The Priest of the Third Bell was the high priest of the cult of the Bell of the Apocalypse in the Caves of Chaos, south of Caladan’s domain — called “Numa Pompilio” as the dark echo of the druid Numa Pompilius. Los Condenados killed him before the third stroke could sound.
| Type | Character (cult high priest) |
| Place | Caves of Chaos |
| Chronicle | NOV (Los Condenados) |
| Fate | Killed |
| Spanish entry | El Sacerdote de la Tercera Campanada (Los Condenados) |
The bell
The cult held aloft a bell whose clapper was a pendulum of death: each swing cut a sacrificial victim in half, and the victims were the valley’s own elders, offered so that the Caladas, the lord’s painted wives, could come after the toll to grind their bones. Two strokes had already sounded; the third, said the prophecy, would open the midnight gates and call the dead: “an end for this land”.
The dark echo
He was not Numa Pompilius, first druid of the Seekers, whom the towers of the Palace of the Prism turned into a vampire and a dragon redeemed with fire. He was the same pattern refracted in a cursed key: the green cult turned to thirst, the officiant sliding into monster; he too was said, uncertainly, to be a transformed vampire. The identities do not merge: one died above, on holy ground; the other officiated below.
Death
The prophetess Basilia, infiltrated in the cult against her own high priest, opened the door; the company, wearing robes stolen from the cultists on duty, fell on the ritual as the third stroke was about to sound. In a bloody fight they killed the priest and most of his followers, and the third stroke did not sound. The same company later opened, with the second egg, a greater door than any he tolled.
See also
- The Abbot — who ordered the clapper cut: “It is the alarm”
- Obsidian Gates and Midnight Road