The Domini saga

Sable hurries up the stairs and into the sealed landing, both hands locked around a heavy bound ledger. Its pages whip and flutter on their own, each turn flashing a different traveler’s name in dark ink.

Kynes catches the rhythm in the paper, steady as a pulse.

Bren steps in beside him, armor gone, one hand already near the door latch. She keeps her body between Kynes and the stairwell.

A thin figure in travel-stained grey pushes into the doorway behind Sable, pausing at the sight of the vibrating book. He carries a bundle of chalk sticks and a rolled route slate.

The ledger flips open on its own to a fresh page, and one new name burns black across the paper. All three of them see it at once.

The name is not merely written in ink. Crimson, jagged script bleeds from the parchment, crawling up the edges of the paper like parasitic vines.

Kynes presses his palm to the ledger. The red script peels free in a thin, hungry wash, then drains into his void scar like ink drawn through a straw.

The book jerks once in Sable’s hands, then goes still. The smell of hot iron and wet paper fades, leaving the room suddenly quieter.

The last of the red glow crawls into Kynes’s palm, and a pale imprint remains on the ledger, bare enough to read. The pattern resolves into a single authority sigil tied to the inland road.

A dry split runs across the spine, and the page edges begin to lock stiff as slate, as if the book is deciding whether to keep talking.