News traveled faster than fire. By the time the fortress city of Drelith fell silent beneath smoke and rubble, half the continent whispered its death toll. Some said an earthquake swallowed the city whole. Others muttered of cursed magic, of crimson serpents slithering through stone. Few spoke the truth aloud—that something beneath the world was stirring, and its hunger had no ceiling.
In the marble halls of Kingdom Aelreth, King Alden IV sat slouched on his throne, goblet of wine trembling in his hand. His council shouted over each other, voices clashing like swords.
"It is sabotage! The southern guilds have plotted this for years—"
"Don't be absurd, no guild could shatter a bell tower with such precision—"
"The priests say the gods are testing us, that sacrifices must be made to restore balance—"
King Alden slammed his goblet down, red wine splashing like blood across the polished stone. The chamber fell silent.
"Sacrifices?" His voice shook not with anger, but with something worse—fear. "What god demands sacrifices in the shape of crimson spirals etched into my villages? Tell me, priest. Which holy tongue burns the fields of my people?"
The priest bowed low, beads rattling in trembling hands. "Majesty… none that we know. Unless…"
"Unless what?"
The priest's voice cracked. "Unless the old texts are true. Unless the Architect—"
The king rose from his throne with a snarl. "Silence." But even as he spoke, his eyes darted to the cracks forming along the chamber walls. Hairline fractures, faintly glowing red in the torchlight.
The councilors noticed too. None spoke.
---
Far across the sea, in the scholar's citadel of Veyndral, sages bent over ancient tomes and cracked tablets. For generations they had treated the "Fissure Prophecies" as metaphor—a poet's allegory for collapse of empire. But now, faced with diagrams of spirals identical to those seared into villages, their laughter had long since died.
One scholar whispered to another, "If the Architect awakens, even our vaults will burn."
His companion shook his head grimly. "No. They will not burn. They will unravel. There will be nothing left to even burn."
---
And in the shadowed alleys of the common folk, fear grew its own roots.
A mother hushed her crying child as she walked past a ruined church, its walls collapsed inward. "Don't look, love," she murmured.
But the child did look—and saw faint crimson threads twitching in the rubble, like veins still pulsing with life. He whispered, "Mama… it's breathing."
The mother dragged him away, but she couldn't unhear it. Couldn't unsee the faint heaving of stone like a chest rising.
Rumors swelled. Some claimed the fissures led to the underworld, where the souls of the damned clawed their way free. Others whispered of a man with crimson eyes, walking untouched through chaos, his footsteps leaving scars in the land. They didn't know his name, but his shadow spread faster than armies.
---
Yet not all feared. Some rejoiced.
In hidden corners of the continent, cults rose like mold. Crimson candles burned in basements. Runes were carved into flesh with steady hands. And voices chanted in unison:
"The Loom stirs. The Weaver rises. We are threads in His design."
---
At the edge of it all, far from kings and priests, a wandering bard strummed a cracked lute in a tavern crowded with desperate men. His voice was soft, but every word clung to the drinkers like hooks:
"Walls crumble, bells break, gods fall silent.
But a crimson loom waits,
And those who wear its colors will never be forgotten."
Coin clinked at his feet. Not for the beauty of the song, but for the hope it carried—even if that hope belonged to a different master.
---
The world did not know Yurin's name.
But already, they felt him.
The cracks were no longer beneath their feet.
The cracks were in their faith, their crowns, their hearts.