Wind howled across the Skygrave Plateau.
There was no path. No footprints. No evidence that any had ever walked here and returned.
The Cradle was not found. It was remembered.
And Cael had remembered it perfectly.
The land here was wrong. Not hostile—just… impossible.
Mountains folded into themselves.
The sky bled starlight into rivers.
Trees grew upside down, their roots thirsting for dreams instead of water.
Vyn paused beneath a spiraling pillar of bones.
"This is older than magic," she whispered.
Cael didn't respond. His focus was fixed on the center—where the wind did not blow, where light refused to touch.
There, suspended in a sphere of threads like a spider's egg, floated a single item:
A loom.Cracked. Unused. But pulsing faintly.
The moment Cael stepped forward, the loom screamed.
Not aloud. In thread. Across the world, echoes of fate snapped.
—An empire fell silent.—A god choked on their prophecy.—The Hollow Prince turned from his mirror, face pale.
"He's found it."
The loom responded to Cael's presence.
Threadlight slithered from its frame and latched onto his arms, chest, and spine.
Visions slammed into his skull.
He saw...
The first humans, born from stolen threads.
The Dream Weavers, bound in eternal sleep.
A face—his mother's—crying as she burned a piece of herself into him.
"So you'd remember," her voice whispered in the loom's song."So you'd find it. So you'd finish what we couldn't."
The cradle shook.
And then—
From within the loom stepped a being wrapped in shifting fate. No face. No gender. Just a voice, soft and full of sorrow.
"Welcome, Threadwalker," it said."You were not supposed to exist."
Cael lifted his hand.
"I don't care what I was supposed to be."
"Then what do you want?"
"To write the story myself."
The being nodded.
Then it attacked.