The ruin was gone.
Kaelen stood on the edge of an empty crater, the wind hissing through jagged stone. Behind him, Aelira stared in silence. They had slept for mere hours, and when dawn came, the entire folded city had vanished—compressed into a single black spindle embedded in the earth, like a needle puncturing the world.
Only one thing remained: the memory of the whisper, and the burn across Kaelen's palm that hadn't faded.
He studied the spindle. It pulsed once—faintly—before going inert. He didn't touch it. He didn't need to. The message was already within him now.
"Did you see it?" he asked quietly.
Aelira shook her head. "Nothing. The moment I closed my eyes, it felt like I was falling. When I woke, the entire city was gone."
Kaelen nodded. "It wasn't meant for you."
"And what was it meant for?"
He looked down at his hand.
"To remind me."
They didn't linger. Kaelen could feel the Loom's pull shifting again. A tug not through space—but intention. A gentle nudge in the shape of emotion, urging him southward. Toward heat. Toward dust. Toward something buried.
By midday, they reached the edge of a scorched ravine.
The terrain had changed again—less twisted, more... broken. This wasn't a land warped by Riftstorms or temporal anomalies. This was damage born of conflict. Purposeful. Scarred by power, not accident.
Kaelen knelt beside a melted blade half-buried in the dirt. The hilt bore symbols he didn't recognize—yet his chest tightened when he saw them. His breath slowed.
He knew this place.
Not from memory.
From grief.
"This was a battlefield," Aelira murmured.
He nodded slowly.
"Long ago," Kaelen said. "But not forgotten."
As they moved deeper, the signs became clearer. Crushed armor fragments. Scorched trees turned to charcoal. Glass plains formed from heat beyond comprehension. And most disturbingly—statues.
Dozens of them.
Not carved, but frozen.
Soldiers in the act of dying. Caught in mid-scream. Weapons raised, or fleeing.
Time hadn't passed here.
It had been ripped out.
"This wasn't a war," Kaelen muttered.
"It was an execution."
The center of the battlefield lay beneath a ridge of black stone. A once-grand structure had sunk halfway into the earth—its shape barely visible now beneath layers of ash and dust. As Kaelen stepped closer, the ash shifted—clearing before his feet.
Aelira stiffened.
"Kaelen…"
"I see it."
The ash moved for him. It responded. Recoiled.
And then the door revealed itself.
A gate formed not of wood or steel—but woven stone, each slab fused into curved arches, runed with spirals and fading symbols. At the very center was an emblem Kaelen recognized from the mirrored city.
The First Weave.
The origin of stitching. Of thought.
Of creation.
He touched the stone—and it opened soundlessly.
Inside was a tomb.
Not for the dead.
But for memories.
Rows of crystalline pillars stretched into the dark, glowing faintly. Echoes flickered within them—scenes frozen in shimmer. Battles. Rituals. Laughing faces. Screaming faces. Children. Gods.
Kaelen moved slowly.
Each memory he passed tried to touch him. A hand from glass. A whisper from the past. The pillars didn't show him what had happened—but what could have.
They were timeline fragments.
Discarded truths.
He stopped at one.
It showed him—older, crowned, standing on a mountain of bones. His harem behind him—warriors, rulers, broken and bound. His gaze was not cruel. It was tired.
Another pillar showed a child—his child?—weaving light into stars.
Another: Kaelen dead, Aelira cradling his body.
Each memory burned into his mind.
He turned to Aelira.
"I've been here before."
"You mean in another life?"
"No." He looked around. "I built this place."
At the heart of the tomb was a dais. Empty.
But not inert.
Kaelen stepped onto it.
The moment he did, the pillars flickered—and a final image appeared before him. Unlike the others, this one was not static. It moved.
A recording. A message. A ghost.
It was him.
Or something wearing his face.
He watched as the figure looked directly at him, eyes silver and ancient.
"If you are me," the figure said, "then the stitch has held."
A pause.
"But if you're not—if you're just another echo—then turn back. This road ends in annihilation."
Kaelen said nothing. The echo continued.
"You were not made. You were unwoven. And now, you are being rewritten. The Loom remembers you—not as a thread—but as the hand that held the needle."
The echo reached out—just once.
"Find the Heart-Spindle. Without it, you'll lose yourself. I already did."
The vision vanished.
Kaelen staggered.
Blood dripped from his nose.
The dais began to sink.
Aelira caught him as he stumbled.
She didn't speak.
He didn't explain.
But she saw the look in his eyes.
A weight heavier than fate itself.
A certainty now threading every breath he took.
He wasn't just wandering ruins.
He was retracing his own weaving.
Undoing the knots left by an earlier self.
A more dangerous one.
They exited the tomb in silence.
Behind them, the battlefield stirred.
Not alive. Not awake.
Just... aware.
Kaelen knew others would come now.
Drawn by the same echo.
He wasn't the only one chasing this path.
But he was the first to remember.
That night, Aelira finally spoke.
"You're changing."
Kaelen nodded. "I have to."
"No," she said. "Not just strength. Not just the power. Your eyes. They don't look for escape anymore."
"I don't need to escape."
"Then what do you want?"
He stared into the flames.
"To finish what I started."
"And if what you started was destruction?"
Kaelen didn't answer.
Not directly.
But the whisper in his blood replied for him.
Then let the world burn better this time.