Volume II: The Weave Unravels
The wind was wrong.
It sang a discordant lullaby, rustling through forests that had once known harmony. Trees whispered secrets to one another in ancient dialects, as if something sacred was unraveling beneath the soil.
Far to the east, beyond the Silver Dunes and the Glass Expanse, a new land had emerged—the Rootless Realms.
It wasn't on any map.
Not because it was hidden…
…but because it wasn't supposed to exist.
---
Kiel stood atop a ridge of crystallized sand, his boots crunching over the strange terrain. The air buzzed, thin and unnatural. It smelled of ozone and paradox.
He hadn't planned to return to wandering.
He hadn't planned on magic calling him again.
But when stars blink out, and trees forget their names, someone had to listen.
And Kiel still remembered how to listen.
---
It started with a dream.
A boy. Pale eyes. Skin that flickered between color and transparency. Standing beneath a tree made of bone and mist.
> "They're waking," the boy had whispered, "but they're not whole."
> "Who?" Kiel asked.
> "The Forgotten Roots," the boy replied. "And they're angry."
---
The dream came three nights in a row.
Then the stars began misaligning—entire constellations shifting without warning. The Weave, once stable, had begun to fray.
And now, here he was, at the edge of the impossible.
---
A sudden gust of wind split open a nearby dune, revealing a staircase spiraling downward. Not carved—grown—out of living salt crystal, glowing faintly with a pulse that mimicked a heartbeat.
Kiel didn't hesitate.
He descended.
---
As he moved deeper into the earth, the sand around him grew warmer. He touched the wall. It pulsed under his fingertips. Alive. Breathing.
> "You came," said a voice, feminine and dissonant.
> "Who are you?" Kiel asked.
> "I am the stitch in the fabric. The whisper between breaths. I am… what remains when memory is denied."
A shape emerged from the wall—half-woman, half-loom, with eyes that spun like spindles.
> "The Weave was never meant to be perfect," she said, "but someone is trying to unmake its flaws. They are severing stories, unraveling timelines. Rootless Realms are the result."
Kiel narrowed his eyes. "You're not asking me to fix it."
> "No," she replied. "I'm asking you to remember it… before it forgets itself."
---
Suddenly, the chamber shook. A scream echoed—not from a throat, but from the walls themselves.
Kiel turned, sword half-drawn, though he hadn't wielded it in decades.
Out of the wall slithered a creature—memoryless, faceless, a thing born of severed narrative. A Nullborn.
Kiel stepped forward, calm and resolute.
He didn't attack.
He sang.
A single note. Low. Deep.
The Nullborn froze. Shuddered. Then began to mimic the note.
As Kiel sang, the being shifted—its form twitching, reaching, reshaping until it wore a face. Not a terrifying one… but a familiar one.
The boy from the dream.
---
> "I… remember," the boy whispered.
> "Then you're not lost anymore," Kiel answered.
The half-loom woman nodded. "One rethreaded. Millions more to go."
---
Above ground, the sky flickered like a scratched mirror. Shapes moved in the clouds—authors of entropy, hunters of history, drawn to the Rootless Realms.
The war for memory had begun.
And once again, the man who only wanted to be forgotten…
would have to be remembered.