Prologue - Death House

Taniwha wades into the water moving as best as one can through the liquid to follow Amalthea, he scans the alter as passes keeping a noticeable space between it and himself. The look on his face one of mistrust and anger.

Abraham gets the idea from observing the dried blood on the chains and altar that victims were hung by the chains (which undeniably fit human-sized wrists) and sacrificed over the altar. Neither Abraham nor Taniwha can figure out what dark god this macabre scene is meant to worship, but Taniwha notices that the ghouls carved onto the altar are partaking of the flesh of some sort of amorphous blob covered in eyes and teeth. This is not the iconography of any religion he knows.

As Abraham approaches the altar, the voices begin to whisper again, as if eagerly awaiting the beginning of some profane ritual. Abraham can almost imagine the fleeting shadow-figures of robed cultists kneeling before the altar.

How stable is the alter? Can it be upended? Or is it carved from the very floor? (Or so massive it cannot be moved?)

Taniwha keeps his distance as he watches Abraham approaching the alter, he shivers a little looking at ghouls dining upon flesh. "Twisted features goring on flesh, doesn’t take much to taint a soul"

The altar is large enough that a human can lay across its surface, and appears to be made of solid marble. It weighs at least a ton, but probably multiple.

Taniwha cannot recognize the figure on the altar. Either it doesn't exist, or it's something he just hasn't seen before. At the same time, as Abraham is examining the altar, the shadows around the ledges eddy and swirl. Thirteen hooded figures appear on the ledges overlooking the room. Each one holds a torch, but the torches are as ethereal and ghostly as their wielders and the flames seem to glow black and absorb the very light out of the room. Instead of faces, these figures have yawning voids under their hoods.

The ghostly chant begins again, but this time its words are different, yet they are clear, sonorous, and dreadful. "One must die! One must die! One must die!"

Amalthea whirls around to look at the altar and the group chanting. She starts to move back to the group in case something comes to attack them. Does her Divine Sense identify anything in the area?

"I think not. Begone foul things!"

He doesn't hesitate, casting Sacred Flame on whichever hooded shade is closest.

Narissa wants to see if her mage hand will push through one of the shadowy figures, are they ghosts like the children?

Amalthea focuses on the shadows encircling the room, but they don't register as anything infernal or undead. However, she does detect the presence of a fiend underneath the pile of leaves and refuse. Meanwhile, Abraham's mage hand slams into one of the robed forms, but the shadows just swirl around the flame and the figure reforms when the flame disappears. The same happens with Narissa's mage hand: the hand harmlessly glides through the shadow as if through a veil of smoke. It seems that these figures are mere illusions, yet nothing you have tried so far seems to dispel them.

Still they chant endlessly: "One must die! One must die!"