The Arch-Leviathan glided across the endless waters, a silent titan cutting through the waves. Above, the Sky-Binders circled in precise formation, their shadowed wings reflecting pale threads of resonance. The horizon shimmered unnaturally, where the sea met a swirling veil of colorless mist—a boundary between the Verdant Maw and the next Vault.
Malik stood unmoving on the Leviathan's prow, his cloak billowing in the cold wind. His eyes, once simply dark, now bore faint strands of lattice-threaded glow. He didn't blink. He barely breathed. Since merging with the Fifth Shard, his perception stretched beyond the physical; he could feel the hidden layers of the ocean beneath them, the faint echo of threads leading forward like spider silk.
Rin sat a few steps behind him, arms wrapped around her knees. Her gaze kept flicking nervously between Malik and the alien flock above. She wanted to speak, to break the suffocating silence, but every time she looked at him now, she saw the same abyssal detachment she had once only seen in the Keepers.
Elara, in contrast, stood firm. She didn't speak either, but her eyes never left Malik. She was watching him with a predator's patience, studying every shift in his aura, every ripple of unnatural resonance that now bled from him.
The Arch-Leviathan slowed, its massive form trembling slightly as the waters ahead began to churn.
Malik finally spoke.
"We're crossing the Veil Rift."
Rin frowned. "The… what?"
"It's the layer between two Vaults," Elara answered before Malik could. Her voice was low, serious. "They're spatial folds. Not quite real. Not quite dream. If you pass through unprepared, you can lose… everything. Your memories, your shape, even your will."
Rin stiffened. "So we're… sailing straight into that?"
"Yes," Malik said, still facing forward. "But we're not unprepared."
As if responding to his words, the Sky-Binders swooped lower. Their hollow eyes glowed faintly, and they began weaving an aerial lattice pattern. Threads of faint resonance stretched between them, forming a skeletal framework above the Leviathan. The creature beneath them rumbled lowly, its ribcage shifting as lattice cores pulsed within.
The Veil Rift loomed closer.
From a distance, it appeared like a curtain of fog. But as they neared, its nature revealed itself. It wasn't fog at all. It was threads. Countless, tangled, writhing threads of lightless resonance, stretching into infinite directions. Whispers filled the air—snatches of forgotten voices, half-formed words, promises, and threats.
Rin covered her ears, but the whispers seeped into her mind anyway. You were never meant to come here. Turn back. Join the loom. Join the loom.
Even Elara's face tightened as she clenched her sabers. "It's worse than I imagined…"
Malik didn't react. He simply stepped onto the Leviathan's skull, raising one hand.
"Silent Weave."
The Fifth Shard within him pulsed, and an unseen ripple spread outward. The whispers faltered. The tangled threads of the Veil Rift slowed their endless writhing, as if something heavier pressed upon them. The Arch-Leviathan let out a deep, subsonic growl, and the Sky-Binders' formation tightened.
Together, they forced a corridor open through the Rift.
"Stay close to me," Malik ordered quietly.
The Leviathan entered the Rift.
Instantly, the world bent.
The ocean beneath them disappeared. The sky above vanished. They were surrounded by nothing but threads—millions upon millions of threads stretching in every direction, looping into impossible patterns. Shapes flickered in the periphery of sight—faces of long-dead sailors, creatures that might have been human once, and endless masks like the ones the Keepers wore.
Time fractured.
Rin gasped as she saw a flicker of herself—older, her face lined with exhaustion, her eyes hollow. Then it vanished, replaced by a version of herself screaming silently, dissolving into threads.
Elara grit her teeth as her own memories surged. She saw her father, Captain Volkov, holding the cursed mask from the Sea Serpent's hold. She saw herself striking Malik in the Vault—but in this vision, she won. She saw herself standing over his body, holding the Fifth Shard. Then it, too, dissolved.
The Veil Rift fed on uncertainty. It devoured possibility.
But Malik…
Malik simply walked through it.
To him, the threads weren't chaos. They were clarity. Every strand was a potential rewrite. Every knot was a challenge to be undone. He extended his perception further, feeling the Rift like a musician tuning an instrument. He plucked one strand, then another, aligning them to the Silent Weave.
The Rift shuddered.
A path solidified beneath the Leviathan's massive claws. The whispers grew faint, silenced by Malik's resonance.
Rin stared at his back in disbelief. How… how can he move like that here? Doesn't this place affect him?
But deep inside, Rin already knew the truth. Malik wasn't resisting the Rift. He was absorbing it.
After what felt like hours—but might have been seconds—they emerged.
The Leviathan breached the far edge of the Veil Rift.
And the new Vault revealed itself.
It was… colossal.
Before them stretched a sunken valley of crystalline structures, glowing faintly with inner light. Massive pillars of black coral spiraled upward into the void sky. Floating platforms drifted lazily, each covered in ruins inscribed with strange lattice runes. In the center of the valley lay a gigantic, broken loom—its threads snapped and frayed, but still humming with faint resonance.
This was the Obsidian Loom Vault.
Rin let out a shaky breath. "This… this is beautiful."
Elara's expression was darker. "It's also wrong. I can feel it. Something here is… awake."
Malik stepped off the Leviathan, landing on one of the floating platforms. He crouched briefly, touching the runes carved into the stone. The Fifth Shard resonated faintly.
"This Vault isn't abandoned," he murmured. "It's occupied."
As if to answer him, a voice echoed through the valley.
"So… the thief arrives."
The voice wasn't like the Keeper's cold whisper. It was deeper, layered with multiple tones, like several people speaking at once.
Figures emerged from the far side of the platform.
There were three of them.
The first was a tall, thin man draped in lattice-woven robes, his face hidden by a mask shaped like an hourglass. Threads floated around his arms like living extensions.
The second was a woman in tattered armor, her body partially fused with coral growths, her eyes hollow yet burning faintly. She held a spear made from a Leviathan's spine.
The last was a creature—neither fully human nor fully Keeper. Its body shifted constantly, a blur of bone, coral, and thread.
Elara's grip on her sabers tightened. "They're… not Keepers. What are they?"
"Rival weavers," Malik said quietly.
The masked man stepped forward. "You carry the Fifth Shard," he said. "Bold. Foolish. That thread was never yours."
Malik tilted his head. "And you are?"
"We are the Loomborn," the masked man answered. "Fragments of the original Weavers, tasked to guard this Vault from intruders like you."
The Loomborn woman raised her spear. "Turn back, mortal. You've taken one thread. That is enough."
"And if I don't?" Malik asked, voice calm.
The Loomborn creature snarled, its shifting form distorting. "Then you are unmade."
Silence hung for a moment. Rin's heartbeat thundered in her ears. Elara shifted slightly, preparing for the inevitable clash.
Malik simply smiled faintly.
"Try."
The Vault reacted.
The Loomborn moved in unison, their threads whipping out toward Malik like spears. The masked man's threads aimed to bind his resonance, the spearwoman lunged with blinding speed, and the creature unleashed a wave of distortions that warped the platform itself.
Malik didn't flinch.
"Silent Weave."
The Fifth Shard flared violently, and for a brief instant, the Vault stilled.
Threads unraveled. The spear's trajectory bent. The distortion wave froze mid-air. Malik stepped forward through the suspended moment, his blade cutting—not flesh, but the binding threads holding the Loomborn together.
The masked man staggered back, his hourglass mask cracking. "Impossible! You shouldn't see our threads!"
Malik's gaze was cold. "Everything is a thread. Even you."
With a flick of his hand, he pulled.
The Loomborn creature screamed as its unstable form collapsed into a pile of loose threads. The spearwoman tried to counter, but her arm twisted violently as Malik rewrote the thread of motion itself, forcing her strike to miss. She fell to her knees, gasping as her coral-fused body began to unravel.
The masked man retreated, desperation in his voice. "You don't understand what you're invoking! This Vault is not a prize—it is a warning!"
Malik advanced, his footsteps echoing like a slow drumbeat. "Then I'll rewrite the warning too."
The masked man raised both arms, summoning the full resonance of the Vault. The broken loom in the center of the valley awoke. Threads erupted from it, tearing through the air like whips.
Malik looked up at the shattered loom and, for a brief second, understood.
It wasn't broken. It was sealed.
Something was inside it.
And now, it was stirring.
The masked man laughed bitterly. "You've doomed yourself, thief. You've stirred the Loom-Eater!"
The Vault shook violently. The platforms splintered.
From the heart of the broken loom, a massive silhouette began to rise.
It wasn't a creature. It wasn't a Keeper.
It was a Loom-Eater, a being of pure unraveling resonance, a predator of threads themselves.
Rin screamed as the entity's form solidified, its countless eyes opening like dark stars. Even the Sky-Binders above scattered in terror.
Malik simply stared at it, his expression unreadable.
"Another thread," he murmured. "Another knot to undo."
The Loom-Eater roared.
And the Vault descended into chaos.
The Loom-Eater's presence warped everything.
Threads disintegrated in its wake. The floating platforms crumbled, their lattice runes unraveling into drifting dust. Even the Vault's crystalline pillars trembled as the entity stretched its limbs—if they could even be called limbs. Its body wasn't fixed. It constantly shifted, alternating between countless shapes—a weaver's loom, a writhing mass of tendrils, a hollow mask with endless eyes.
The Loomborn masked man fell to his knees, his voice breaking into overlapping tones. "It's awake. It's awake. It's awake!" His remaining threads snapped and scattered like shredded silk. The spearwoman screamed as her coral armor crumbled, leaving her hollow. Only the shifting creature let out a warped, inhuman howl before it dissolved completely into the Loom-Eater's pull.
Rin staggered, clutching her head. She felt something clawing inside her mind, pulling at the concept of her existence. For a split second, she saw herself as a single thread, trembling on the verge of being plucked free.
Elara planted her sabers into the platform to steady herself, her knuckles white. "What in the depths is this…?" she whispered, sweat streaking her brow despite the cold.
Malik watched silently.
His mind was calculating, dissecting. The Fifth Shard's resonance within him flared in warning—the Loom-Eater was beyond the Keepers. It wasn't bound by the same lattice law. It didn't protect Vaults. It consumed them. It unmade threads.
It was pure entropy, wrapped in resonance.
Yet even as the Vault quaked and the Loom-Eater let out a soul-shattering shriek, Malik felt no fear. Instead, his eyes narrowed slightly.
So this is the true predator of the weave…
The Loom-Eater lunged.
It didn't move like a beast. It didn't even move like a Keeper. It simply was—and then it wasn't—and then it was everywhere. Threads snapped out from its form, slicing through the air like knives of unmaking. One lashed toward Malik, moving faster than thought.
He stepped aside.
Not with speed. Not with strength.
But by slipping between the threads of causality.
The Fifth Shard pulsed, and Malik's position subtly shifted out of alignment with the Loom-Eater's strike. The unmaking tendril tore through empty air where he'd been a heartbeat ago.
The Vault groaned louder. The floating ruins collapsed one by one. Entire chunks of the Obsidian Loom fell into the abyss below.
Rin stumbled toward Malik in panic. "We—we have to run! There's no fighting this! Look at it! It's eating the Vault itself!"
Elara grabbed her arm, holding her back. "Wait. Watch him."
Malik raised his hand. Threads shimmered faintly between his fingers—thin, fragile strands of rewritten resonance.
The Loom-Eater turned its endless eyes toward him. It saw. It recognized.
It shrieked again, but this time the sound wasn't only destructive—it was angry.
"Interesting," Malik murmured, his voice barely audible over the chaos. "It remembers."
For the first time since its awakening, the Loom-Eater hesitated.
That tiny pause told Malik everything.
It wasn't mindless.
It was bound to something. Perhaps a memory. Perhaps an ancient order. It was neither fully free nor fully wild. Somewhere within its core, there was still a pattern—a knot waiting to be untied.
Malik stepped forward.
Each step aligned more threads. He wasn't fighting the Vault's collapse. He was synchronizing with it, pulling the remnants of its structure into his Silent Weave.
"Rin. Elara. Hold your ground," he said quietly, without looking back.
"Hold our—are you insane?" Rin shouted, her voice trembling.
"Yes," Elara cut in, though her gaze was locked on Malik. "He knows what he's doing."
Malik raised his hand higher. The Fifth Shard's resonance expanded, forming a faint lattice barrier between them and the Loom-Eater's reach. It wasn't strong. It wouldn't last. But it bought him a fraction of time.
"Silent Weave," he whispered again.
The Vault answered.
The broken loom in the valley's center convulsed, its shattered threads reattaching temporarily, like a corpse twitching under forced life. Malik used it as an anchor, weaving new lines of resonance directly into the Loom-Eater's path.
The entity roared, its endless limbs thrashing. But Malik's threads caught—not its body, but the concept of its movement. For a fraction of a second, the Loom-Eater froze mid-shift, its unmaking halted by Malik's invasive resonance.
Rin gasped. "He's—he's stopping it!"
"No," Elara muttered, eyes narrowing. "He's reading it."
And she was right. Malik wasn't trying to defeat the Loom-Eater. Not yet. He was learning it.
He let his perception sink deeper, beyond the Vault's fractured surface. He saw the Loom-Eater's core—a writhing mass of threads tangled around a singular knot of darkness. That knot wasn't resonance. It wasn't even part of this reality. It was something older. Something below the lattice.
A Seed of Unmaking.
Malik's lips curved faintly.
So that was the truth of the Loom-Eater. It wasn't just a beast. It was a weapon.
A weapon left behind by someone—or something—that wanted the Vaults to fall.
The masked Loomborn, half-unraveled on the ground, laughed hoarsely. "Do you see it now, thief? Do you see what you've awakened? There is no controlling the Loom-Eater. It will consume you, consume this Vault, and then consume every—"
Malik silenced him with a glance. A single tug on the Silent Weave unraveled the Loomborn's last threads, reducing him to drifting fragments.
The Loom-Eater broke free of Malik's brief hold. Its limbs lashed out in fury, destroying another floating platform. The Sky-Binders screamed as they were dragged into its gravity, their forms torn apart.
Time was running short.
Malik exhaled slowly, his mind already weaving possibilities. He couldn't destroy the Loom-Eater now. He didn't have the resonance for it. But he could redirect it.
The Vault itself still contained fragments of the original Loom—a mechanism meant to bind. If he rewrote those bindings, even temporarily, he could trap the Loom-Eater long enough to move deeper into the Vault.
He turned his head slightly toward Elara. "When I move, follow. Do not hesitate."
Her eyes widened. "What are you planning?"
"Rebinding," Malik said simply.
Then he moved.
The Fifth Shard flared like a collapsing star. Threads erupted from Malik's body, racing across the collapsing platforms, linking shattered pieces of the Vault into a temporary network. The broken loom in the valley's center shuddered violently as Malik hijacked its resonance.
The Loom-Eater sensed the shift and lunged—but Malik was already ahead.
He pulled.
For an instant, the Vault bent to his will. Threads of Silent Weave shot upward, spiraling around the Loom-Eater's shifting form. They didn't bind its body—they bound its pattern.
The Loom-Eater roared, thrashing, tearing through several layers of Malik's threads. But each time it broke free, Malik rewrote the binding, tightening it again and again, faster than it could unmake.
"Now!" Malik barked.
Elara grabbed Rin and sprinted. They leapt across a crumbling platform toward Malik, landing just behind him as the temporary lattice cocoon sealed around the Loom-Eater.
The entity shrieked one final time, then froze—contained, for now, in a half-formed cage of resonance.
The Vault fell silent.
Rin collapsed to her knees, gasping. "I—I can't believe we're still alive…"
Elara stayed standing, but her grip on her sabers was tight. She looked at Malik, who stood in perfect composure, his gaze still on the trapped Loom-Eater.
"You didn't kill it," she said quietly.
"No," Malik replied. "I can't. Not yet."
Rin stared at the writhing, bound entity. "Then why trap it?"
Malik turned to the broken loom in the valley's center.
"Because it's not my enemy," he said softly. "It's my teacher."
Elara's eyes narrowed. "Teacher?"
Malik's lips curved faintly, his gaze cold and sharp. "I just learned how to unmake threads."
The Fifth Shard pulsed inside him, resonating with newfound understanding.
And deep within the Loom-Eater's bindings, something smiled back.