The Curse of Home recap

Kael tries to conceal demonic tokens while ancient forces pursue him, then recovers binding-stone research and attempts to rescue the dragonkin queen's daughter from another dimension. The return corridor fails, leaving the dragons lost and Kael's magic damaged. He learns that the Ritek and their Kohari agents are killing children born under Black Suns, finds his daughter Kayla, and defeats a Ritek-backed trap, although Kayla's mother dies saving him. Kael takes Kayla, Kenna, Tanner, and other families toward a legendary fortress that could serve as a refuge. Its living corruption and curse nearly kill the advance party, but Kael accepts the curse, survives, restores its ancient guardian, and becomes master of the fortress. As the families move in, a Black Chasm attack strikes Kael, Ember, two children, and the elven guardian. The Ritek meanwhile recover limited, unstable magic at the chasm and prepare further outposts and an invasion.

Previously: Kael returned from the afterlife but remained hunted as a death wizard. Demonic damage continued to threaten his mind, with Ember's magic providing a measure of stability. Ember, his wife and a leading Fae, was away on relief work when the new crisis began. Max remained one of Kael's closest allies, while Dominic commanded a cannon-equipped pirate fleet and the elven guardian continued to protect Kael. A dragonkin ruler also held Kael to an unfinished bargain: within a year, he was expected to recover her daughter and other dragons left in another dimension. These obligations followed Kael into a changed world where ancient powers had returned and the authorities continued to execute death wizards.

Two months after the sepulchre falls, Kael hides four afterlife tokens from an archdemon while struggling against lingering demonic damage. His allies split between reinforcing Ember in the Fae Islands and preparing the token mission. Dominic brings his cannon fleet after ancient forces abduct its human engineer. The engineer resists torture in captivity and befriends a Ritek historian who opposes the war. Max and the elven guardian confront the fact that their former relationship cannot simply be restored, while the guardian reunites with Dominic, the father of her daughter. Kael tests the teenage pikeman through a staged interrogation and accepts him for the mission. In the islands, Ember and the pirate fleet defeat the seal island's visible defenders, but a surviving priestess uses concealment and coerced help to escape. A month later, Kael and the necromancer rulers hide a demonic token in a defended burial ground. When ancient emissaries arrive to execute Kael, he uses the site's undead protections to force their retreat, then leaves quickly to conceal the remaining tokens without drawing war toward his allies.

Kael's party answers a southern king's secret summons but is arrested after false intelligence claims Kael plans to kill him. The king instead asks the group to evacuate his hidden partner and infant son. Hostile pendants sabotage Ember's travel spell, and ancient forces attack the destination, badly wounding Kael and the vampire. Kael escapes with a reduced party and reaches a deserted monster-hunting fortress, where evidence points to poisoned food, magical parasites, and mass violence among the vanished knights. After exposing a tribal operative planting parasites, Kael secures one token with a scorpion-like people and escapes the desert aboard Dominic's ship. Dominic formally recognizes Kael as clan family. At Caleb's Reach, the former Dead Sister secretly protects Kael from bounty hunters while he joins an antiquities caravan bound toward the archdemon's caverns. The magistrate at Bender's Pass identifies Kael and suppresses his party's magic. Holding the caravan and the teenage pikeman as leverage, he forces Kael, the necromancer queen, the royal guard commander, and the vampire to seek binding stones beneath a ruined fortress. Kael learns that the magistrate plans to betray them once they are out of reach.

At the Heliscore ruins, a wraith lord admits Kael alone and guides him to an underground laboratory. Journals reveal that the wraith is the researcher whose failed attempt to combine life and death magic transformed him. Kael finds a large cache of empty binding stones and research for producing them. The archdemon's forces capture the party, but Kael bargains away one token's location and uses the wraith as leverage. Back at Bender's Pass, Kael surrenders only part of the cache. A disguised ancient adventurer kills the treacherous magistrate, preserves Kael's hidden stones, and reveals to his sister that he opposes Ritek rule. Elsewhere, the Ritek order the deaths of death wizards and children born under Black Suns. The captive human engineer escapes with the Ritek dissident, only for a hidden subterranean community to take them into protected custody. Kael reaches the Dragon Isles and is compelled to attempt the promised rescue. In the other dimension he finds the dragonkin daughter after about a thousand years, along with one other recoverable dragon. Chasm energy ruptures their return corridor. Kael reaches home, but both dragons are pulled away and lost, and the dragonkin queen imprisons him.

Ember rejects Ritek demands that the Fae restrict travel magic, while Kael escapes the dragonkin prison with the vampire and the teenage pikeman. He retrieves the final tokens from the Black Ark and begins a long covert journey. A Fae truth hearing exposes Ritek support for executing death wizards, including children, and reveals a secret project at the Black Chasm. After almost two years on foot, Kael meets a farming family whose young twins were born under a Black Sun. He confirms their latent death magic and offers sanctuary, making protection and training for such children an explicit goal. In Death Valley, a wizard seals one token in stone and hides the other in runic clothing, removing both from Kael's possession. Kael then finds the twins' farm burned and the family killed. Kohari hunters have taken the children and are moving against another target in New Cairnwood. Their leader ambushes Kael with soul magic and poison, seriously injuring the spirit within him and disabling his arms. Kael's group kills several attackers, but the leader escapes. Despite his injuries, Kael immediately turns toward New Cairnwood to protect the next child.

In New Cairnwood, Kael discovers that the endangered child is Kayla, his daughter, and that her mother is the former Dead Sister who has quietly protected him and several refugees. She also shelters Kenna, an unstable teenage death wizard, and Tanner, whose blue shield resists magic. Kael asks Ember to help find a defensible home for children born under Black Suns. Mayor Devon Waller proposes an alliance with the Blackwall warlord to create a new kingdom, and Kael pretends to cooperate while investigating. The supposed meeting at Blackwall is a Ritek-backed trap involving the Kohari leader and a priest connected to the Black Chasm. Kael has anticipated the betrayal, and Ember, Max, and allied soldiers arrive as reinforcements. Kael kills the warlord, but the priest escapes. Kayla's mother takes a Kohari strike meant for Kael and dies. Kael evacuates the survivors and devastates the fortress, then assumes care of Kayla and the other children. A memory-impaired fallen god provides a map to a remote pre-cataclysm fortress that might become a refuge and school. Kael and the necromancer rulers authorize an expedition despite warnings that the place is cursed.

After nearly two months, the expedition reaches the hidden fortress valley. The families remain at camp while Kael leads an advance through an abandoned village, a corrupted forest, and defenses that interfere with magic. A cursed female guardian warns them to leave. Purple contamination, mutated creatures, and locked gates divide the work, while Kael restores part of the elven guardian's old power so she can move through the disrupted region. The group retrieves two keys, crosses a cemetery infested by corpse lice, and reaches an ancient basilica. One parasite briefly controls the necromancer queen before Kael removes it. Inside, animated stone knights attack from the rafters. The female guardian returns with a huge lantern-bearing protector, and the advance party falls through a trap beneath the altar. In the underground prison, they find the remains of an earlier expedition and learn that it sought a legendary device for raising unlimited dead but found only death. Max destroys one undead priest, and the survivors begin moving through the prison while more of its guards converge. Kael, Ember, Max, the queen, the pikeman, and their remaining allies are trapped below the basilica, with the vampire's location still unknown.

The survivors rescue the vampire and escape the prison into the fortress, where their magic returns. Red runes keep the purple corruption outside, but both forces are dangerously invasive. The fortress's armor attacks the giant guardian, and Kael uses the red magic against it. A demon caretaker explains that the creature anchors a curse and cannot simply be killed. Kael is contaminated and stops breathing, but Ember revives him by transferring life force, advancing the change that may mark her as a darkling. To prevent the curse from consuming everyone in the region, Kael accepts it into himself. His black vines absorb both invasive magics, and the guardian emerges restored as an ancient Northman. Seven days later, families move into the fortress. The caretaker recognizes Kael as its master and gives him a chain linking him to its defenses, although much remains inaccessible. A remote Black Chasm attack then makes Kael, Ember, two children, and the elven guardian collapse. At the chasm, the Ritek recover only a localized portion of their original magic. Their new structure is already being corrupted and may fail within a year, yet they plan more outposts and a southern army. A knight-mage begins seeking evidence that Ritek interference caused Kael's failed dragon rescue.

Kael survives taking the fortress curse into himself and becomes the site's new master. The transformed guardian returns to his ancient Northman form and helps extend protective runes while families, including Kayla, Kenna, and Tanner, move into the refuge. Kael still cannot command all the defenses, and the region's red and purple invasive magics remain poorly understood. Ember's use of life-force magic to revive Kael advances the change that could make the Fae regard her as a darkling. A remote Black Chasm attack then makes Kael, Ember, two children, and the elven guardian collapse, leaving their conditions uncertain. At the chasm, the Ritek recover a localized portion of their old magic and build an outpost around it. Corruption is already entering the structure and is expected to overwhelm it within a year, but the Ritek plan more structures and a southern invasion. The dragonkin daughter and her companion remain lost, the archdemon still seeks the hidden tokens, the human engineer remains valuable to the Ritek, and a knight-mage begins seeking proof that Ritek interference caused the failed dragon rescue.