Kynes's palm flares again, violet heat beating in time with the buried pulse. The shadow in his veins does not merely linger, it drinks, and the Hall seems to lean toward him.
Venom spills across his hand as a living lattice of dark veins, stretching wider with every pulse. The Ledger rattles on its own, ink crawling into a stark map of the void-well feeding straight into Kynes.
Kynes
The energy is not just touching him. It is going into him.
Bren
Kynes, your hand.
Bren steps in close, blade half-raised, her eyes fixed on the mark as the room's pale runes flicker around them. Sable stiffens beside the Ledger, tracing the bleeding ink with careful dread.
Sable
It is not only watching now. It is growing.
The map finishes itself, and a second line blooms from the well into Kynes's marrow. For one breath, the pulse below the floor answers from inside his body.
✓ Quest Accepted
Suppress the parasite surge
“" Venom buddy, what's going on?" I ask”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +1)
Kynes
Venom. What are you doing to me?
Venom
Feeding on the seam you opened, not the whole of you. The well tastes your mark, then follows it inward.
Bren
That sounds less like a meal and more like theft.
Venom
It is both. I am not the only thing pulling, Kynes. The well answers your blood because it recognizes a door.
Sable
The Ledger agrees. The siphon is keyed to his pulse, not forced through it.
Venom
You can cut me loose, and lose what I have taken with me. Or you can let the current settle and keep the power it has already taught your body to bear.
Bren
Kynes, say the word. We do this your way, not the well's.
““Neither. Venom, stop feeding from the seam and stay with me. We're not cutting you loose, and we're not letting the well decide what enters my body. Let the power already inside me settle while we close the siphon. If I choose to draw from the well later, we'll do it deliberately.” I pause. " You mean the well is try to draw from me also, or something else is trying to siphon off of me."”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +1)
Kynes lowers his raised hand a fraction, not in surrender, but in control. The violet sheen inside his palm steadies, then dims to a hard, watchful glow.
Kynes
Neither. Stop feeding from the seam and stay with me. We do not cut you loose, and the well does not decide what enters my body.
The pulse in the floorboards shudders, then eases. Pale runes below the warped boards lose their frantic flicker and settle into a thinner, measured beat.
Kynes
Let the power already in me settle while we close the siphon. If I draw from the well later, it happens by choice.
Venom
Fine. I release the pull, but the current remains in you.
Kynes
Is the well trying to draw from me too, or is something else siphoning off of me?
Sable
The Ledger says both can be true. The siphon is keyed to your pulse, and something beneath it is drinking the route it makes.
Bren shifts closer, blade lowered but ready. The ink map on the Ledger holds steady, its lines no longer racing, while the chamber keeps its uneasy silence.
Quest Complete
Suppress the parasite surge
New Gift: Parasite-Purging Arcane Insight