The wind had changed.
Kael stood at the edge of the fractured Prism, the golden strands weaving slowly back into place like veins healing in the flesh of the world. Behind him, Lin and Aelira watched as the celestial patterns began to stabilize, their earlier shimmer of chaos replaced by rhythm. Harmony was returning, thread by thread.
But within Kael's chest, something still burned.
He had touched something beyond time, something older than the Nexus, older even than the First Pact. In that vision—that memory or echo or prophecy—he had seen not just futures, but roots. Origins. The source of power that had shaped not only his fate, but the fate of realms.
"Are we home?" Lin asked cautiously, her hand reaching toward one of the stabilizing threads.
"Not yet," Kael replied, his voice low. "We're in between. The Prism is knitting reality, but it needs an anchor."
Aelira raised a brow. "And that would be?"
Kael turned slowly, his gaze heavy. "Me."
Before either could respond, a new surge of energy rippled through the threads—silver, fluid, alive. A voice spoke, not from above or below, but from within the threads themselves.
"You bear the Echo Root. And the echo must choose."
It was the voice of the Throne, and yet gentler. Less command, more guidance. The Nexus recognized him not just as a Pactbearer, but as a seed of change. One who had journeyed to the depths of shadow and flame, and still carried the light.
The light flared.
Each thread pulled taut around Kael. One showed him returning to the Empire in triumph. Another, him vanishing into seclusion. A third, him leading a war against the gods themselves. All possibilities. All real.
Lin moved closer. "You don't have to choose alone."
"But I do," Kael said. "This is the burden of the threadwalker."
His fingers closed around the central strand—the one that pulsed not with power, but with purpose. Not the grandest path. Not the most glorious. But the one that led home.
The Prism trembled. Then, slowly, it began to dissolve. Not in destruction, but in transition. The celestial lights faded into the air, absorbed into Kael's skin.
They landed.
Grass. Earth. Sky.
The real world.
Aelira collapsed with a laugh. "By all the stars, we made it."
Lin turned to Kael. He was different now. The light no longer shone on him but from him. His eyes held time itself.
"You're not the same," she whispered.
Kael smiled faintly. "None of us are."