The instant Kael crossed the threshold, the rules of existence… broke.
There were no stars.
No light.
No time.
Only noise, like the tearing of a million silk veils in absolute darkness.
Lyra and Valen appeared behind him moments later, flinching as the cold of this new dimension clawed at their bones—not with temperature, but with the suffocating pressure of unwritten reality.
Even Tyrnex, reborn and armored in cosmic purpose, stepped into the void with hesitation.
Kael's eyes scanned the darkness. Unlike the Loom's thread-filled reality, this place had no threads. No fate. No echoes. No memory.
A realm where nothing had ever been written.
A realm where anything could happen—because nothing had.
> The Realm Without Threads.
It was worse than chaos. Chaos had shape, energy, opposition.
This place? It was absence, pure and complete.
They floated on invisible ground, surrounded by what could only be described as the un-formed. Glimpses of shattered gods blinked in and out of being. Fragments of thought, unfinished languages, faces never born—all swirled around them like dust in a windless storm.
"What… is this?" Valen whispered.
Tyrnex spoke low, almost reverent.
"A forgotten layer of existence. A place the Looms refused to weave. This is where the unchosen truths sleep. The discarded possibilities."
Kael stepped forward, every motion tugging against a resistance that had no substance.
"We were pulled here for a reason. Something exists in the void—and it's trying to reach back into the pattern."
He extended a hand—and the Celestial Core pulsed at his chest.
Golden light flared.
Instantly, the darkness reacted.
A shape began to form ahead.
Not a being.
A citadel.
Built from broken concepts and floating on a platform of unmade time, the Throne of Fracture rose from the void like a wound refusing to close. At its center stood a lone figure, motionless, cloaked in flowing fragments of unraveling fate.
Kael's heart skipped. His divine senses screamed warnings he had never heard before.
The figure raised its head.
No eyes. No face. Just a mask made of silence.
It spoke not in voice—but in subtraction—as if its very existence erased sound:
> "You brought threads into my void."
Kael took a step forward, golden aura flaring. "And you're trying to pull void into my world."
> "I was the First Refusal," the figure whispered. "Before the Flame, before the Loom, before creation pretended to make sense… I chose not to be."
Kael's breath caught.
This was no monster. This was Nyros.
The Threadless King.
And he was waking up.
> "You stitched your gods from fear," Nyros continued. "Now I will unstitch them. And I will begin… with you, Kael, Starborn Pretender."
Kael drew his blade of woven light.
"I've faced death, rebirth, and eternity. I've rewritten gods. I'm not afraid of a shadow that ran from existence."
Nyros tilted his head.
> "Then let's tear your bravery... thread by thread."
And the void attacked.
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