The Domini saga

The terrace answers Kynes’s breathing with a low, hungry tremor. Violet cracks spread from the vent and race toward the river stones, as if the earth is mapping him in return.

Bren snaps her gaze to the glow, then back to Kynes. The cracks stop at the edge of his stance, waiting, feeding, recognizing him as the anchor.

The riverbank answers with a faint pulse, and a second seam opens in the damp soil beyond the terrace. The void-current is spreading through the ground, one pulse at a time.

Kynes plants his staff at the terrace edge. The violet light surges toward the wood, then bends under his will, diving into the earth instead of climbing the walls. The cracks dim, and the path of the threat becomes clear, the current is moving through him toward Phandelver unless he forces it down first.

Kynes threads the surge through a tighter pattern, and the violet cracks answer like spokes around a hub. For one breath, the river takes the excess, then the flow veers away from the water and sinks toward a point beneath the bank.

He presses the pattern flatter, using the ground itself as a sieve. The void-current splits cleanly, a narrow ribbon taking shape between hunger and waste, while the rest is forced down into stone that drinks and disperses it.

The glowing vent in the terrace widens into a careful lattice of channels, no wider than a thumb, etched in pale violet. The river stones stop pulsing at random and begin to hum in steady reply, as if the bank is no longer being fed, only bled off.

Kynes turns the last excess into usable charge, gathering it into the sealed nodes along the terrace edge. The energy settles there, contained and quiet, while the deeper pull in the soil is choked to a faint tremor.

The riverbank goes still except for one thin pulse under the mud, marked and cornered. Whatever lies below is now exposed by absence, not power, and it waits for the next strike.