The Domini saga

Kynes stands in the heart-chamber, before a brass-and-bone mass that throbs like a living wound. Three seals overlap the path ahead, each one warping the stone around it.

The void hum deepens, and the shadow on Kynes's palm stirs against his skin, hungry and bright.

Bren holds at the shaft behind him, blade ready, eyes fixed on the chamber mouth while the floor shivers under the pulse. Gold traces on the nearby stone dim as the machinery gathers itself.

Kynes brings the Soul-Cutter up against the nearest seal. The blade bites, and the first ring of warped light cracks apart, exposing a darker line beneath it.

Kynes feeds the surge into the Soul-Cutter. Venom pours through the blade like hungry ink, and the second seal splits with a dry, brittle crack.

The third seal shudders, then fractures in the same instant. Red script peels off the stone in strips and dies against the floor.

The brass-and-bone mass convulses, its hidden lines exposed. A pulse of gold runs through the chamber, and the path beneath it opens with a grinding groan.

Kynes stays planted for a breath, blade still buried in the broken seal. The chamber tilts as the heart's defenses fail, and dust rains from the ceiling.

Venom surges through Kynes's hand and the cracked stone drinks the black-violet flow. The last red traces shiver, then turn inside out, as if something in them has been bitten by a darker hunger.

Kynes twists the spell through the exposed seams. The gold pulse resolves into a cleaner pattern, and a hidden thread answers from deeper below, cold and unmistakably alive.

The dormant brass-and-bone mass answers with a heavy groan. Dust lifts off the floor in a ring around it, and the opening beneath the heart widens by a handspan.

The spell costs him, a sharp burn blooming across his palm as the last of the red script dies. Above, the chamber groans harder, and one cracking support stone drops from the ceiling behind Bren.

Kynes vanishes in a blink of shadow, the void-step snapping him through the widening gap and into the chamber below.

He lands beside the source, where the hidden pulse beats through a cracked knot of brass, bone, and blackened script. The Soul-Cutter comes down hard.

Steel bites the core. The pulse lurches, then fractures with a dry, ringing crack that rolls through the floor and up the walls.

Black-violet force floods the break, and the sealed shape below caves inward. Red light spits out in a few last threads, then gutters out.

Above him, the heart room answers with a heavy shudder. Stone dust pours from the cracked support, and the path deeper beneath Phandelver stands open in the wobbling dark.