The passage opens into a round chamber of layered obsidian, each wall shifting like deep water. Violet light coils across the glass, and the hum in Kynes’s blood answers from the floor.

At the center stands an ancient black dais, ringed with silver script. The lines of House Domini pulse once, then flare toward Kynes like a recognition finally named.

The chamber shudders. From beneath the dais, the void-hunger rises in a cold surge, and the silver script crawls toward Kynes’s feet, as if asking whether he will seal House Domini, or become its next master.

The silver script pulses, waiting for the contact that will bridge the gap between the stone's history and Kynes's mind.

Kynes lets the cold script touch his mind. The chamber answers with a buried memory, not words, but posture, timing, restraint.

He sees the last master standing here with no force wasted, one hand on stone, one hand on blood, never asking the house to obey, only to recognize.

The memory folds into him. The method is simple, brutal, and exact, claim the chamber by speaking its true name, then anchor it with a living line of blood.

Silver threads race across the dais and answer his focus. The runes flare in a full ring, and a hidden seam under the central platform clicks free.

Kynes follows the remembered pattern, setting his staff and blood to the same cadence the old master used. The chamber stills, as if it has been waiting for that exact rhythm.

Beneath the dais, the void-hunger stirs and the silver script brightens to a throne-like glare, leaving the next claim hanging in the air.