The sky above the Riftwild shimmered like a dying memory.
Kaelen stood at the edge of a jagged cliff, the map of memory-threads unfurling across his mind. The Weaveglass shard pulsed faintly in his palm, no longer inert but alive—like a compass pointing toward things long buried. Below, ancient constellations flickered not in the sky, but within the stone itself, embedded into the bedrock like veins of forgotten light.
"They're stars," Aelira murmured behind him. "But wrong. As if they were drawn by someone who only remembered how they died."
Kaelen nodded. "We're close. The Loom guided us to this point. The next ruin lies beneath this land—a Weavecore saturated in celestial echoes."
"Meaning?"
"Something watched the skies here. Maybe shaped them. Maybe tore them down."
They descended through rock and mist, leaving behind the distorted trees of the silent forest. The terrain shifted beneath their feet with every step—one moment solid, the next soft like sponge or glassy smooth like frozen water. The Rift was unstable here, as if the land itself was struggling to remember what shape it was supposed to hold.
Kaelen muttered to himself as they moved, words not in any known tongue, but a pattern meant to anchor his perception.
"You're resisting the distortion?" Aelira asked, watching his fingers twitch as if weaving invisible threads.
"Temporarily. This place is built on shifting reality. If we don't carry a fixed narrative of who we are, we might end up becoming someone else entirely."
She raised an eyebrow. "And if we already hate who we are?"
"Then we'll become someone worse."
The cave's mouth yawned open below them—a chasm torn into the base of the valley. Faint starlight glimmered within, not cast from above, but glowing from the stone itself in constellations twisted and unfamiliar. The walls seemed to breathe. Not figuratively. Kaelen saw them rise and fall.
"This is the Stargrave," he whispered. "It's not a ruin. It's a dying reality's coffin."
They entered.
Inside, the air turned sharp.
Kaelen felt it cut through his lungs—not from cold, but from something deeper, a kind of existential edge that made his breath unwelcome. Aelira reached out and touched a wall—only to flinch back as her hand passed through it.
"No... that wasn't just phasing," she muttered. "It rejected me."
Kaelen stared at the walls. They rippled slightly under his gaze.
"They only accept memory," he said softly. "We're intruders to this place. Unless…"
He drew a line of blood from his palm and pressed it to the stone.
Images exploded behind his eyes.
Kaelen saw stars screaming.
Suns imploding into themselves not with fire, but with shame.
A being—faceless, infinite—watching them with indifference.
And beneath it all, a name, written across the void in burning Weave-threads:
"Sy'varah."
Kaelen reeled back.
"What did you see?" Aelira asked.
"Not a place," he said, voice unsteady. "A memory. Not mine. A record of the last star's death… and the one who watched it die."
Aelira's eyes narrowed. "Another god?"
He didn't answer.
He was staring deeper into the cavern now. Something in the pulse of the star-veins was calling. Not with sound. But with grief.
They moved forward slowly, passing beneath a ribcage of fallen sky-rock. Glyphs shimmered along their path, glowing only when Kaelen passed by. The shard in his hand sang low, like a hum buried in sorrow.
He began to speak aloud as they moved:
"In the beginning, there was light.
Then, the light looked upon itself—and saw it was finite.
So it sang a song of forgetting, and turned into shadow."
"That's not yours," Aelira said, walking beside him.
"No. It's the ruin's. This place has a memory. And it's trying to make sure it's not forgotten."
Eventually, they reached the heart of the ruin—a circular chamber with a pool at its center. But the pool wasn't water. It was sky—swirling, star-filled, and depthless.
Reflected in it was not their world—but another.
And in the center, floating above the sky-pool, a crystal sphere—spinning slowly, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"The memory core," Kaelen whispered. "This is it."
Aelira drew her blade. "It's never this easy."
She was right.
The walls cracked.
From the shadows emerged the Starfallen—creatures of cosmic dust and collapsed divinity. They had no mouths, but their faces bore mockeries of human emotion. Grief. Joy. Terror.
All carved into stone.
Kaelen raised a hand—and the Loom shard ignited.
Aelira vanished into movement, her blade a blur, cutting through two Starfallen before they could reach her. But more came, emerging from the void-walls like memories resisting erasure.
Kaelen stepped forward and dropped the shard into the sky-pool.
The Weave reacted.
Not violently.
But like a veil parting.
Suddenly he understood the structure of this ruin—not just spatially, but conceptually.
He rewove the floor beneath the Starfallen, turning their approach into a collapsing spiral of gravitational folds. The creatures howled soundlessly as they fell into the mirror-sky, consumed by the reflection of their own deaths.
Aelira landed beside him, panting.
"You're getting better."
"I'm getting closer," he corrected.
He reached toward the floating sphere.
The moment he touched it, the world fell apart.
Not literally.
But in thought.
He stood in a dream.
A vast plain beneath a dying sky.
The stars blinked out one by one.
Before him stood a woman.
Skin of midnight silk.
Hair woven from starlight.
Eyes like twin galaxies collapsing inward.
She looked at Kaelen and smiled.
"You are late."
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I was once Sy'varah. But I'm no one now. Just a witness."
"To what?"
"To the end."
Her fingers reached out and touched his forehead.
"Now you've seen it too."
"What was the point?" Kaelen asked. "Of all this?"
"So someone would remember we were beautiful."
He awoke.
The crystal sphere crumbled in his hand.
The pool went still.
And above them, the star-veins in the ceiling flickered—then went dark.
Kaelen rose slowly.
"We're done here."
"Did you get what we came for?" Aelira asked.
"No," he said.
"But I know where we're going next."
Outside, the Riftwind had changed direction.
A storm was coming.
But Kaelen no longer felt like prey.
The shard had changed shape—longer now, like a thread of light. Not passive. Not sleeping.
Awake.
And it whispered of a city of mirrors.
Of a Weaver who remembered too much.
And of a ruin that could make memories come alive.