As Kynes holds Soul-Cutter steady, the obsidian pupil blooms into a vision. The Warden stands whole in the old dark, not a jailer, a keeper placed to guard what sleeps below House Domini.

Cold voices flood the chamber, the past echoing through stone. The spectral Warden kneels at the edge of the seal, and the hidden silver glyph on the core flares as if remembering its first bond.

The vision shifts, showing the Warden bound to the chamber, then loosening. The seal does not shatter, it opens, and something vast stirs behind the restraint, patient as buried thunder.

The chamber falls silent around Kynes, the core humming under his blade. The choice hangs in the violet light, to free the ancient guardian, or keep it chained to the ruin forever.

Kynes plants both hands against the chamber’s foundation stone. The spiral runes tighten beneath his palms, answering his will like a locked jaw opening at last.

The command drops into the vault and the silver glyph on the core flares white-hot, then loosens. Chains of pale script unwind from the Warden’s shape, peeling away in silence.

Walter is not dragged free, he simply becomes whole. The spectral figure straightens from the old binding, and the chamber’s pressure eases in a single breath.

Behind the fading vision, a narrow seam opens in the core’s face, revealing a second line of silver script hidden under the first. Something below stirs, but the Warden’s bond is gone.

The serrated blade in Kynes's grip begins to hum with a rhythmic, predatory vibration that matches the core's own pulse. He feels the entity Veyl not only anchored within the steel, but simultaneously tethered to the obsidian pupil of the core, creating a singular, hungry circuit.

The hunger in the sword answers first, then the core. Violet light surges through the bridge between steel and stone, and the obsidian pupil splits wide.

A seam of silver script tears open across the core’s face, bright and legible, as if something locked inside is being read aloud by force.

Veyl pours into the opening in a single, hungry rush. The core buckles, its glow collapsing inward instead of bursting outward.

Where the core’s eye had been, a second layer of script remains, calm now, exposed and waiting. The chamber’s pressure drops, and the violet arcs gutter into steady embers in Kynes’s blade.