Two weeks after the goblin pact, Phandelver feels wrong underfoot. The cobbles hum with a metallic pulse, and the gold scar on Kynes's palm answers it like a second heartbeat.
Bren stays close, eyes on the street. Mara hurries up with a stack of damp parchment, her face drawn from too little sleep.
Mara
The tremors near the old well are worsening. Every night, more often, farther out.
Kynes
The pulse is matching the scar, not the street.
Mara spreads the top sheet between them. A crude map shows the well circled again and again, with fresh marks radiating toward the center of town.
Bren
If the sinkpoint is waking under Phandelver, it is not staying buried for long.
The hum deepens. For one breath, the market noise thins around the three of them, as if the town itself is listening.
Mara
Whatever is calling through the well, it is tying into your mark, Kynes. If you mean to protect this home, we have to find the source before it opens wider.
✓ Quest Accepted
Investigate the old well breach
“Is there a way to permanently remove the thing on my hand”
NO (Likely, rolled 80)
Kynes probes the golden lattice beneath his skin, but the mark remains stubborn and absolute. The connection is not a curse to be lifted, but a permanent scar woven into the very marrow of his hand.
“What if I chop the hand off again to remove it”
NO, BUT (Unlikely, rolled 37)
The void-tether is not a physical appendage, but a fundamental rewrite of his own essence. Severing the flesh would only leave the mark to manifest upon the stump, as the archive recognizes the soul, not the limb.
“What if I ask for help from a supernatural source to remove it, will that work”
YES, AND MORE (Unlikely, rolled 7)
The air around Kynes grows heavy, the scent of ozone and ancient dust rising from the cobblestones as the void-tether responds to his query. A spectral, multi-faceted eye manifests in the air before him, its gaze piercing through the skin of his palm to the very architecture of his soul.
The Void-Entity
You seek to excise a part of yourself that has already become the foundation of your existence. I can strip the mark away, Kynes, but you will find that the void it leaves behind is far hungrier than the tether itself.
Kynes
A cure that demands a larger sacrifice than the disease.
“To the void entity " go on..."”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -1)
Kynes
Go on.
The Void-Entity
Then hear the shape of the bargain. Remove the mark, and the well below you answers with nothing to leash it. It will open wider, feed harder, and take the nearest hungry thing as its mouth.
The spectral eye tilts, and its reflected light skims past Bren and Mara, toward the house frame, the street, and the buried stone beneath Phandelver.
The Void-Entity
I can tear away the tether. I cannot promise the absence it leaves will stay empty.
Kynes
So the scar is a clamp, not a curse.
Bren tightens her grip on her wrench, watching Kynes instead of the eye. Mara shifts closer to the timber frame, their calm thinning into wary focus as the ground gives one more rhythmic shudder.
The Void-Entity
Ask your next question, Kynes. The well is listening.
“" so my cursed glowlight of a hand is the metaphysical cork in this..eh?" I ask the eye”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +0)
Kynes
So my cursed glowlight of a hand is the metaphysical cork in this... eh?
The Void-Entity
Cork, seal, nail in the lid. Your scar keeps the well from opening all at once. It holds the shape of the leak.
The eye’s pale shine settles on Kynes’s palm, then flicks down through the boards and stone, as if tracing a buried seam.
The Void-Entity
You are not the wound, Kynes. You are the clasp across it.
Bren lowers her wrench a fraction, relief and suspicion crossing her face together. Mara watches Kynes, then the floor, reading the answer into the trembling boards.
Kynes
The well is the source.
The red pulse in Kynes’s palm steadies into a dull, stubborn glow, matching the rhythm under the house frame.
Quest Complete
Investigate the old well breach
New Gift: Well-Spring Arcane Attunement