The glyphlight figure did not move, not in any way a human would recognize. But something in the bend of his posture, in the slow curling of threads from his fingers, gave the impression of deep, focused attention.
Like the Loom itself was listening through him, sifting through tangled memory to determine what mattered now.
Rafael was the first to step forward. Every fiber of him was taut with tension, but he didn't draw his blade. That would imply this was something he could fight. And they all knew better by now.
"Do you remember us?" he asked, voice low and steady.
The figure didn't answer. Instead, he unfurled more threads from his hands. Not aimlessly, but with deliberate care. The filaments glided through the air like glowing ink on invisible parchment, sketching symbols too old and fractured to name.
They shimmered and flickered, each one resonating faintly in the bones of those who watched.
Salien stepped beside Rafael, jaw clenched. Her boots crunched against the Loomwake's woven ridges. "Last time, he didn't show us anything. Just vanished when we got too close."
"Maybe this time is different," Mira murmured. She didn't sound convinced. Her loop-compass buzzed softly in her satchel, useless again.
Juno crouched slightly, eyeing the threads that now wove between all of them, a shimmering web of potential and past. One glyph pulsed nearby, and her breath caught. "That's... my name. My real name. From the first Loop."
Rafael turned toward her, frowning. "You remember it?"
"Kind of. But the glyph does. It remembers me."
The glyphlight figure finally moved.
He extended a hand, palm up, and from it burst a blossom of threadlight—a slow explosion of spinning, crystalline loops that painted the air with a scene:
A forest. Not the one they had just left, but older. The trees towered like titans, the sky flickered with auroral fire. And three figures stood beneath that alien canopy.
Juno. Mira. Rafael.
Younger. Wounded. Laughing.
"That was Loop Eight, right?" Lira whispered, stepping closer. "We died in that forest."
"But not before we won something," Rafael added. His eyes were distant, locked on a memory the Loom had stirred. "A fragment. A Loomkey."
The glyphlight pulsed. Threads danced again.
A second bloom of memory erupted: a citadel of copper and bone rising from shifting dunes. The four of them standing before a massive door sealed in knotted thread.
Lira sobbing. Rafael kneeling. Juno and Bryn holding hands with white-knuckled tension. Kelan mid-death. Mira fainting in pain.
"Loop Seven," Bryn murmured. Her expression darkened. "That's when we learned the Loom doesn't forgive."
"And doesn't forget," Lira added.
Juno turned toward the figure. "Why show us this? What do you want from us?"
The threads curled inward again, weaving a singular sigil of speech. It flickered with sound and intent.
"Anchor."
Rafael narrowed his eyes. "You want us to anchor this memory? To stabilize it inside the wake?"
Still no spoken words, but the threads lanced downward into the ground. The Loomwake rippled in answer, and the pulsing beneath their feet rose in volume; low, insistent, like the heartbeat of the world.
Shadows emerged from the far edges of the scarred horizon—fractured silhouettes with familiar outlines. Reflections. Past selves. Dead iterations. Loop echoes.
Juno hissed, spinning into a defensive crouch. "They're collapsing in. The convergence is coming early."
"We triggered it," Mira said, blade halfway drawn. "That memory, the tree, it's a keystone. This was planned."
"Then we hold," Rafael commanded. He stepped forward, drawing his sword. Not in rage, but with solemn purpose. "We anchor the Loom. Buy the time it needs to finish."
Sailen raised her arms, and threads answered her call. Sigils bloomed in her palms like fireflies, scattering into the air around them.
Lira mirrored her, hands sketching memory-runes, the gestures instinctive and ancient. Lira took position behind them, her stance protective.
The echoes charged.
Some looked like them—same faces, different eyes. Others bore scars they'd never earned, wounds from Loops they had yet to live. All of them moved with urgency, desperation, fury.
The fight was not clean. It never was.
But they fought with clarity, with purpose. Not to destroy the echoes—they weren't enemies. They were possibilities denied, paths rejected. They fought to ground themselves in the now. To give the glyphlight the moment it needed.
Above them, the sigil-tree flared with brilliance. Its fractal branches twisted and spread, drawing down memory like lightning from a storm. The glyphlight figure did not flinch, only wove faster, guiding the flow of the Loom.
Bryn screamed as an echo lashed at her mind—a version of herself still twisted by guilt from Loop she couldn't remember.
Juno drove it back with a searing glyph-spear, her whole body shaking. Rafael stood beside Lira, a wall of steel and focus.
The Loom trembled. The Wake distorted. A great thread—thicker than any before—snapped into place above them, and suddenly the echoes paused.
Frozen.
Silent.
The glyphlight figure drew one final sigil in the air.
It was a door.
Shaped not of wood or stone, but of memory, sealed loops, and hard-won unity.
Beyond it: a path. A real path. Not a Loop. Not a recurrence.
Something new.
Juno collapsed to her knees, gasping. Bryn caught her, trembling. Lira wiped blood—hers or someone else's—from her cheek.
Rafael looked at the door, then the figure. "Did we do it? Did we change the pattern?"
The glyphlight didn't answer. But a single thread wove around his shoulders now, linking him to the tree, to them.
A memory made anchor.
A future unstuck from repetition.
Mira whispered, "Then let's see where it leads."
And they stepped through.
Together.
***