They walked in silence, the road winding east like a dying serpent. Sera kept pace behind Kael, her steps quiet but heavy. The sky was pale, a washed-out gray, as if mourning something the world hadn't caught up to yet.
Every so often, Kael felt the pull.
The seventh thread was no longer content to rest. It tugged at his thoughts, slithered through his spine, and whispered of timelines not yet born—realities where Sera fell by his hand, or where he knelt before Vain and begged for a truth he'd long abandoned. Each possibility hung in the air like smoke, waiting to be inhaled.
By nightfall, they reached the edge of the forest.
Beyond it lay the Reach—a scar in the land, barren and endless, where even birds refused to fly. Once, it had been a fortress of the Pathbound. Now, it was hollow. Abandoned. Some said the threads had stopped weaving there centuries ago, and that the Loom had buried its shame beneath stone and silence.
But Kael knew the truth.
The Reach had been the site of the First Severing.
And Vain had made it bleed.
They set camp beneath a withered tree whose bark had twisted into runes long since erased. Kael didn't speak for a long time. He sat cross-legged, running the broken shard of the seventh thread between his fingers. The glassy texture shimmered with impossible colors—some that didn't exist on the spectrum of mortal eyes.
Sera watched him from across the fire. "You've changed."
Kael didn't look up. "Change is the only thing left."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know."
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "Who is Vain?"
Kael's jaw tightened. He stared at the shard for a moment longer before slipping it back into the pouch at his hip. Then he looked at her.
"Vain was the first to bind a thread outside the Loom's blessing," he said. "The first to twist fate into something unnatural. He severed his own Path—cut it clean—and used the frayed end to bind others. It worked. Too well."
"What happened to him?"
"He vanished. The Keepers claim they cast him into the Black Void. But the Reach still hums with his signature. I felt it in cycle twenty-three. Again in thirty-six. He's not dead. He's waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
Kael's eyes drifted toward the east. "Someone like me."
They crossed the Reach at dawn.
The soil crumbled beneath their feet, black and brittle like burned paper. No trees. No grass. Just open land and silence. Thread remnants littered the earth like veins—faint glowing filaments, snapped and half-buried, reaching toward nothing.
Kael could hear them.
Echoes.
Regrets.
Screams.
At the center of the Reach was a monolith, tilted and cracked, carved with an old sigil: the Ouroboros in flame. The symbol of the Pathless, erased from history.
Sera slowed as they neared. "Kael… the ground's pulsing."
"It's not the ground," he said. "It's the dead threads. They remember."
As he approached the monolith, the seventh thread flared inside him—sharper than before. Hungry.
"Do you feel that?" he asked.
Sera nodded, her face pale. "It's like the world is watching."
Kael reached out and placed his hand on the monolith.
The stone was cold. Then hot. Then both. His vision blurred. Colors twisted. Time unraveled.
He saw Vain.
A tall figure in a threadbare cloak, eyes black with spinning glyphs, standing atop the same monolith centuries ago. The sky was aflame. Around him, threads whipped violently in the air, binding to his limbs like puppeteer strings. People screamed. Collapsed. Died. All while he stood still.
A voice echoed—not from the vision, but from the monolith itself.
"Are you ready to unmake the weave?"
Kael jerked his hand back. The vision shattered. The monolith hissed with violet light, then cracked further down the center. A small sliver fell from it, shaped like a fang.
Sera rushed forward. "What did you see?"
"Vain," Kael whispered. "And the end of the Loom."
He knelt, picked up the fallen sliver, and felt the thrum of impossible energy. This wasn't just a relic. It was a key. One Vain had left behind—intentionally.
He turned to Sera. "This is a thread blade. A pure one. Made from the root of the First Severing."
"And that's… good?"
Kael smiled bitterly. "It's fatal. If I bind it, I lose whatever part of me is still Kael Riven."
"Then don't."
"I might not have a choice."
That night, Kael dreamt of Vain.
They stood across from each other in a colorless void. No stars. No ground. Only threads—millions of them, swaying gently like grass underwater.
Vain's voice was quiet. Almost kind.
"You're close."
Kael stared at him. "I'm not you."
"No. But you will be."
"I'm trying to fix things."
"So did I."
Kael stepped forward, thread blade in hand. "Then tell me what you saw. What made you sever your fate."
Vain tilted his head, studying him like a parent watching a child lie to himself.
"The Loom is not broken," he said. "It's malicious."
Kael froze.
"Every thread it binds is a cage. Every path a leash. You've seen it. You know it's true. It doesn't want harmony. It wants control."
Kael lowered the blade slightly. "So you destroyed it?"
"No." Vain's eyes narrowed. "I rewrote it."
The void shifted. Images bloomed around them—cities never born, children never saved, entire nations falling into silence. And at the center of each: Kael. Or something that wore his face.
"You are the anomaly," Vain whispered. "The Loom can't predict you anymore. That's why it fears you."
Kael backed away. "You're not real. This is just the Reach playing tricks."
"Is it?" Vain stepped forward. "Or is it the only truth you've been allowed to see?"
Kael awoke gasping, drenched in sweat. The blade shard pulsed beside him, echoing with the last words of his dream.
Rewrite it.