Kael stood at the edge of the dying fire, arms crossed over his chest as the sky slipped into black. The embers crackled softly, like tiny bones snapping in the quiet. Sera slept nearby, her body curled beneath her cloak, her breath shallow but steady. The shattered vial lay beside her, a smear of starlight leaking from its broken lip.
He hadn't meant for things to go this far.
The seventh thread coiled beneath his skin, a slow-burning poison or salvation—he couldn't tell which. It pulsed against his spine like a second heartbeat, whispering to him in moments of silence. Whispers that weren't in words, but in futures. Possibilities. Deaths he hadn't yet lived.
He paced slowly, bootheels crunching frost-bitten grass. The stars above had shifted again. The Watcher's Crown—an ancient constellation that had always guided those born under the Justice Path—was broken now. One of its stars blinked in and out, off-tempo with the rest. He remembered it clearly from his first life. His sister had pointed it out on the night before the Ceremony.
Now it was fractured.
Like everything else.
Kael crouched by the fire and picked up the remains of the vial. The liquid inside had been drawn from three different echoes—a stolen mercy, a broken oath, and the final breath of a pathless boy who had chosen to die rather than bind. He'd intended to use it to stabilize the thread inside Sera. Or at least slow the unraveling. But her body had rejected it before it touched her lips. Fate, it seemed, had other ideas.
He looked at her now. She was thinner than before, but stronger too. Her eyes had seen more pain in the last week than most did in a lifetime. Yet she hadn't abandoned him. Not even when the threads began to fray around him like paper in a storm.
Kael whispered, "You're still here."
Her eyes fluttered open at the sound.
"You talk to yourself now?" she asked hoarsely.
He smiled faintly. "Only when I need smarter conversation."
She sat up slowly, pressing her back against a nearby stone. "That thread inside you. It's changing everything."
"I know."
"It's killing you."
"I know that too."
Sera studied him for a long moment. "Do you even remember why you're doing this?"
Kael didn't answer right away. He looked at the fire again, watching the flames dance like miniature destinies unraveling in reverse. "I thought I could fix something," he said. "I thought… if I pulled hard enough on the right thread, I could make it all fall into place."
"And now?"
"Now I think I've started a fire I can't put out."
Silence returned, thick as the night. Somewhere in the distance, a hawk shrieked. The woods didn't feel alive anymore. They felt like a stage, waiting for the next tragedy to begin.
Sera shifted. "We can still walk away, you know."
Kael looked at her sharply. "You really think so?"
"No," she admitted. "But I like to pretend."
He exhaled, the breath steaming in the cold. "The Loom will come for us. The Pathbound too. Especially now. That attack yesterday wasn't a warning. It was a test."
"And we passed?"
"No," Kael said softly. "We survived. That's not the same."
She reached into her pack and pulled out the last intact sealstone—a charm meant to disrupt thread signatures, useful for evading pursuit. Kael had crafted it himself, years ago, in another life where he had still believed in fate. She placed it between them.
"I've followed you this far," she said. "But if you start pulling more threads like the seventh, I need to know who you're becoming."
"I don't know who that is yet," Kael replied. "But I'm afraid it's not someone you'll like."
Sera leaned forward. "Then don't become him. Be someone else. Bind to a new fate, Kael."
"I can't."
"Why?"
He met her eyes.
"Because I've already killed too many versions of him."
The words lingered, heavy with truth. She didn't argue. Didn't offer comfort. She only nodded, understanding that some paths didn't lead home.
Kael stood and turned away from the fire, walking toward the slope of the hill that overlooked the river. The moon reflected there, fractured like a broken mirror. In that shattered surface, he saw the faces of the people he'd lost: his brother, burned by the Keepers in cycle nineteen. The girl who'd loved him in cycle thirty-four. The mentor who betrayed him in cycle twelve.
And now Sera, caught in the gravity of his unraveling.
He clenched his fist. The thread pulsed in his veins, a slow, inevitable tide.
A part of him wanted to stop. To bury the thread deep within the earth and let the world fix itself.
But it wouldn't.
It never had.
He'd seen it fail thirty-nine times. And this time, it wasn't just his world burning. The seventh thread didn't belong to a single fate—it belonged to all of them. And if left unchecked, it would twist the Loom until it snapped.
He would need more than resolve to survive what came next. He would need truth. And that meant facing Vain—the first Hollow. The one who had broken the rules before Kael ever dared to.
He returned to the fire.
Sera was watching him.
"Where do we go now?" she asked.
Kael looked toward the east, where the mountains carved the sky.
"To the Reach," he said. "To the place where the Loom keeps its dead."
She didn't argue.
She only rose, and together they began packing in silence.
Behind them, the fire died. And with it, the last warmth of night.