The Domini saga

The briars part on a blackened ring of earth. At its center, a stone altar rises from the loam, half-swallowed by frost and ash.

Symbols crawl across the altar’s face, the same hooked geometry as the mark in Kynes’s palm. The air feels thin here, strained, as if something tried to root itself into the surface and failed only partly.

A smear of void-dark residue clings to the stone groove, and the scorch circle matches the size of a binding rite. Whatever passed through was not hunting blindly, it was preparing a foothold.

Kynes’s palm throbs in answer, the taint waking like a lock recognizing its key. The altar is a map, a wound, and a warning, and the path forward is now clear.

Kynes settles into the circle, blood darkening the chalked Gran lines. The chant starts low, measured, and the altar answers with a faint shiver.

The hooked symbols peel apart under his voice. Ash flakes from the stone groove, and the black residue thins into a map of seams beneath the roots.

Kynes presses harder, and the circle flares. The surface around the altar cracks in a ring, exposing a buried lattice of old binding-threads sunk into the earth.

The revelation lands cleanly. The altar is not the source, it is a cap, pinning a permanent scar into the land and holding something deeper in place.

His chant bites through the last of the altar's hold, and the cold pressure below the grove breaks into dissipating mist. Bren tightens her grip, watching the cracked ring and waiting for his next move.