The Domini saga

The northern branch lies empty beneath a pale afternoon sky. Beside an ancient milestone, a small camp has gone cold: ashes, a torn blanket, and bootprints heading east into the scrub.

A frightened pilgrim rises from behind the milestone, gripping a travel staff. Dust streaks their face, and their eyes dart toward the trail.

Nhal keeps one hand near her cloak, where the grey cloth rests concealed. She studies the camp without touching it, then points toward a folded packet caught beneath a stone.

The discarded notes bear Corven's hand. They list old family names, fragments of Kynes's history, and a meeting place marked beyond the eastern ridge. One line is underlined twice: If he follows, the witness will come with him.

Kynes lifts the packet and studies the folds, ink pressure, and copied route marks. The eastern meeting place is not a town or ruin, but a dry wash beyond the ridge, where three split stones form a crude compass.

A second examination reveals faint impressions beneath Corven's list: he prepared several copies, each naming a different approach to the dry wash. The packet is bait for anyone reading it openly, but the true route is clear from the repeated compass mark.

The pilgrim points east, toward the scrub concealing the ridge. Beyond it, a brief flash of red thread catches on a thorn and vanishes from sight. The safe knowledge is now in hand, but Corven has arranged for it to expose whoever bears it.

Kynes copies the true compass mark into the margin of his journal, preserving the repeated angle and the break in its eastern point.

Then he lowers his staff and makes three ordinary-looking jabs in the packed earth. The spacing and direction form the old code he and Bren have used through countless reiterations.

The Pilgrim watches the staff-tip instead of the mark. Nhal keeps the grey cloth concealed beneath her cloak as Kynes leads east, leaving the packet's false copies behind.

Scrub tears at cloaks and the road falls away behind them. At the ridge crest, the dry wash appears below, its three split stones forming the promised compass. A second red thread is tied around the nearest stone.

Kynes turns his staff toward the Pilgrim and releases a quiet befuddling charm. His practiced arcana folds the spell deep, stretching its confusion across the waiting hours.

The Pilgrim blinks. The ridge, the red thread, and Kynes's presence lose their order, sliding apart like scraps of a dream.

Time passes beneath the hard afternoon light. When the spell finally loosens, the Pilgrim finds only his own footprints and a staff-marked slope.

Below, the second red thread remains tied to the split stone. Nhal watches from beyond the Pilgrim's fading recollection, one hand still guarding the concealed cloth as the dry wash waits beneath the ridge.

Kynes lowers his staff, and his shadow spills outward across the ridge like ink beneath water.

A large murder of shadow crows rises from it, wings beating without sound. When the first birds brush the open air, each divides into two, the flock multiplying into a moving veil around the ridge.

The flock sweeps east and west over the scrub, breaking sightlines and swallowing the ridge in restless black motion. From below, the three split stones vanish behind the passing wings.

Kynes opens the empty memory shard and lays the packet's contents across its surface, recalling each mark, route, and warning without disturbing the bait itself.

Violet script folds inward. The shard accepts the copied account, preserving Corven's family investigation as a quiet inner record.

Kynes slips the loaded shard into his pocket, then turns from the red-threaded stone and the dry wash below.

The shadow crows part just long enough to show the eastern scrub's safest descent. Beyond it, the marked route bends toward unseen ground, waiting for the party's next step.

Kynes follows the crow-marked descent, placing each step on the firm strips between loose shale.

The slope narrows beneath thorn scrub. A stone breaks free under his boot, scraping loudly down the ravine and leaving his ankle twisted with a sharp, manageable pain.

Kynes steadies himself against a pale root and continues without abandoning the marked route. The shadow crows fold overhead, hiding the ridge behind them.

He reaches the scrub’s lower shelf, where the safe descent ends above the dry wash. Three split stones stand far behind them, reduced to dark teeth on the ridge.

Kynes lets his sea of shadows spill over the shelf, thin black forms pouring downhill without a sound.

Therefore the shadows reach the dry wash first, spreading between the reeds and stones to map every open approach.

The shadows return in overlapping fragments, carrying the shape of a low fire ring, fresh boot marks, and a strip of Corven's writing weighted beneath a stone.

The scouting costs Kynes a sharp pull through his injured ankle. His staff bites into the shale as he descends, and the sea of shadows thins behind him.

He reaches the dry wash with Nhal close behind. The route ends here, but Corven has arranged his account in the open, making the family information dangerous to carry unchanged.

Kynes crosses the wash and lifts the stone with his staff, then folds Corven’s writing into the dust-dark lining of his satchel, hidden from any passing eye.

He opens it only after the page is concealed, reading each cramped line beside the cold fire ring.

The account names Kynes’s family as a living question, not a solved mystery. Corven has compared old names, copied route marks, and prepared false versions for anyone who follows.

Kynes finishes the account. The dry wash yields its information, and the pursuit ends here, but Corven’s preparation has made the family record dangerous to carry openly.

Nhal draws the grey cloth farther beneath her cloak and looks from the hidden page to the empty eastern scrub, waiting to see whether Kynes preserves, alters, or abandons the account.

Nhal studies him across the dry wash. Then she lowers her guarded shoulders and steps clear of the cloak's edge, choosing an answer instead of another evasion.

She points toward the folded account hidden in Kynes's satchel, but does not touch it. The answer gives the dangerous page a wider meaning, while the dry wash remains still around them.

Keep the family account from being used against Kynes