The red seam throbs brighter, and Kynes feels his palm answer in kind. The hooded stranger does not retreat. Behind them, the scraping boots draw closer through the tunnel dark.

The seam splits wider for a heartbeat, spilling a crimson web through the stone. In that flash, Kynes sees the House Xar lattice, a buried spine of nodes stretching into the cliff and beyond.

The footsteps stop. From the dark ahead, another presence shifts near the wall, waiting on Kynes's answer as the seam burns like an open wound.

Kynes snaps his staff forward and calls the storm into his palm. White-blue lightning bursts down the tunnel, fanning into a whirling maelstrom that slams the hooded stranger into the wall of stone.

The red seam answers with a violent flare. Sparks crawl through the widened lattice, and the scrape marks on the floor blacken where stray power spits across them.

The stranger coughs once, still pinned by crackling force, but their hood slips back enough for Kynes to see the focused strain in their face.

A second pulse rolls through the stone. The lightning holds, but Kynes's left hand goes numb with a cold sting, and the seam spits a ribbon of red light into the dark.

From the far side of the corridor, Bren steps into view, one hand raised against the glare, eyes fixed on the stranger as the tunnel waits for Kynes's next move.

Kynes snaps the tunnel wider with force, and the hooded stranger jerks hard against the stone as the lightning maelstrom tightens around them.

His other hand closes, and the air around the stranger cinches shut like an unseen fist, pinning their throat and shoulders in place.

The red seam spits sparks through the exposed script, and the scrape marks on the floor char black as the pulse rolls down the passage.

Bren steps closer, braced against the glare, while the stranger’s hood slips further back under the pressure, their face tight with forced truth.

Kynes does not answer with words. The pressure in the tunnel contracts instead, and the stranger’s breath catches as if the air itself has chosen a point to crush.

His telekinesis twists once, precise and cold. The hooded figure’s head jerks sideways with a sharp crack, then goes limp against the wall as the lightning field sputters around the body.

The red seam flares hard in the stone, casting the blackened scrape marks in ugly relief. For one breath, the tunnel feels like it is listening.

Bren stops short, eyes fixed on the slack hood and the fading sparks. Her raised hand lowers a fraction, but she keeps her stance, ready for the tunnel to answer back.

The body is gone still. The pulse in the seam is not.

Bren steps closer, not breaking eye line with the dead stranger. Her shoulders ease, but only enough to speak plainly.

The red seam gives a low pulse through the stone, and Kynes feels the scar in his palm answer with a dull, rhythmic heat. Bren waits, steady and open, for him to choose what to share.

Kynes sets his staff tip to the tunnel floor and draws the spell inward. The red ache in his palm tightens, then loosens as pale light threads through the singed skin.

The healing takes cleanly, but not cleanly enough. A faint crackle jumps from his hand to the stone, and the seam answers with a sharper pulse.

The blackened scrape near the dead stranger flakes, and a thin line of red returns beneath it, like the tunnel remembers where the spell landed.

Kynes lowers his hand, the damage mended but the pulse still there, steady as a heartbeat in the wall. Bren waits beside him, calm and watchful, asking the question without pushing past the quiet.

Kynes speaks the words of the spell into his own palm. Pale light gathers under the scar, knitting heat and ache into a dull, sealed sting.

The red seam in the wall answers with a brief pulse, but Kynes’s hand is whole now, the wound reduced to a tight, living throb.

Bren steps closer and studies the glow in his palm, then the dead stranger’s body near the scrape marks. The tunnel feels less hostile, but no less awake.

The red light in Kynes’s scar settles into a steady rhythm. Bren waits beside him, calm and expectant, leaving the next question hanging in the dark.

The red light in Kynes's palm pulses with a sharp, rhythmic bite that radiates up his forearm, leaving a faint trail of numbness in his nerves. It is a slow, steady erosion of his own vitality, a price paid for the seal's continued presence.

The scar answers him with a steady pulse, and the tunnel seems to answer back. The rhythm is too clean to be random, a matching beat between skin and stone.

Kynes can place it now, the damage begins the first time he pushes the tether too hard. Since then, every flare has taken a little more from him, as if the seal is borrowing his strength to keep its own line open.

Bren loosens her grip just enough to look from his wrist to the red seam in the wall. The glow there stays level, patient, almost listening.

Kynes lowers himself to the tunnel floor, staff laid across his knees. The red seam and his palm scar beat once, twice, then fall into his breath.

He lets the pulse sink inward, following the line through stone, mortar, and buried script. The tunnel stretches above him in his mind, not as distance, but as a stacked chain of locks.

A point answers back higher up, sharp and old, where the rhythm stutters against a heavier seal.

Kynes opens his eyes. The corridor ahead is unchanged, but his expression hardens with certainty. He knows where the higher latch sits now, above them, tied into the same blood-red pulse.

Bren straightens, watching him and the seam in silence, while the dead stranger’s body lies still by the scrape marks. The tunnel holds its breath around them.