They stepped into the coil—and reality unmade itself.
Color crumbled off the air. Noise fragmented into fractal resonations. Even their bodies unraveled, breaking apart into memory-threads that shone and twirled like fireflies suspended in liquid time.
But Kael and Elira didn't.
Not by will, so much—but bond.
The golden thread between them pulsed with rebellion, rebelling against the separation, reforming their bodies even as the Forgotten Weaver sought to break them apart.
Weaving begins, the voice stated—no longer a threat, but an order. If your union is true, it will create the emptiness. If otherwise….
Darkness swelled inward, engulfing them.
And then—they were not alone.
They stood at the heart of the coil, enclosed by strands of all that ever existed. Each drawn thread a life, a hope, a sorrow. Threads belonging once to the living. The dead. The gods. The forgotten.
And hanging in front of them, a thread blacker than night, and whiter than hope.
Their own.
