The Grand Arcane blossoms through Kynes’s palm, and the lower lattice answers with a harsh, grinding hum. Lines of red glass and old script flare into view, not as one chain but as many, each feeding the coastal source, his scar, and the ache in his bones.

He draws the connections tight in his mind, then slips a new current between them. The bypass takes shape, a clean arc of force that skirts his living signature and turns the mechanism back onto its own hungry intake.

For one breath, the crimson pull stutters. The floor’s cracking slows, and the red flare in Kynes’s hand dims from a blaze to a contained ember. The coastal pulse still drives beneath the stone, but now it bites into the valve instead of his life force.

The hum changes pitch, steadier now, as if the hidden brace has noticed the theft and begun to drink from its own reservoir. The exposed script crawls with light, waiting for the final cut.

The crimson light in Kynes's palm fades to a dull, harmless grey, the agonizing drain on his marrow finally snapping shut. The bypass holds, and the mechanism begins to draw its sustenance directly from the coastal source, leaving his own life force untouched and steady.

Kynes plants the staff and traces the relay’s hidden cadence with a steady hand. The Domini script answers, then fractures, and the inner brace locks open to his will.

The crimson pulse gutters. One by one, the nested rings go dark, swallowing their own light until only dead stone and a few cooling red flecks remain.

A thin seam of smoke slips from the breach and vanishes into the tunnel air. The floor’s rhythmic thrumming fades to silence, as if the entire passage exhales.

Bren eases back from the opening, blade lowered, eyes fixed on Kynes’s greyed palm. The seal lies inert, and the relay no longer pulls at anything beneath the stone.

From deeper in the tunnel, the hidden presence does not advance, but the air tightens around its silence. Somewhere beyond the dark, something has noticed the cut.