The Domini saga

Bren slows at the brush line and crouches over the mud. The fresh prints are wrong for deer or boar, long-heeled and dragged at the edges, as if something heavy is being pulled rather than walking.

Ahead, the buried route-mark Kynes found gives a faint answer. It is not opening, only pointing, and the pull in the air leads straight toward the road embankment.

The Road-Born Figure stops beside a broken root and stares at a patch of churned earth where the soil bulges once, then settles. A muffled scrape travels through the bank, low and distant, like nails over stone.

Kynes reaches the edge of the embankment and the line becomes plain, a thin wake of void-cold pressure threading beneath the road toward the mill. The path to the source is close now, and so is the chance to break it before more bound dead are dragged along it.

Kynes lets the pull settle in his senses, then turns his question on the road-born figure. The bank stays still, but the answer in the air shifts with him.

The road-born figure flinches as if the name itself has weight. Their uneasy stare drops to the embankment, then lifts back to Kynes.

Bren goes still beside the prints, fingers hovering over the mud. Harlen’s guarded look hardens into understanding, while the distant scrape beneath the road seems to align with the figure's admission.

The figure nods once, grim and hollow-eyed, and points along the embankment toward the road. The tether’s pull reads clear at last, driving toward the crypt's way rather than the mill yard.