The Domini saga : lich lords favor

Kynes and Bren descend through the ruined doorway, leaving Magistrate Magistrate Orlan Vey’s chambers behind. Below, the stairwell carries rain, candle smoke, and the fading chill of shadow magic.

Above them, Magistrate Orlan Vey appears on the landing, unarmed and holding a sealed parchment between two fingers. His signet presses fresh wax marked with his authority.

He lets the parchment hang openly over the broken threshold. The guards remain gone, and no other footsteps answer from the upper rooms.

Bren watches the parchment rather than Magistrate Orlan Vey’s face. Beneath the formal language, one clause remains dangerously narrow: it forbids seizure under his name, but says nothing about agents acting for him.

Fire blooms from Kynes’s hand and races across the parchment. The magistrate’s seal blackens, curls, and vanishes as ash scatters over the broken landing.

Kynes turns to face Vey with a predatory smile. The last ember gutters between them, leaving the magistrate’s withdrawal destroyed but its meaning unmistakable.

Vey’s jaw tightens, but he remains unarmed and alone on the landing. Below, rain murmurs through the stairwell as the final ash drifts from his fingers.

Kynes and Bren leave the Gilded Eel behind, moving through rain-dark streets toward the chandlery. The magistrate’s threat fades beneath the steady hiss of the harbor.

The chandlery’s rear door opens at Bren’s touch. Inside, Elira stands beside the cluttered table, one hand resting near the brass-bound vessel beneath a folded sailcloth.

Bren gives her the account while Kynes crosses to the vessel. He lifts it from its hiding place, checks its bands and seal, then places it inside a stout salt crate.

Shadow settles through the crate’s seams as Kynes secures the lid and binds it with cord. The vessel is enclosed, warded, and safely in Elira’s keeping.

Kynes sets one hand against the salt crate and draws a silent circle through the air. Void gathers without flame, dimming the chandlery’s lamplight to violet.

The circle opens cleanly. Veyr steps from its depth, a void spirit with a masculine silhouette,, a tall young adult figure formed from translucent purple shadow, with a smooth faceless head and thin, drifting limbs.

The spirit’s presence presses softly against the room, stirring the folded sails and making the brass bands around the crate answer with a faint, resonant hum.

Veyr’s translucent silhouette inclines toward the salt crate. Violet shadow brushes its bands, listening to the ward without disturbing the seal.

Veyr settles beside the crate, its purple form becoming a quiet sentinel in the dim chandlery. The brass bands’ hum softens, and the vessel remains sealed and watched.

Kynes leaves Chandlery workroom behind and arrives at Hall of Welcome.

The Hall of Welcome rises from pale riverstone beneath a clearing sky. Its broad doors stand open, and warm lamplight spills across rain-dark steps scented with wet cedar and hearth smoke.

Kynes and Bren arrive beneath the carved archway. Travelers murmur in the entry court while robed attendants carry bundles between guest chambers, kitchens, and a high-ceilinged gathering hall.

A bronze bell rings once from within, though no hand touches its cord. The sound rolls through the Hall, and several attendants stop to listen.

At the far end of the entry court, a sealed inner door bears fresh violet chalk marks arranged like a map of branching paths. None match the Hall’s familiar symbols.

The chalk lines brighten as Kynes crosses the threshold. Beneath them, a quiet pulse answers from somewhere below the Hall, steady as a distant heartbeat.