The Domini saga

Weeks slip by on ordinary roads. Kynes and Bren pass through small settlements, take clean beds in roadside inns, and keep moving south under honest skies. The mill house becomes smaller in memory, just a place they once stayed.

By the time Oakhaven’s gates rise ahead, the market is loud with carts and haggling voices. Kynes hears it, a soft tapping behind their boots, perfectly timed and wrong.

Bren notices Kynes go still. Her hand shifts near her blade, but she does not draw, only scans the cobbles and the crowd as if measuring the road itself.

Kynes turns the sound over in his senses and catches a faint thread in the street, a buried trace tied back toward the mill house. The tapping is not an attack, only a trail, and it leads straight to the line still touching Rell.

Ahead, the market presses on, oblivious. Behind them, the hidden rhythm keeps pace, waiting for Kynes to decide whether to follow the trace or cut it here.

Kynes begins the chant, his voice low and rhythmic against the market noise. The air around his hand ripples, and the golden tether between him and Bren flares, casting a harsh light that reveals the hidden trail.

The tether does not just point back to the mill house. It branches, weaving into the very shadows of the market stalls and attaching itself to the backs of unsuspecting passersby, turning the entire crowd into a living, breathing extension of the house's reach.

Kynes lowers the staff and lets the crows’ rhythm settle through his spell. The violet threads in the market twitch, then loosen like knots cut under water.

The tether back to the mill house peels away from their shadows, lifting free of Bren and Kynes alike. For one clear breath, the net forgets their shape.

Kynes takes a clean sample from the golden bond, a bright thread caught between his fingers. He turns it through the air, studying its pattern against the hidden line.

Then he rewrites it. The copied pulse folds over itself, quieter now, masked and unclaimed, so the house cannot taste it anymore.

Across the market, the faint tapping thins out. It still exists, but only as a dim echo with nowhere left to grip.

The crowd keeps moving, unaware. Yet the wrong sound does not vanish. It lingers at their heels, stubborn and local, as if the house has left behind only a memory of them.