The purification of the nested ghost turns a grotesque haunting at an abandoned well into a rescue of the child spirit trapped within it. With Wicker’s knowledge of ghost rites, Cargo’s protection, and Theo’s healing magic, the companions destroy the creature that is stirring up the surrounding ghosts, then close the well itself. The encounter ends not with triumph over a monster alone, but with a ghost finally released and a dangerous place removed from the landscape.

Background and the Well

As dusk fell, the party approached a town ringed by temporary fencing. The farms along the road had dark windows, and Wicker sensed ghosts nearby; Veiv noted that the season made their presence unsurprising and suggested the barriers might have been erected for that reason. The threat was thus already part of the town’s surroundings before the companions reached its source.

Cargo warned the group as they came to the edge of a small glen. Across it stood a moss-covered well: its wooden winch and cover had rotted away, although the stone structure remained intact. Theo thought he heard distant calling and screaming from within or beyond it. Wicker could not tell at first whether the well itself was the source, but the appearance of a large shadow soon made the danger visible. It was a decaying deer corpse joined to the rotting hind legs of a bear, with bones protruding at unnatural angles and old blood matted in the remaining fur.

Wicker identified the creature as a nested ghost. Their explanation gave the encounter its stakes: a ghost that haunts a place for long enough may nest in available corpses, and the other attacking ghosts are stirred up by the one that has nested. Destroying the powerful spirit could release the others from its influence, but the corpse was protecting its source. The well and the creature therefore formed a single problem: the companions needed to keep the beast occupied while reaching the place where the haunting began.

Diverting and Burning the Creature

Wicker directed the group toward the well, while they and Cargo drew the creature away and Theo went by another route. The plan immediately became dangerous. Though mostly rotten, the beast was fast, and it pursued Theo. He could not be sure why it singled him out: perhaps it sensed Malthios inside him, or perhaps it was drawn to the strong smell of healer’s magic.

Theo turned and threw holy water at the creature. Where it struck, flesh and bone steamed and bubbled as if scalded; the ghost shrieked. Cargo bit into one of its hind legs and dragged it away from Theo, giving him the opening to run for the well. The air there was intensely cold, and cobwebs hung from the stones. Even with his companions buying him time, reaching the source meant approaching the site of the haunting directly.

The confrontation continued when Theo returned with Cargo and Wicker. The nested corpse was already pacing the glen, so there was no need to hide. Wicker threw a lantern at its feet, coating it in oil; after speaking a rune, they ignited a torch and the group attacked from either side. Cargo stayed close to Theo, since Wicker expected the ghost to focus on him. As soon as Theo entered the glen, he heard a child’s voice pleading to go home.

Theo raised his magic, whose green light outshone the torch, and the beast flinched. Wicker used that hesitation to swipe the torch across the oil-soaked corpse. The flames caught in the rotten flesh and fur. Wicker struck it twice more with the torch, which had been marked with fire-spell runes to make its flames burn hot and bright. The creature’s shrieks, the burning corpse, and the cracking bones mark the shift from pursuit to destruction: the source of the other ghosts’ unrest was being consumed.

The Child’s Release

When the flames died, the nested beast had collapsed into a blackened skeleton. The companions waited several heartbeats. A silvery glow then appeared alongside the orange firelight and Theo’s fading green magic, and the figure of a boy formed above the remains. He was clearer than before, with tears on his cheeks, and asked to be taken home, reminding Theo that someone had promised him this.

Theo crouched, held out his arms, and offered to help. The boy met his eyes for another heartbeat before running into them. As Theo held him, his magic washed over the spirit; Theo felt the pain melt away as the figure faded. This is the encounter’s decisive release: the child does not merely disappear with the corpse, but reaches Theo and is met with an act of healing.

Malthios responded with bitter anger at the cruelty mortals could inflict. Theo shared the anger over the child’s suffering, while recognizing that nothing could undo it and that other innocents might suffer in the future. The scene therefore refuses to treat purification as a simple erasure of harm. The ghost can be released, but the suffering that made his plea necessary cannot be reversed.

Closing the Source

The boy’s release did not end the work. Wicker still sensed ghosts and believed they were the nested spirit’s victims. They were less powerful, but Wicker did not want to leave them unrestful. Using salt, incense, a torch, and the runes traced with their spoon, Wicker performed a further rite at the well. They sprinkled salt counterclockwise around its rim, lit five sticks of incense and placed them among the stones, then used their magic before instructing Theo to toss the torch into the opening.

Wicker planned to have Veiv destroy the well the following day. Theo instead drew on Malthios’s mana and brought the stones down into the opening, then collapsed the surrounding earth into it. The well disappeared beneath a bare mound of dirt. Theo wished he knew the child’s name so he could leave a marker, and prayed to Arriss for the boy’s peace. The wish for a name and memorial stands in contrast to the well’s anonymous dead: its closure prevents future hauntings, but cannot give the child an identity the companions never learned.

On the walk back toward town, Theo said he hoped never to see another nested ghost. Wicker answered by recognizing that they had made a good team, imagining that in another life the work might have been theirs. Their exchange closes the event on companionship rather than victory. The sequence also recalls Leafel’s distinct customs for honoring the dead: at Glefald’s funeral, his wish for burial beneath a planted tree was honored, and his knitted work was shared as mementos. The child at the well receives no known name or planted marker, but Theo’s care, prayer, and destruction of the source give the haunting a form of closure. The cleansing restores some order to a town facing seasonal ghosts without pretending that the dead, or the living, can be spared every consequence of cruelty.