The Domini saga

The hum under the Hall of Welcome sharpens into a grid. Pale runes bleed up through warped floorboards, and the bedrock below answers with a clean, geometric glow.

Sable crouches with the Ledger, both of them tracing the pattern at once. The lines are not random, they are a map, and they are locking onto Kynes's marked hand.

The floor dips, then snaps level, as if the room briefly forgets what shape it is. A thin seam opens in the glowing pattern, showing a depthless dark beneath the hall.

Above the seam, Kynes's palm flares, and the pattern widens like an eye. The next pulse will either seal the hall to his will, or drag the Architects back through his connection.

Kynes leaves Hall of Welcome behind and arrives at Void-Well.

Kynes is no longer under the Hall. He stands in a hollow of black stone and cold vapor, where the void-well opens like a polished wound below his boots. The air tastes of rain on metal, and the marked hand he drives forward throws back a dim, hungry glow.

The well answers at once. A lattice of pale geometry rises around him, not as walls but as spokes, and at their center sits a buried core veined with red script.

Kynes drops through the opening in a clean blur, staff tucked in close, cloak snapping once in the thin air. He lands hard on one knee beside the core, the impact sending a tremor through the pattern.

The red script peels back in strips, exposing an older binding underneath, one that carries his mark like a key and a hook at once.

The core flares, then steadies, held in place by Kynes's presence. Above him, the geometry tightens into a seal instead of a mouth, and the pull into the sanctuary goes slack.