The Vale changed once Azerai walked.
Reality, which had once simply trembled at the marked, shivered for her.
Thread-bridges tightened beneath her bare feet. Starlight recoiled. The gold-stitching across the sky dimmed like it feared being seen. She didn't command it. She reminded it.
And that was worse.
Kael followed first—without hesitation. The others trailed, a step behind their courage.
Rin muttered under her breath, "She's not from here, is she?"
"She's older than here," Juno whispered, his voice uneven. "The Vale is responding like a child caught lying."
They walked through memoryscapes stretched into eternity. Not visions. Not illusions. Stuck time.
A market mid-laughter, where no one moved.
A battlefield paused at the second before death.
A mother reaching out, frozen mid-sob.
It all felt too personal.
"They're echoes," Azerai said quietly. "Not yours. Not mine. Just… abandoned. History that didn't pass judgment."
She touched one—a little girl cradling a flower—and the image unraveled into dust.
"I used to believe memory was mercy. I don't anymore."
As they walked, Kael saw something.
Flickering at the edge of perception.
His reflection.
No, not reflection—refractions.
Hundreds of Kaels. Some with different eyes. Some with no mouth. Some older, battle-worn. Some barely thirteen.
All walking beside him.
None looking at him.
Just moving. Forward. Forward. Forward.
He didn't speak of them.
But Azerai noticed.
"You're stabilizing," she said gently. "That's why the throne fears you now."
"What does that mean?" Kael asked.
"It means your thread's no longer bound to choice. You've become a fixed point."
She paused. "And fixed points can't be rewritten. Only destroyed."
They reached the Crossing of Fade.
A field of doors suspended in the sky.
Each one labeled in a language the soul remembered but the tongue could never speak.
One door per marked.
But there were six.
Mace frowned. "Six? I thought we were five."
Azerai's smile didn't reach her eyes. "You were."
She pointed to the last door—its name shifting every second.
> The Thread That Broke.
The One Who Burned the Loom.
The Child Left Behind.
The Sixth.
"Someone else made it here once," she said. "But not with us. He never joined. He ran."
Kael tensed. "Is he alive?"
Azerai tilted her head. "That depends who's telling the story."
They each passed through their doors alone.
And they saw what they weren't supposed to.
Rin's Door: The House of Flame
A palace of mirrors made from every version of herself that survived. Not thrived—survived.
One who sold her soul.
One who raised an empire of blood.
One who never left the burning house with her sister.
Each offered her a crown.
Each asked her: Why did you turn out soft?
She didn't answer.
She walked out laughing.
And the mirrors cracked in silence.
Mace's Door: The Unfinished War
He faced every opponent who should've killed him.
Not ghosts. Real. Breathing.
The fight lasted hours—or days. Time warped.
Each kill hurt.
Each win stole a part of his will.
Until the final opponent stepped forward—
Himself.
Not stronger.
Not evil.
Just tired.
"I'm not here to fight," the other Mace said.
"I'm here to ask if we can stop."
Mace stared.
And answered, "When the others are safe."
Then he walked through. Alone.
Juno's Door: The Silence Library
Books. Millions of them.
Each one humming with his voice.
The one he silenced when he took the oath.
The boy who believed in stories before he believed in spells.
He opened a single book.
> "Once, there was a boy who thought he had to become dangerous to be worth loving."
Juno wept.
Then closed the book.
And walked into the dark with his hands clean.
Kael's Door: The Broken Throne
It wasn't a place. It was a scream.
The throne—real, gleaming, divine—was empty.
But blood soaked every step leading to it.
Kael walked up.
Sat on it.
And the moment he did—he felt it.
The rage of every soul who had ever been twisted into fate's puppet.
The sorrow of every path overwritten.
The hope of every life that ended in silence.
Threadcutter appeared in his lap.
And Kael said:
> "I don't want to rule.
But I will end the ones who keep writing over others."
All four emerged.
But the sixth door remained closed.
Azerai walked up to it.
"Laith," she whispered.
The name fell like a curse.
Like a memory she wasn't supposed to keep.
Kael asked, "Who is Laith?"
Azerai didn't answer.
But Juno did.
Voice shaking.
> "He was the first marked.
But he was too powerful. Too kind.
They erased him not just from the world—but from the weave itself."
Kael turned to her. "He was your brother."
Azerai's smile was brittle.
"I used to think so.
Then I forgot.
And now I remember too much."
The sky groaned.
Above them, a fracture appeared.
Not a crack in space.
A crack in story.
The stars started bleeding.
Rin clutched her head. "Something's pushing through!"
Mace yelled, "Another throne agent?!"
"No," Azerai said. Her voice was deadly still.
"That's no agent."
> "That's the original."
And then—
A single eye opened in the fracture.
Not looking.
Reading.
Kael stepped forward.
Threadcutter in hand.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
He just lifted his blade toward the sky and smiled.
Because now?
Now the story was remembering him.