A month has passed since the Hall sealed behind Kynes. He stands on a moonlit rise above the property, grass wet underfoot, the old portal now a narrow shimmer in the dark. The shallow dip beside it is clearer than before, a usable line down into the grass.

At the edge of the field, Clerk-Under-Mask waits with a bundle of salvaged scrolls from the Drowned Archive. It lifts one stiffened page and points toward the town’s faint glow.

Kynes looks past the construct to the grass. A clawed trail cuts through it, crossing the slope and vanishing toward Phandelver. The marks overlap the route Mara took earlier, as if something follows her scent and his at once.

The portal flickers again, dim and narrow, while the new trail offers only one clear answer. If Kynes leaves the parasite feeding, the beacon strengthens. If he follows the trail now, he can cut the hunt before it reaches the town.

The construct lowers the scrolls, its own attention fixed on the clawed ruts as if reading a sentence cut into the grass.

Moonlight slides across the trail, and the marks point both toward Phandelver and back at the shimmer of the portal, like two hands pulling the same thread.

Kynes lifts his staff and spills sea-dark shadow across the rise. The grass dulls, the trail sharpens, and the air takes on a deeper edge.

He steps through the fold with void-step speed, and the clawed marks pull him forward like a chosen vein in the earth.

Moonlight thins behind him. Ahead, the ruts split around a shallow descent, and the hunter's path sinks toward the dark.

Shadow gathers at Kynes's heels, muffling his passage as he closes the distance. The trail no longer feels like spoor, it feels mapped.

The clerk's voice fades behind him while the grass ahead bends with a fresh pressure, as if something has just turned to listen.

Kynes drops into the hollow behind the trail, his shadow folded thin around him. The clawed path keeps sinking ahead, and the grass stops whispering under his boots.

He stays low and lets the hunter move first. Ahead, the ground dips toward a darker seam of earth, and the marks remain clean, as if nothing has touched them but intent.

The trail opens beside a slit of exposed stone. Kynes gains the bend without being seen, and the line of tracks now runs straight into his reach.

A pale knot of shadow flickers at the far end of the descent, not yet a body, only the shape of something listening with its whole weight.

Kynes holds his pace and keeps the clerk's warning behind him. The hunter's line is his now, and the descent ahead waits for his decision.

Kynes lifts off the slope in a hush of shadow, boots leaving the grass without a rustle. The hollow below falls away, and the trail opens beneath him like a dark vein in the hill.

From above, the claw marks resolve into a straight, deliberate drag toward Phandelver. Their edges press the grass flat, and the shadow at the bend gains a throat, then a shoulder.

Kynes climbs higher, just enough to clear the rise. The watcher below becomes visible at last, a House Xar hunter shape crouched in the descent, head angled toward the town.

The hunter pauses, as if hearing the air change above it. Its shadow tightens around the trail, and the path to Phandelver is now openly marked.

Kynes hangs in the night air with the quarry revealed below him, the town beyond it, and no cover left between them.

Kynes drops out of the air like a blade, shadow folding tight around him. He hits the hunter’s flank and locks both arms around its torso before it can turn fully toward Phandelver.

The House Xar shape bucks once, claws scraping the slope, but Kynes hauls it cleanly off balance. Grass tears under the sudden lift as they rise together above the dark swath.

Clerk-Under-Mask stays back on the rise, rigid and watchful, while the hunter twists in Kynes’s grip. The trail below is left empty, broken by the gouge where its weight was ripped free.

Kynes drives upward on a burst of force, carrying the hunter back over the slope and away from the town line. The figure hangs helpless for a breath, then drops hard when Kynes releases it.

It slams into the grass with a dull, final impact and lies still. The clawed route to Phandelver loses its charge, as if the hunt’s next step has been cut from the land.