The Domini saga

The broken floorboard gapes beneath the foreman’s desk. The ledger lies beside the custody slate and succession record, while the quiet quarry makes every restrained breath audible.

The first watcher shifts against his bindings. Slaan notices the movement and places one boot across the loose cord, keeping him still without drawing her blade.

Bren nods and moves the bound watchers closer to the gallery wall, while Slaan and Nhal take positions with clear sight of every prisoner and the open door.

Kynes follows the western drainage marks beyond the foreman’s office. Dust scuffs and fresh bootprints lead behind the weighing room, confirming Pellan’s route through a narrow service passage.

The passage opens behind the weighing room, where an old brass key-mark is scratched into the stone beside a concealed stair. Pellan’s trail continues downward, plainly visible in the dust.

Kynes follows the two fresh prints down the concealed stair, placing each boot beside the clearer marks. Dust settles softly from the old stone overhead.

The stair ends beneath the weighing room in a low service passage. Pellan’s prints continue through dust, while the woman’s narrower steps turn toward a timbered doorway.

Beyond the doorway, Kynes finds a neglected records alcove with empty shelves and a stone table. A brass key-shaped impression marks the table’s edge.

Fresh scratches surround the impression, and a faint line of disturbed dust leads from the table toward a second passage descending beneath the western wall.

The voices from above reach him faintly through the stairwell. Pellan’s trail remains clear below, and the hidden route opens farther into the quarry’s buried works.

Kynes descends farther beneath the western wall, following the disturbed dust past the timbered doorway. The air grows colder, carrying the smell of wet stone and old timber.

The passage levels into a buried workroom beneath the quarry. A cracked weighing platform occupies the center, surrounded by abandoned crates and a low stone arch.

Pellan’s heavy prints cross the room toward the arch. Beside them, the woman’s steps stop at a half-open wooden door, where fresh brass scratches mark the threshold.

Kynes passes through the wooden door and reaches a lower chamber cut directly into the quarry bedrock. Pellan and the brass-keyed woman have already entered, leaving their tracks plainly visible.

At the chamber’s far wall stands a sealed stone doorway beneath an old foreman’s mark. The route ends there, with Pellan’s footprints before the threshold and the woman’s beside them.

The brass key tears free from the woman’s hand and flies across the chamber into Kynes’s grasp. Pellan and his companion halt mid-step.

Invisible force locks both intruders against the bedrock wall. Pellan’s boots leave the dust, while the woman’s raised hand remains fixed beside the sealed doorway.

The key settles heavily in Kynes’s palm, cold and ridged from long use. Its teeth match the brass-shaped impression found above, confirming the woman carried the needed tool.

Kynes delivers the command in Sil’thalis’s cold, menacing cadence. The chamber seems quieter around the words, while the brass key remains firm in his hand.

Pellan’s boots settle back onto the dust, though neither prisoner risks moving. Their answers come quickly now, stripped of their earlier confidence.

Kynes asks coldly, the brass key resting motionless in his palm. The accusation settles over the chamber, stripping away the pretense of a mere succession dispute.

The cost of the question becomes plain when Sereth studies Kynes with new caution. His suspicion is no longer hidden, and she now understands exactly what he protects.

The brass key turns in Kynes’s hand as the first seal releases with a dry click. The stone doorway opens onto a plain records passage, and the route into the archive lies accessible beyond it.

Kynes closes his hand around the brass key. Invisible pressure folds Sereth and Pellan against the stone, pinning them hard enough to steal their breath without breaking bone.

The pressure tightens. Sereth’s composure cracks first, while Pellan’s boots scrape helplessly against the floor. The sealed passage remains open behind them.

Kynes increases the invisible pressure. Stone groans behind Sereth and Pellan, stealing their breath while the open records passage waits in silence.

Sereth nods toward the passage beyond the opened seal. Her brass key remains in Kynes’s hand, while Pellan struggles against the pressure without attempting resistance.

Their accounts align on the clause, the hidden copy, and Maelin’s forged reports. The pressure holds them fast, but their answer now carries corroborating detail rather than pleading.

Shadow-tendrils rise silently from Kynes’s feet, gathering from the dark between the stones. They curl around Sereth and Pellan without tearing or striking, drawing their hidden fears into the open.

The fears press forward in their minds, immediate and overwhelming: Maelin’s judgment, the ruined claims, the sealed record slipping beyond their reach. Both prisoners go rigid against the wall.

Sereth’s brass-keyed hand slackens, and her gaze fixes on nothing. Pellan’s struggle ceases beside her, his breath shallow as the shadows hold him immobile and unresponsive.

The records passage remains open behind them. Their fears now occupy every thought they can reach, leaving no strength for speech, resistance, or deception.

Dust settles across the chamber. The brass key rests securely in Kynes’s hand, while Sereth and Pellan remain pinned in silence before the witness route.

Kynes leaves Sereth and Pellan pinned in silence and returns to the foreman’s ledger, carrying it into the open records passage for better light.

He turns each oil-darkened page carefully. The entries record Ilyr’s severance clause, the witness register’s hiding place, and Maelin’s repeated alterations to the succession reports.

A brittle page tears beneath his thumb, exposing a concealed notation: the register was moved from the first alcove to the sealed chamber after Maelin began searching.

The inspection yields its answer, but the torn page makes a sharp crack in the quiet passage. From above, Bren calls once, alert to the noise.

Protect the sealed record from Maelin’s forged claim