The moment Cael sat upon the Throne of Thread, the world convulsed.
Not broke.Not shattered.But rewound.
Time unraveled—not backwards, not forwards, but sideways. Like a ribbon tearing free from a forgotten gift. Memories that weren't his spilled into his mind, weaving alongside his own: a woman birthing a child under a crimson eclipse… a blade forged by an unspoken name… an empire that had once almost become a god.
And then silence.And then stillness.And then… reconstruction.
"The Throne accepts your stitch," said a voice, not from outside but within."And so the Loom obeys."
Cael stood—but he wasn't standing. He was floating inside the Eye of the Pattern, the very heartbeat of the world's weave. Threads stretched in every direction—past, present, future, possible. All vibrating with infinite lives. Some were golden and noble. Others dark and screaming. But none were fixed.
A hand reached into the vision.
It was his own.
He understood what it meant now.He wasn't following fate.
He was writing it.
Below, Vyn watched the air split open. No longer was the Hollow Court cold and dead—it pulsed with magic. Light and shadow bent into fractals, flowing upward toward the Throne. Then she heard it.
"He chose the Dream."
It was whispered by the statues. Murmured by ghosts.
The gods that had once ruled this space acknowledged the Threadborn Emperor. Not with fealty. Not with loyalty. But with ancient, primordial respect.
Because Cael had done what none of them dared.
He chose freedom over control.
Cael floated back down—no longer just a boy from a broken village.
He was crowned by nothing. Dressed in no gold. Yet the weight of infinite paths pressed against his chest like armor.
Vyn looked at him and saw a friend.
A stranger.
A sovereign.
"What now?" she asked.
Cael looked down at his palm. The silver thread, once delicate and trembling, was now a living coil of potential, pulsing like a second heart.
"We go back," he said. "To the others. To the war. To fix what should never have broken."
"You're not the same."
"No," Cael said quietly. "But I remember who I was. That's enough."
When they stepped back through the Hollow Gate, the world paused.
For just a moment.
And across distant kingdoms, in the bones of dying kings, in the mouths of sleeping prophets, a whisper passed:
"The Dreamt Emperor rises."
And the world began to change.