he bones whispered in the wind.
They lay across the cracked basin like the skeleton of a god that had once crawled from the Rift and died screaming. Ribcages tall as towers jutted from the red-dusted earth, warped and blackened as though burned by forgotten suns. Every gust stirred ancient dust, each mote glittering faintly with a residue of Weave—broken, unclean.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the basin, eyes half-lidded, his breath visible in the chill. His new sight—granted in the ruin beneath the mountain—no longer showed only the physical. Now, he could see the patterns beneath. The bones did not rest. They pulsed with threadwake—echoes of what had once been tethered here.
"It's not just remains," Aelira murmured behind him. "Something... was built from this. Something divine."
Kaelen nodded. "Or dissected."
He stepped forward.
Each footfall stirred the dust, and with it, the air sang—a high, thin vibration that set the hair on the back of Aelira's neck upright. She drew her cloak tighter, eyes scanning the basin's far edge, where faint shapes moved—statues, perhaps, or petrified corpses that hadn't collapsed with time.
"I've seen temples before," she said. "But this? This feels like a surgical theater."
Kaelen didn't respond. His gaze remained fixed on the center of the basin, where a circular altar lay cracked and sunk into the earth. Black lines etched its surface—natural-looking from a distance, but up close, they formed looping spirals and sharp runes.
Weave sigils.
Old ones. The kind Kaelen could now partially understand.
He stepped onto the altar. The dust didn't stir.
Instead, the world paused.
A memory not his own surged forward.
Hands bound in red thread. Screaming across many tongues. A body opened not for death, but for revelation. A voice that never stopped weeping even as it sang in joy.
Then silence.
Kaelen inhaled sharply as the vision passed. He staggered, catching himself on one knee. Aelira rushed forward, but he raised a hand.
"I'm fine," he said. "It was... a memory echo."
"From the bones?"
"From the Weave anchored to them. Something was torn from this world here. Not killed—ripped out. And part of it left behind."
He looked down at his hand. The skin flickered for a moment, turning translucent, then stabilizing.
Whatever had happened here had altered the fabric of reality.
And the threads still resonated.
They made camp in the ribcage of one of the massive bones, hidden from above. The stars in the Rift sky swirled slowly overhead, like oil slicks across black water. Kaelen sat cross-legged, eyes closed, his mind drifting through the anchored Weave in the bone fragments surrounding them.
Aelira watched him quietly, sharpening her blade. Her thoughts were not still.
"How much longer will you do this alone?" she asked suddenly.
Kaelen opened his eyes.
"You're not alone physically," she clarified, not looking at him. "But you never let anyone in. Not really."
Kaelen studied her.
"I trust patterns," he said finally. "Not people."
Aelira smirked. "Then let me be a pattern."
He didn't answer. But his gaze softened.
The night passed without incident. But at dawn, something shifted.
Kaelen stirred before the sun reached the basin. The altar was glowing faintly, as though awakening.
He moved toward it.
The symbols on the stone changed—no longer static. They formed a path.
Kaelen followed them, each step activating the next.
A circle. Then another. Until he reached the deepest point of the cracked structure—and found it.
A skeleton.
But not made of bone.
This one was forged from glistening thread-metal, like silver wires braided into a humanoid form. Hollow-eyed. Mouth agape in silent scream.
Upon seeing it, Kaelen's Weave-sight flared.
His vision doubled. Tripled.
He saw not one body—but three layered atop one another.
Different timelines. Different deaths.
Each one ended the same way.
Dissection.
This was a Weavewalker. Or had been.
A powerful one. A predecessor. One who'd tried to rewrite the Loom and failed.
Kaelen reached out, fingers brushing the cage-ribbed chest.
The air cracked.
Sudden understanding surged.
Not words. Not thoughts. Instruction.
A blueprint of what not to do.
Of how even power like Kaelen's could be turned inside out—folded against itself, caged by the Weave's own immune system.
"This place," he whispered. "Was a punishment chamber."
Aelira had arrived beside him.
She didn't speak. But her expression said enough.
"Can we leave it?" she asked.
Kaelen didn't answer at first.
"No," he said finally. "Not yet. There's something it wants me to see."
They traced the sigils further into the broken altar. Beneath the husk of the Weavewalker lay another layer of reality—one that could only be accessed through Kaelen's new sight.
He opened it.
Reality folded.
The ground peeled open like paper. A staircase formed of static light led downward.
Aelira hissed. "Kaelen... this isn't a doorway. It's a trap."
He stepped through anyway.
She followed.
Below was a second hall—smooth, metallic, pulsing with a cold blue glow. The ceiling dripped with suspended droplets that never fell. The corridor led to a chamber shaped like an hourglass, mirrored perfectly across the centerline.
Time warped here.
Kaelen stepped forward.
He saw versions of himself flicker—young, broken, ascended, godlike, monstrous.
He reached the mirror's midpoint.
It showed him nothing.
Only Aelira.
Her eyes. Her blade. Her loyalty. Her betrayal.
All at once.
"I won't betray you," she said suddenly.
Kaelen turned. She hadn't spoken.
But the reflection had.
He frowned.
"This place predicts potential," he murmured. "Not certainty."
"Do you believe it?"
"No," Kaelen said. "But I believe in contingencies."
They touched the hourglass. The vision shattered.
A pulse echoed through the chamber.
The skeleton above—the Weavewalker's husk—crumbled.
The bones in the basin shifted.
And Kaelen understood.
This was not just a tomb.
It was a warning.
He emerged from the hall with new clarity. The Weave itself had tried to destroy those like him before. But it hadn't succeeded.
Because the pattern was flawed.
He would be the one to correct it.
Later that night, as they prepared to move on, Aelira stood beside the collapsed bones.
"You saw yourself… ending up like that?" she asked.
"I saw possibilities," Kaelen replied.
"And me?"
He paused.
"I saw you walking away."
"Did I?"
He looked at her.
"You haven't yet."