The descent began with silence.
Kaelen stood at the lip of the chasm the mountain had opened, where bones the size of spires jutted from red stone like the vertebrae of a dead god. Dust drifted upward from below, not falling, as though gravity itself had grown confused. The path downward was etched by no mortal hand—it spiraled like a carved helix, dug into the rock as though reality had twisted upon itself to leave a mark.
"This ruin... it's not just old," Aelira murmured behind him. "It's older than time. I can feel the pressure. Like something waiting."
Kaelen didn't reply. His silver-violet eyes scanned the shadows beneath, the glimmering strands of Weave drifting through the air. Even here, beneath the crust of the Riftwilds, the Loom whispered.
Not with words, but with presence.
They descended.
Stone ground underfoot as they moved deeper into the hollow of the world. The further they walked, the quieter it became—not just in sound, but in thought. Even Aelira, normally sharp with commentary or subtle questions, had grown tense, gaze flicking toward the void beyond the path.
Kaelen could feel it too: something coiled far below.
Not hostile. Not yet.
Just watching.
Several hours deeper, the spiral path opened into a dome of impossible size. A subterranean temple stretched beneath the surface—half collapsed, half intact. Crystalline pillars shimmered faintly in ambient light, as if preserving echoes of an old sun.
And at the center stood a door.
No lock. No mechanism. Just a seam in stone, etched with geometric patterns that spun as Kaelen looked at them.
"A Weavegate," he said at last.
Aelira blinked. "Like the Folded Ruin's?"
"No." He knelt, brushing the ground. "Older. This wasn't built by the First Civilization."
She crouched beside him, her eyes studying his face instead of the gate. "Then who?"
Kaelen didn't answer.
He didn't know.
But the Loom did.
He placed a palm to the stone. Power thrummed beneath his skin, his Domain of Matter reacting first—feeling the textures, the make, the age. This wasn't stone anymore. It was memory given form.
The moment his thoughts shifted from analysis to intention, the gate opened.
The hall beyond pulsed with unformed potential. Kaelen stepped through and felt time distort again. Not rewind, not fracture—but... wait.
The corridor curved downward in impossible geometry—he could see the end of it while still at the beginning. The walls were inscribed not with runes, but with events. Memories etched into existence. Moments neither real nor false.
"I think we've stepped into a living thought," he murmured.
"Whose?"
"Not mine."
Aelira frowned. "It's not yours, Kaelen. But something here recognizes you."
At the end of the corridor, a chamber revealed itself—circular, domed, and filled with suspended strands of liquid silver. They floated midair, like veins of starlight trapped in a slow exhale. In the center stood a platform with an altar-like shape, but no religious markings. Only a faint hum.
Kaelen stepped forward.
As he touched the platform, the Weave coalesced above it. Images flickered to life—shattered worlds, figures cloaked in living flame, a great loom breaking apart.
Then, a silhouette.
Him.
But... not him.
This Kaelen stood taller, surrounded by radiant glyphs and bound in threads that cut through reality. His body burned with unstable light, his face worn and hollow.
Then came the whisper.
"I remember you... before you began."
Kaelen staggered back, eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"
The voice was within the Weave itself. Echoes. Layers of self. Not an entity—but a memory left by him, or by one like him, in a world that had ceased to be.
"I don't understand," Aelira whispered. "Is that you? Or your future?"
Kaelen turned away, his voice low. "A possibility."
The altar reacted again. Threads of Space began to swirl around him, drawing in fragments of the surroundings.
Kaelen felt something new—not just presence, not just memory. Permission.
He opened himself.
The Weave surged.
Power tore through his body—not violently, but with surgical intensity. His perception warped. Space stretched and folded inside him. For a heartbeat, Kaelen was the hall.
When he awoke, he was on the floor. Aelira knelt beside him, eyes wide.
"Your eyes... they've changed."
Kaelen blinked.
The world shivered. Depth itself bent around his gaze, curving like cloth being tugged.
He could see... anchors. Points of tethering in space—natural seams where dimensions were weakest. The Rift-born eye he'd grafted weeks ago now pulsed in tandem with this new awareness.
He could move through these.
No longer just cutting or blinking through space, but rewriting the framework of it.
"I can step into things that shouldn't exist," he whispered. "Fold layers. Open sealed points. Undo solidity."
Aelira looked awed—and terrified.
"You're not just bending space anymore," she said. "You're unraveling it."
They stayed in the hall for several hours. Kaelen examined the other strands—the floating veins of memory-threads. Most were damaged. Burned. Incomplete. One of them pulsed brighter than the others. Aelira approached it first.
When she touched it, the strand sang.
A low hum, musical yet broken.
Then it broke, and a memory was shared.
A battlefield of inverted light. Kaelen—the older version of him—stood over a dying creature shaped like a god. The world bled stars. Above, a Loom of gold and bone disintegrated as if rejecting its own purpose.
"I saw that," Aelira said breathlessly. "I saw you end a god."
"I don't remember it," Kaelen replied.
"Then it hasn't happened. Or it happened in a Weave that never was."
They looked at each other.
Then, silently, turned back toward the gate.
Outside, the air was colder. Dust no longer rose, but fell again. As if gravity had remembered its place.
Behind them, the gate sealed shut.
Not by force. By completion.
Whatever they had awakened would remain dormant—for now.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the spiral path and looked to the stars—dim, fractured things in the Rift sky.
"We're being watched."
Aelira stiffened. "By what?"
"By ourselves," he replied. "Or what we could become."