The light didn't just swallow her up.
It tore her apart.
Not physically.
Not like pain.
Like a truth that rips away what no longer has the right to remain hidden.
Lunaya fell, or floated, she no longer knew.
The world had no more up or down, no more time or form.
Just a clarity too pure, too bright, too bare.
Then...
Something reassembled itself.
A white slab.
An infinite vault.
And in the center, like a column of light: a weave.
Not a web.
Not a halo.
A real weave of luminous threads, pulsing like living veins.
And Lunaya understood without understanding:
The Sanctuary was showing her its soul.
But there was more.
In the transparent threads...
other colors could be distinguished.
A glowing red thread, rage, fire, domination: Dravik.
A deep blue thread, calm, loyalty, silent pain: Kael.
A golden thread, pulsing like restrained laughter: Sahr.
A black-silver thread, grainy, broken in places: Erynd.
And at the heart of it all...
A white thread.
Her thread.
Fragile and yet impossible to break.
Lunaya approached despite herself.
The threads throbbed.
They breathed.
They reacted to her.
As if each one recognized her power, her blood,
her past, and her mistakes.
The light of Erynd's thread quivered first.
Then Kael's, like a frantic beat.
And finally, slow, dangerous, inevitable, Dravik's.
Sahr vibrated very faintly, but with a strange intensity,
almost... intimate.
"What is...?"
Her voice was lost in space.
A silhouette formed in the light.
Not the woman from the pool.
Not a corbin.
Someone else.
A form shrouded in mist, neither man nor woman,
neither living nor dead.
The weave responded to its arrival with,
a shiver that ran through Lunaya's heart.
The figure spoke without opening its mouth:
"You have been broken.
You have been divided.
You have been erased.
Yet...
you have returned whole."
Lunaya shook her head, backing away.
"That's not true. I am... lost. Fractured.
I don't even remember... my name. "
The figure approached.
And with the tip of an immaterial finger, it touched the white thread.
Lunaya screamed.
Images exploded:
The ravens surrounding her in a circle of black feathers.
Dravik trying to break his chains of fire.
Sahr kissing her palm before she was torn away from him.
Kael screaming her name as she disappeared into the light.
Erynd, kneeling, head bowed, holding something invisible in his hands...
The pain dissipated.
Lunaya fell to her knees.
And the figure said:
"You were not destroyed.
You were defeated.
And everything you loved still calls out to you. "
Lunaya looked up, breathless.
"Why... why don't I remember?"
Silence.
Then:
"Because you were forced to forget.
Because the only bond you had chosen was taken from you.
Because without your choice...
there was nothing left of you."
Something broke inside her.
The white thread tensed, like an overworked muscle.
The other threads, red, blue, black, gold, shivered.
The silhouette continued:
"To find who you are...
you must accept what links you to them.
All four.
And the one you thought you chose first...
is not the first one who chose you. "
Kael's blue thread vibrated violently, almost in panic.
Erynd's black thread burst with a painful light.
Dravik's red thread shivered like an animal ready to pounce.
Sahr's golden thread... lit up silently, amused, intrigued, predatory.
Lunaya felt a tear slip down her cheek.
"What do you want from me?"
The figure placed a hand on her shoulder.
"For you to remember.
And for you to decide.
Before they destroy each other."
The room fractured.
Everything turned to dust of light.
And Lunaya felt the outside world return.