Something in the sewers below Aventhine started singing back at her, and now she only ever sings in a round. Vaerith raises a spectral copy of herself every third beat and just lets it stand there — whether it lives or dies decides which song plays next.
A Bound Echo rises near a random enemy - a weak spectral duplicate with no actions of its own. It just stands there.
Nothing happens. The party spent a few swings on a decoy and got away clean - which is the point.
It collapses inward. Vaerith banks a permanent stack (+8 temporary hp), capped at four. No other boss in this bestiary raises a killable copy of ITSELF that rewards the party for killing it and the boss for them not bothering.
Her epic spell detonates in a 9m burst of negative energy centred on her, and the stack count resets to zero so the choir can build again.
Aventhine Sewers' real ceiling was Ilqaeth at CR11 as of round 7; Vaerith is pitched one notch above at CR12, and the area still had 3 free Sparky slots to take her.
She is the bestiary's first Dread Necromancer - a Charisma-based spontaneous caster with no dedicated spells.2da column in this hak, so her list is drawn from the standard Wiz_Sorc column filtered to necromancy, the same convention used for Assassin and Hexblade before her.
Real Epic Spell: Ruin (id 640/878) - granted the same way round 1 established (Epic Spellcasting + Epic Spell: Ruin + a low-numbered MemorizedList9 entry) and, new this round, its own capstone is scripted rather than left to blind AI autocast: the Unquiet Dead payoff literally IS her casting it. Ilqaeth's own dossier at CR11 explicitly went without an epic spell; Vaerith is one CR higher and does not repeat that gap.