The Garden no longer slept. Beneath its soil, the threads that once wove the fate of the world twisted restlessly, resisting the pull of their old master. The Loom's grip weakened with every carved name, every remembered soul, every breath Kael dared to take against its will.
But not all threads surrendered.
Beneath the shattered sky, something ancient stirred — not born of the Loom, but left behind when it first began.
Kael stood at the edge of the Garden, watching as strands of unclaimed fate shimmered between his fingers. They were frayed and violent, heavy with abandoned oaths.
"These aren't broken," he muttered. "They're refusing."
Lin approached from behind, quiet. "Refusing what?"
"To be rewritten."
Kael released the threads. Instead of falling, they coiled around him like smoke. In them, he heard voices — thousands — whispering defiance. Some were familiar. Others were his own, echoes of lives he might have lived, or was still living, somewhere across the splintered planes.
"They remember me," Kael said. "Or versions of me."
Lin touched one thread, and it recoiled, hissing like a snake. "They're feral. If you bind yourself to them—"
"I won't bind them," he interrupted. "I'll earn them."
Before them, the air rippled. A gate opened — not summoned, not forced. It invited.
Aelira landed beside them, sparks still dancing around her. "What now?"
Kael stepped toward the gate.
"We find what the Loom buried. The old gods. The failed weavers. The ones who dared rewrite the pattern and paid the price."
"You think they'll help?" Lin asked.
Kael's gaze didn't waver. "No. But they'll remember. And that's enough."
As they crossed the threshold, the world shifted.
No light. No sound.
Just memory.
They walked through scenes etched in cosmic dust: wars that never ended, births that never happened, betrayals that unraveled empires. Kael saw himself in a hundred roles — tyrant, martyr, father, child — each version of him torn away by some unseen force before their story could resolve.
A figure stood at the center of this maze. Not a god. Not a monster. But Kael — older, cracked by time and yet still standing.
"I was the first one who refused," he said, voice hollow. "And you may be the last."
Kael didn't flinch. "Then show me how you endured."
The older Kael extended a hand, and the storm of feral threads rushed into the space between them. Pain flared. Time screamed.
But Kael did not fall.
Instead, he gripped the storm — and rewrote the shape of his own fate.
His eyes burned gold. Not with power. With clarity.
"I won't survive this as a hero," he whispered. "But I'll make sure no one else is forgotten."
The threads, once wild, began to follow him.
Not as bindings.
As allies.
He emerged from the memory realm changed — marked with the patterns of a thousand timelines, armed not with prophecy, but possibility.
The Garden shuddered at his return.
Lin stared at him. "Kael… what are you becoming?"
His voice was steady.
"Not what the Loom expected. And not what it can erase."