The Domini Saga :the Void War

By late afternoon, Sil’Thalis and Bren reach the abandoned wayhouse east of Phandelver. Its shutters hang crooked, and old road dust veils the threshold, but fresh boot marks lead inside.

The common room smells of ash and damp timber. Bren finds a loose plank beneath the hearthstones, revealing a storage pit where a wounded traveler hides among empty grain sacks.

The survivor is a middle-aged man with a gaunt build, weather-darkened skin, tangled brown hair, and a torn ochre cloak. One hand presses a blood-darkened bandage beneath his ribs.

His gaze jerks toward a blackened mark on the plaster, a branching stain that resembles burned ink. His breathing quickens, and his next words catch behind his teeth.

Sil’Thalis reaches through the weave without touching the plaster. Magic threads across the blackened mark, reading its branching residue while ash stirs faintly around the stain.

The pattern resolves beneath his perception: not a living ward, but a copied witness-channel anchored to the wayhouse. Its branches gathered spoken names, then redirected them toward the old road south.

The weave shows a second trace within the counterfeit, thinner and angular, bearing the same altered signature found in Dunmire. It records response, not consent, and points toward a concealed route beneath the road.

The blackened stain dims as Sil’Thalis withdraws the weave, leaving its southern orientation legible in his memory. The wounded traveler watches him, breathing carefully beneath the bandage.

Sil’Thalis increases his presence in the weave, letting his witness-mark widen through the counterfeit channel. The black stain answers, and the orchard road brightens beneath his perception.

Beyond the old milestone, Ilyra Voss is clearly present among the orchard’s bare trees, alive and moving south with the sealed papers beneath her cloak. Her signature anchors the hidden route.

The sense reveals more than her location: Voss has not detected Sil’Thalis. Her counterfeit channel is focused ahead, preparing another gathered-name pattern beneath the road.

The wounded traveler grips his bandage and stares toward the orchard, while the southern trace settles into a precise path from the wayhouse to the milestone.

Sil’Thalis cuts one finger, letting a single dark bead form, then draws Lolth’s rune across the traveler’s brow. The mark kindles violet-black.

The counterfeit channel recoils from the rune, but Lolth’s claim takes hold. The traveler’s breath stills, and a thin silver shadow rises from him into the mark.

Power floods Sil’Thalis’s marked hand, cold and immense. His numb fingers loosen, and the hidden route beneath the milestone becomes sharply visible through the orchard earth.

Sil’Thalis circles the orchard through the bare trees, keeping the buried route between himself and the milestone. The stolen strength guides him around its anchor without disturbing the channel.

He emerges on the southern side directly before Ilyra Voss. The former Xar cipher-mistress halts beneath a twisted branch, sealed papers tucked beneath her dark cloak.

The counterfeit pattern tightens around the milestone, gathering the traveler’s spoken name from the wayhouse behind them. Silvery residue drains from Sil’Thalis’s marked hand, leaving his fingers numb again.

Bren reaches the orchard’s edge but stops outside the channel’s boundary, her vellum held against her chest. The wounded traveler remains behind her, alive and beyond the pattern’s reach.

Sil’Thalis studies Ilyra Voss through the bare branches, his expression unreadable. The counterfeit channel hums between them, drawing the traveler’s name toward the milestone.

Ilyra Voss watches him in silence, then presses two fingers against the sealed papers. The channel divides sharply, severing his declared choice from the gathered name behind him.

The milestone cracks with a muted chime. The counterfeit channel folds inward, carrying Ilyra Voss’s signature and the sealed papers beyond Sil’Thalis’s reach, while the southern path closes into ordinary earth.

Sil’Thalis reaches through the closing channel with telekinetic force. The air compresses around Ilyra Ilyra Voss, pinning her against the twisted tree as the sealed papers fall from her grasp.

The pressure tightens. Ilyra Voss’s resistance breaks, her body going still beneath the invisible crush, while the counterfeit channel collapses completely and leaves the milestone silent.

Bren remains outside the former boundary, protecting the separate evidence. The wounded traveler watches from behind the orchard trees as the stolen silver shadow fades from Sil’Thalis’s hand.

Sil’Thalis releases shadow mist into Ilyra Voss’s thoughts. It slips past her resistance and drags her deepest nightmare into waking clarity: every voice she trusts becomes an instrument of command.

The nightmare opens a hidden memory. Voss copied the counterfeit pattern from a sealed Xar archive beneath Blackglass Wayhouse, then adapted it for Dunmire under orders from a superior known as Merovan.

The extraction succeeds, but the mist catches on the broken channel and tears a thread of shadow from Sil’Thalis’s marked hand. His palm goes cold and briefly loses sensation.

Sil’Thalis opens his marked hand to the orchard’s buried currents, the broken milestone, and the fading counterfeit channel. Mystic power answers from each wounded seam.

Cold radiance climbs through his palm and wrist. Sensation returns to his fingers, then steadies into controlled strength as shadow gathers around his restrained hand.

The effort renews Sil’Thalis’s magical reserve and sharpens his hold without crushing Ilyra further. The cost lands in the soil: the orchard’s bare trees shed black ash.

A low tremor passes beneath the milestone, audible beyond the channel’s former boundary. Somewhere beneath the road, a copied pattern stirs in answer, while Bren keeps her evidence close.

With a sudden jerk, Sil’Thalis twists the force holding Ilyra Ilyra Voss. Her neck gives with a muted crack, and her body goes slack against the twisted tree. The act is finished.

The cost arrives at once. Black ash whips from the orchard floor into Sil’Thalis’s restored hand, burning across his palm and draining the gathered radiance back into the soil.

Ilyra Voss’s voice is only a fading remnant from the broken channel. Her sealed papers lie beneath the tree, while the copied pattern below the milestone pulses once and falls silent.

Behind Bren, the wounded traveler recoils from the corpse and the ash-choked air. Beneath the milestone, a buried latch clicks open, exposing stone steps descending into the old road.

Sil’Thalis turns from Ilyra Voss toward the wounded traveler. Telekinetic force closes around the man’s neck, and his life ends instantly, without spectacle.

The effort tears through Sil’Thalis’s restored hand. His palm splits with cold pain, and the radiance gathered from the orchard gutters into the ash-dark soil.

Bren stands rigid beside the open steps, vellum pressed against her chest. She looks from the dead traveler to Sil’Thalis, then deliberately keeps her account separate.

Below the milestone, the stone stair exhales a breath of dust. A violet thread briefly shines along the first step, carrying the traveler’s name downward before fading.