The sky did not exist here.
Not in the way Kaelen understood it.
Above them, a dome of fractured black hung motionless, as if the heavens had been shattered and frozen mid-collapse. Stars blinked in and out like dying thoughts, and the clouds—if they could even be called that—moved like oil across glass, warping each breath of light.
Aelira stood beside him in silence, her eyes fixed on the monolith ahead.
The Spire of Threadless Dawn.
It rose from the dead earth like a nail driven into the spine of the world—so tall that it pierced what little sky remained, so wide its base devoured a crater. The structure pulsed faintly with strands of violet and gold, threads that blinked in and out of reality.
"This isn't just a ruin," Aelira murmured. "It's a... memory that never ended."
Kaelen didn't answer.
He was already listening.
The Loom thrummed in his mind, louder now, more insistent. With every step he took toward the Spire, it whispered.
You wrote this. You forgot this. You feared this.
But he didn't remember.
Not yet.
They crossed the basin by dusk, the ground littered with glass bones and petrified roots. The wind here was still—but it wasn't quiet. The hum of the tower echoed through the air, beneath it, around it, inside them. It felt less like a sound, and more like the pressure of a thought too large to fit inside the mind.
The doors of the Spire were open.
Not broken. Open. Waiting.
Kaelen stepped through first.
Inside, time stopped.
Not metaphorically—literally.
Aelira followed—and staggered as her hair froze in midair, the flick of her movement caught in a slow cascade.
Kaelen raised a hand.
A thread of energy extended from his palm, humming with quiet tension. It wove itself into the fabric of the air, stabilizing the distortion.
Time resumed—slowly.
"You anchored us?" Aelira asked, breathing again.
"Barely," Kaelen muttered. "This place is old. Older than flow. It exists across moments."
The inner chamber of the Spire resembled no architecture they had ever seen. The walls were made of interlaced threads—literal strands of light and shadow braided together into firmament. Each thread vibrated with meaning.
Memories.
Possibilities.
Unwritten futures.
At the center of the chamber was a dais.
And upon it, a loom.
Not the one in Kaelen's mind.
This one was real.
Or as real as anything here.
He stepped closer.
The loom was shattered. Its spindles cracked, its threads frayed and smoking. But something beat beneath it—a rhythmic pulse, like a heart refusing to die.
Aelira stood back.
Kaelen reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the broken loom, the world fractured.
Memory. Vision. Dream.
He was no longer Kaelen.
He was a thousand selves.
Standing upon a dais, thread in one hand, blade in the other.
A city knelt before him—golden, endless, perfect.
Behind him, the Loom spun reality.
Before him, a tear in the Weave—a shadow, consuming, laughing.
He screamed—not in fear, but in defiance.
He threw the blade into the Loom.
He cut the thread.
And the world burned.
Kaelen collapsed to the floor, gasping.
Aelira caught him before he hit the ground, her voice sharp. "Kaelen!"
His hands trembled.
Smoke leaked from his eyes.
"What did you see?" she asked.
Kaelen stared at the loom.
"I broke it," he whispered.
"I built this place. I wrote the laws. And I destroyed them."
Aelira frowned. "You're saying this Spire… this whole tower… was yours?"
Kaelen looked up.
"No," he said softly. "I was it."
He stood again.
The loom no longer throbbed with life—but something lingered. A piece. A shard.
At its heart, embedded in the ruined spindle, was a crystal—small, dark, pulsing with impossible light.
Kaelen reached for it.
The moment he touched it, the Loom inside his mind screamed.
But it did not reject the shard.
It absorbed it.
And Kaelen remembered.
Not everything.
But something vital.
The Pattern.
It wasn't a spell. Or a weapon.
It was a design—a blueprint for possibility.
He had created it once, as a god-child in a world that worshipped truth and balance. He had tried to rewrite suffering. Remove pain. Equalize life.
But perfection breeds stagnation.
The Pattern had become a prison.
And he had shattered it.
Now, here he stood again—fragments in hand.
Not to rebuild.
But to remake.
The tower began to collapse.
Not physically—metaphysically. Reality folded around it, threads unraveling into pure concept.
Aelira drew close. "It's time."
Kaelen nodded.
And together, they stepped out of the Spire.
The basin behind them exploded in silence—threads flying into the sky, vanishing into the Rift.
Behind his eyes, the Loom wept.
Not from grief.
But anticipation.
That night, they made camp beneath a torn moon.
Kaelen sat in stillness, the shard pulsing in his palm.
Aelira approached, quiet. "You changed again."
"Yes," Kaelen replied. "This shard wasn't power. It was understanding."
"Of what?"
Kaelen looked at her. His eyes were distant, yet sharp.
"The Weave isn't just threads and law. It's desire. The world isn't made of truth—it's made of what someone once wanted to be true. That someone... was me."
Aelira sat beside him.
They didn't speak for a long time.
But the silence was shared.
And for once, Kaelen didn't feel alone in it.