before you, you see only the endless dark, the suffocating silence — maddening and peaceful all at once. The long dark promises eternity. The Darkwalker barks out a laugh, thrashing more heavily against its cage, exhilarated. The blood of Interlopers shed for its release offers it power, and cracks begin to form against the iridescent sheen of Enola’s prison.

Enola watches for only a beat, finishing the last of the sigils on Interlopers who have chosen to assist her in the banishment ritual. She works quickly, but she keeps calm — directs Interlopers to the cairns, trying to work an even spread, urging them to hurry.


“Whatever happens.” Enola tells you, “Don't let go.”

Around the abyss there are cairns that circle the edge before the earth falls away into nothing. The cairns tower over most, intricately and carefully constructed. You notice there has been blood put on these before — old and blackened by now. For a moment, you consider Enola — she’d told you that she’d been holding the Darkwalker all this time, and in dreams and visions when she’d appeared to Interlopers, her hands had always been bloody.

All this time, you wonder, she has used her own blood to hold the Darkwalker back.

You place your own bloodied hand upon a stone of the cairn. Now all into position, Enola turns around to face the Darkwalker once more. For a long time, nothing happens: she just looks up at the endless abyss and the Darkwalker caged within it. She stares up at the being with a quiet defiance as it snaps its jaws against her. Slowly, Enola raises her hand, the one branded with the banishment sigil, and with a brief snap of her wrist races her palm up towards the Darkwalker. The being jerks backwards against the sigil: it understands its meaning, it understands the consequence of its use.

The woman does not meet the being’s recoil with cockiness or humour. She does not gloat. Enola knows better, she holds the weight of it all carefully. She stares up, unafraid, her one eye gleams with iridescent light.

Her other hand comes out at her side and sweeps forward, fingers splayed and then flexing and twisting as if working at something. There is a shift in the air; strange and disorientating — you are suddenly aware of your own breathing, the breathing of others around you.

You are all connected.

The rune on your palm glows soft white, the shimmering mother of pearl escaping past your fingers. The ground trembles below you, and you hear a roar of noise in your ears. Maybe it’s the roar of your own heart, maybe it’s something else. You cannot be sure. Enola’s mouth moves, whispering words under her breath. You cannot hear them. Her hand keeps working, coaxing and twisting — the wind picks up around you, and through the din you hear the shrill, ethereal chorus begin.

For a moment, you’re sure the sound comes from Enola herself.

Colour dances under your palm, tendrils of light escaping and snaking around the cairn — spiralling downwards towards the snow. At your feet, the ground cracks, the soft glow of colours of the Aurora, faintly coloured with your mingling blood. The lines spread out — connecting the cairns together and then to Enola’s feet.

Your hand burns warm and a wave of pressure hits you — you give only how much you wish to, and you feel something coming away from inside you. The cold tingling at your fingers, or the dizzying light feeling in your head, or the stutter of your heartbeat. It hurts in a strange way you can’t quite put words to. But you hold fast, keeping your hand where it is, trying to stop your knees from buckling.

The Darkwalker thrashes violently, like a wild animal trapped. It wails furiously, teeth bared and snapping. Through the howl of the wind, it causes the ground to shake more violently — whipping up snow and stone.

Whatever pressure you feel, Enola feels it more. As you watch her, you can see some sort of invisible weight pressing down on her. Her knees shake, her shoulders tense. Enola doesn't bend under the pressure, she doesn’t break under the force of both the magic and the Darkwalker straining against it but something else begins—

There is an odd sound like the cracking of ice across deep water. It echoes strangely in the air through the deafening chorus of the Aurora and the wild, furious winds. Looking at Enola, you notice a strange transformation beginning to take hold: the light that pools at her feet begins to cover her boots, curling upwards — a strange crystallization. It slowly climbs upwards, covering Enola's body — cementing her in place, and you can only watch in horror as it crawls up her calves and up to her knees. Enola doesn't seem troubled by whatever is going on to her, but she can feel your surprise.

”Don’t let go. Promise me.” she whispers in the corners of your mind.

It crawls up her hips, her waist — she is turning to stone before your very eyes. It crawls up to her chest, choking the breath out of her lungs. Her mouth still moves, furiously uttering words. The shimmering colours of the Aurora dance, blindingly so—

The Darkwalker freezes suddenly, a terrible and strange noise escapes from it that echoes. Three jaws open wide and hang loose — the green visage turns red, as if burning. The bones begin to melt away.

”You have doomed this world.” It struggles to speak. ”You have no idea what you have done. You will see the true devastation you have caused.”

Enola’s voice is a soft whisper, and yet it carries on the air — curls in your ear.

“No. Not devastation. A new chapter.” she says, “One that does not need your apocalypse.”

Her hand twists. Something final in the gesture.

“We banish you, Devourer.” she says, “This is of our design.”

There is an explosive, guttural sound — the Darkwalker breaks into pieces, scorched away, dragged down into the depths of the darkness below. The Aurora burns too bright, blindingly so that you’re forced to close your eyes, your ears ringing. A wave knocks you back off your feet, the world goes dark — and you slip into something peaceful and quiet.

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF ALL THINGS

WHEN: May 1st.
WHERE: Blackwood.
CONTENT WARNINGS: character death; npc death.

For a long time, there was only the dark. It is soft and warm, and you are held within it. Cradled. You are safe, and it asks for nothing in return. As you exist in that dark, you hear the soft call of voices: muted laughter, happy conversations that you cannot quite grasp the words of — voices familiar to you. You do not mind, you do not fret. You are safe, as are they.

For some Interlopers, there is a distinct absence within them. The hunger that haunted you, the need to take and consume so ancient — gone. A soft balm washes over you, rests within your very bones. You are content, freed: you are no longer marked by the Devourer.

And then, the chill of the snow below you, the soft call of bird song.

When you open your eyes, clear blue skies hang above you. The early summer sun sits quietly among it, warming your cheeks.

Around you, your fellow Interlopers stir into waking. Some lie quietly, in the gentle, final throes of life — they will not have long. The world is still, the daylight is restored. A dawn rises on a new and uncertain day.

An understanding settles within you.

You have banished the Darkwalker.

Enola’s body stands frozen in place in her final stance. A statue, one palm raised upwards, her other hand with fingers splayed as if holding out her hand for it to be taken. Her body completely transformed into stone. A final cairn.

The open maw of earth before you all has closed, but the wound remains: a vast crater of ice and stone that stretches impossibly wide. A permanent scar on the landscape. The yawning grave has been closed. It stands only as a monument now.

The banishment sigil on your palm is healed but remains scarred — silvery, with the soft sheen of mother of pearl as you examine it in the daylight. A reminder of your sacrifice.

And for those who chose nature’s design: the cracks of green curve from your fingers to your elbow, like some macabre rendition of some ancient mending tradition. The green is dim, nothing more than a scar, too. A reminder of your refusal.

Marra is the first on her feet, drawing close to the stone shaped in the form of her daughter. She peers up into Enola’s face, breathless. There are no words, there is only rage and grief.

Methuselah is slower to get to his feet, his old bones stiff and sore. But he rises and moves towards Marra — raising a gnarled hand to her shoulder. He is silent too. There are no words he can offer her.

Bearoak sits in the snow, trembling. She does not understand what this will all mean, and she holds the weight of it carefully.

You take it all in, slowly. Enola is gone, the Darkwalker is gone. But there is a sense within you, that you stand at a wholly new precipice. For a long time, you do not know what to do. You find your loved ones; you comfort the dying; you exist within the unsure silence for what seems to be an eternity, the next steps unclear.

A voice calls from behind you.

“It’s done.”

Enola stands before you, her form shimmers at the edges — something almost spectral. Her face is whole once more: no withered and blackened skin, no missing eye. She appears the healthiest you have ever seen her, ethereal in the way she holds herself, the way her eyes glow. You cannot be sure of what she is now, as your eyes move from her to the stone form before the wound in the earth.

She lifts her chin, her smile is warm.

“You’ve helped me save my home. The only home I’ve ever known, ever remembered. You have banished the Darkwalker.” There is finality in her words. Certainty. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

She moves like a dream, steps through the crowds towards her stone form. Marra’s expression is unreadable, but there is apprehension in her eyes as Enola draws near.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” she says gently. “I will never expect your forgiveness. You deserved better than this.”

Marra’s eyes are filled with tears. She says nothing, but lets the moment exist. Enola nods, turning her attention back to the Interlopers.

“I promised you all that once this was done, I would put things right. I intend to keep that promise.” she says. “The Darkwalker’s influence on some of you is gone, and the only thing that remains is what you want.”

Overhead, even in the daylight, the colours of the Aurora swirl and dance amongst the blue. The ever-familiar soft chorus of sound, punctured by whispers of thousands of worlds — a crossroads of the universes.

“Now I don’t have to concentrate on keeping the Darkwalker at bay? Now I’m— like this?” she holds up a hand to examine it with an amused curiosity. “The things I could do…”


Her eyes lift to the skies for a long beat before she glances back down.

“The choice is yours, Interlopers.” Enola says gently. “I have shaped you, you are of my design. But your future is of your own.”

She looks to the Interlopers branded with the green lighting crackles of scars.

“Even the ones who didn’t choose to side with me. I hold no ill-will towards you. You get to choose, too.”

There are options, and here she offers them:

“You can remain here in this world, in this new place you may have come to call home. I can help you rebuild Milton, help reshape what has been destroyed in the past few months. A new age begins here in the Northern Territories — and one day, perhaps, we see what the world makes of it.”

Enola’s gaze moves southwards, towards the coast. She does not elaborate, but the meaning is clear. Not now, perhaps. But one day, Interlopers may be able to venture forth from this island.

“You can return home, if you want. I will put you back where you were.” she offers. “You will forget, but this place will not remain closed off to you forever.”

She raises a finger to the skies, to the soft hush of voices scattered amongst the Aurora.

“Or perhaps,” she says with a small smile. “You might want to discover what other worlds lie beyond the Aurora.”

Three options, but there is room within the spaces of her words to offer something more. Enola had meant what she had said, the offer of what the Interlopers would want when all was done. She is open to hearing Interlopers and their asks, and she will do whatever possible to grant it.

“You can choose now, or later. Some of you will need time, I know. Whenever you’re ready.” she points towards the blackened, dead trees behind you. “You can return to Milton for now. Follow the trail back.”

Enola offers to tend to the dead. She asks Methuselah to lead the way, smiling a little when she tells him that she will need someone to help with what awaits in Milton. Methuselah’s eyebrows raise for a moment in faint amusement, but his head nods and he turns to head back through the trees.

“Should you ever want to move on from here? Come back here to Blackwood. A door will be left open.” Enola tells you as you leave. “I’ll be here waiting.”

ENOLA'S FEAST

WHEN: May 1st - onwards.
WHERE: Milton, everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A.

It began with a feast.

Each and every Interloper journey began in a similar way: the unyielding cold, the biting winds, the silence of the woods, cave or empty cabin they found themselves in. But upon their arrival in the town of Milton, it still began in the same way — a feast.

Simple affairs of tables laden with rustic offerings of stew, soup and charred meats. Food that would fill an empty stomach and warm chilled bones, hearty and sustaining. The workings of Methuselah, and the Interlopers who offered their help to welcome in Interlopers fresh from the wilds of Milton.

The Interlopers return from the wilds of Blackwood, through the scorched and desolate landscape of bones and dead wood — a graveyard of its own kind, home to the yawning grave and being who had once been housed within it. Methuselah leads the way, calm and steady, back through the woods towards the portal of iridescence that Enola had opened.

As you approach, you realise that gnarled, dark trees have curled and bent around it — forming a doorway, a more permanent fixture within Blackwood.

Stepping through brings you back through to the Community Hall, and you are hit with the various scents of food.

The previous chaos of the Community Hall is gone. The slim scrapings of a place used to its brink as a shelter is no more. Cots have been folded away, blood and used medical supplies tidied away. The long tables that line the hall remain. The room is softly bright, lit by natural daylight through the windows and lamplight. The fire that sits at one end of the huge hall crackles, bright and cheerful and warm — a pleasant heat that spreads throughout.

The remains have been replaced with a bounty that patiently waits. A feast, filled with the likes of ingredients Interlopers have not seen in some time. Hot soups and stews, filled with hearty meats and vegetables; roasted meats of both game and domesticated animals; platters of fresh fruits and cheeses; breads; honey and preserves. Hot tea and coffee, wine and spirits.

You take it all in. Enola has worked quickly. Impossibly so. It makes you wonder about what else she can do.

When the last Interloper has moved into the wall, the portal closes behind you. You feel a sensation in your chest, a notion from Enola to you: the way is not blocked. A new way will open to you when you’re ready.

“Her meaning is rather clear enough.” Methuselah says softly, his head dipping as a low chuckle escapes his throat. “Come. Much has happened, and there will be much to still come. Give yourself time to breathe — eat, rest. Then we will see what is to become of you all.”

The feast begins, and perhaps it is a strange affair. An odd tension hangs in the air, the aftermath is huge and difficult to grapple with. The unknown remains before you, whatever this day may bring and whatever comes the day after that. But for now, there is the banquet before you — and a return to some semblance of normality.

It began with a feast, it ends with a feast. Gratitude and farewell, and the welcoming to a new chapter.

In Silverpoint, Molly stands in the sunlight outside the Frozen Angler. She cradles a cup of tea in her hands, lifting her head to the blue skies above. Her brow softens slightly, and she listens to the call of the seabirds on the air.

Along the beach, Jace sits upon an old chest that has washed ashore. He lets the chill of the sea breeze brush his cheeks and closes his eyes to the sun’s warmth, his face breaking out into a wild grin.

In St Nicholas' Church, Father Thomas kneels in the pews with his head bent in prayer. His voice is low and steady as he prays, and he smiles in quiet relief as the sunlight catches through the stained glass windows — casting soft colours over him.

Out in the wilds, not too far from his former home, the remains of Young Bill rest uncaringly in the earth below next to the grave of his father. The world is quiet around them.

The wildlife returns, the wilds become flush with rabbit, deer and ptarmigans once more. Wolves and bears still roam, and the danger remains in a place so wild and remote. They move with their own rhythms. The cold remains, but the earth is warmed a little by the sun’s presence.

Interlopers take stock in the coming days, and Enola gives them the space to do so. There are discussions to be had, plans to be made. Enola provides no deadline, the timelines are your own.

But soon enough, for some, a decision is made.

The way back to Blackwood comes as an intuition. You walk out into the wilds, heading for the door to take you back to Enola. Much like the doorway you’d seen before, this one too sits made from trees bent into shape to form an arch over the mother of pearl sheen of the doorway. Stepping through sends you back to the woods, and you follow the trail to return to the gravesite.

Enola sits at the feet of her mortal form made of stone, looking up expectantly as you approach. She smiles, rising to her feet.

“You’ve made a decision.” she says gently. “I already know what you want, but feel free to speak it.”

She listens with an easy patience, giving space through her silence. Her head dips here and there — considering your words, your decision, your wish. Finally, she raises her hand — the flick of her wrist, fingers twisting as she works.

“I am glad to have known you, despite the circumstances.” Enola tells you, “One by one, I called you here. There is a word for it: singillatim. But together, you have created something so much more than I could ever do alone.”

The colours of the Aurora swirl above you: a shifting of blues, greens and purples that stretches as far as the eye can see: it's almost like a storm, an impossible storm. Otherworldly, but now you have long since known — quite possible, actually.

“There is light at the end of all things.” her head tilts towards the skies with a knowing smile, “I wish you well in your travels.”

Farewell, Interloper.