The bridge of light steadies under Kynes’s hand, and the central aperture opens wider. Violet script crawls across the stone like veins finding a pulse.

A cold draft spills up from below, carrying distant voices from the vault above, alarmed and searching. Bren shifts at the edge of the chamber, blade ready, while Mara stares at the opening as if it might bite.

The aperture answers by shedding a ring of light, and the genealogy script resolves into a path downward, then upward, as if the ruin now points both to its heart and to the town above. Kynes has the power, but using it marks him as the thing the outside world fears.

The violet light within the aperture coalesces into a singular, rhythmic point of intensity at the very center of the ruin. It is not a tomb, but a living, beating core of ancient magic that recognizes the bloodline of the Domini.

Kynes lays his palm flat against the rune-carved wall. The violet script shivers, then folds inward like a shuttering eye.

A thin hush spills through the vault. The lines on the stone dim to a private glow, and the open heart below keeps beating, but its pulse no longer rides the air.

The broadcast clots, then stops. The chamber’s claim stays inside the stone, hidden under Kynes’s hand.

A fresh seam of faint silver script flickers once beneath the violet glow, then settles, as if the vault has accepted a second layer of secrecy.