The cold light of dawn broke over the cliffs of Ezereth, but there was no warmth in it.
Ashes floated in the air like snowflakes that had lost their way. The ritual grounds were silent now — save for the whisper of the wind threading through the hollow bones of the shattered Loom. A relic once older than dynasties, now a carcass of splintered wood and bleeding sigils.
Kael stood at the edge of the ruin, still cloaked in the bloodstained robe from the ritual, his breathing shallow but steady.
"You broke it," murmured an elder, her voice thick with awe and fear. "It should have consumed you, like all the others. Instead... it cracked."
The other Seers dared not speak. Their eyes trembled when they looked at him — not with reverence, but dread. Even those born blind to the Threads could now see the difference in Kael.
He had not simply survived the Weaving.
He had unraveled it.
Kael said nothing. His gaze was locked on the fractured frame of the Loom, where threads of light still flickered — dying stars caught in the final moments of collapse. The ritual had been meant to bind his fate, to assign his role in the grand Pattern like every soul before him. It was law. It was tradition.
And yet, when the Threads reached for him, he had reached back.
He saw too much. A thousand lifetimes not his own, memories stitched into the world's secret skin. Betrayals carved into mountains. Names whispered in blood. He had seen a face—burning blue eyes beneath a silver helm—someone whose name clung to his bones like frost.
He had ripped himself free.
And the Loom, unable to force destiny upon a soul that had already chosen, had shattered.
⚘
That night, the elders convened in a broken circle.
"He is an anomaly," one hissed.
"A heretic," said another. "A tear in the Pattern."
"No. Worse. A weaver without a thread."
Kael listened from beyond the chamber, where shadows curved to his will and silence obeyed him like a pet. His heart should have pounded. It did not. His mind was quiet — too quiet. That disturbed him more than the whispers.
Was this what the Loom stole from others? The weight of consequence? The burden of fear?
He felt... free.
But also unmoored.
He clenched his fingers, and a faint ripple of violet light coursed along the edges of his palm — the remnant energy of the Thread that had tried to bind him. He hadn't destroyed the Loom. He had merely broken it.
And broken things could be remade — or twisted.
⚘
Hours later, he stood at the edge of the underground sanctum, staring at the wall where the old murals showed the origin of the Loom: a gift from the First Weavers, who were said to descend from the gods themselves. The carvings depicted souls spun into form, destinies assigned like threads in a tapestry — all leading to a single design: Order.
Kael raised his hand toward the mural. The air warped. Symbols shifted.
Where once he would have seen art, he now saw code.
Input → Ritual → Thread → Role.
He could read the system like a mathematician reads a proof — and more disturbingly, he could see its flaws.
"The Loom was never divine," he whispered to no one. "Just a tool... a prison dressed as prophecy."
He stepped back.
And smiled — a faint, broken smile.
Not because he found joy.
But because he finally understood the stakes.
⚘
The following morning, the council summoned him. Not in robes of honor, but chains of silver thorns.
"Kael of the Broken Thread," intoned the High Seer. "By the laws of the Pattern, you are unbound. An aberration. A threat."
Kael raised his head slowly, his eyes colder than ice and twice as sharp.
"Then why haven't you killed me?"
A hush fell. The Seer hesitated.
"You can't, can you?" Kael said, rising without permission. The guards flinched. "You don't know what I am anymore. You're afraid that if I die, the Pattern unravels. Afraid that your thread ends with me."
"Blasphemy," the Seer spat.
"Truth."
Kael turned away, unshackled by his own will. The chains fell like brittle leaves.
As he walked toward the threshold of the sanctum, he uttered one final word.
"Reweaving."
And the ground trembled.
A new force was being born — not from prophecy, but from rebellion.
From him.
From the first Weavebreaker.