The threads beneath Ahri's feet had changed.
Where before the Loom had been silent and endless, now the weave was narrow, deliberate. A single path of tightly woven silk stretched ahead of her, faintly glowing with a shimmer like starlight reflected in water. The violet-gold thread on her wrist twitched, urging her forward.
Behind her, Sol said nothing.
Perhaps even he knew words had limits here.
Ahead, the path curved and twisted—not randomly, but with purpose. This was not just a trail. It was a test.
Ahri stepped onto it.
The moment she did, memory shifted.
She was seven again.The fox mask lay in her lap, too big for her face. Her mother's hand brushed her hair back, warm and shaking. "Whatever happens, remember this thread."
The memory snapped—
—and she was back on the path, breathing hard.
The trail of fate was showing her not only where she came from.
It was unraveling her.
Sol's voice finally broke the silence. "The Weftborn left you a path—but they never said it would be safe."
"I need to know what they're leading me to," Ahri said. "And why the Loom chose me."
Sol looked grim. "You're asking the wrong question."
She glanced at him. "What's the right one?"
He met her gaze.
"Why didn't it choose anyone else?"
As the path narrowed further, the landscape began to change.
Threads became roots.
Roots became stone.
The Loom had vanished. Now they were in a cavern—half-world, half-memory.
Statues lined the corridor. Tall, cracked figures carved from spirit-thread and bone. All were faceless.
At their feet were offerings—charms, broken masks, and twisted talismans.
Sol knelt beside one. "These are the Threadshed. The first weavers who tried to sever fate willingly. They gave up their names to escape their stories."
Ahri frowned. "Did it work?"
Sol's fingers brushed a mask. "They vanished. Some say they became the Hollowed. Others… the Weftborn."
Ahri kept walking.
At the end of the corridor stood a shrine—part-temple, part-weaving loom.
In its center, a figure waited.
Another Weftborn—but taller than the child. Adolescent in form, cloaked in a tapestry of lost voices. Their face was uncovered, but instead of features, their skin was lined with threadmarks—every one pulsing with an unfinished sentence.
They didn't speak.
Instead, they held out something small.
A charm.
Ahri reached for it.
It was hers. A childhood trinket she'd lost years ago. A silver bell in the shape of a fox.
"How—?"
The Weftborn stepped back, hands raised not in threat but invocation. The walls of the chamber trembled as light filled the shrine.
The charm glowed in her hand.
And then a voice—not one she recognized—spoke from the air:
"The fox spirit is not your power. It is your price."
The bell rang once.
Then silence.
Outside the shrine, the world began to shift again—thread by thread, like a loom preparing for its next weave.
Sol put a hand on Ahri's shoulder.
"You're walking a line no one's ever walked. The Weftborn are watching now. And if they deem you unworthy…"
Ahri looked up.
The ceiling of the cavern was opening—revealing a sky stitched with violet and red threads, as though the fabric of fate was bleeding.
"…then the Loom itself may close."