The coin Lyra left behind pulsed with old thread energy—unlike anything we had ever felt.
Dark.
Raw.
Untamed.
Kael returned that night with dust on his boots and fear in his eyes.
"The Fracture Court isn't a myth," he said. "They're real—and they've built a loom beneath the ruins of the First Threadvault. A corrupted one. They call it the Unmaker."
My skin went cold.
"They want to sever the entire Veil," Kael added. "Not rewrite it. Destroy it."
"And Lyra's with them," I whispered.
"She's their harbinger."
We left at dusk, guided by old maps and Kael's memory. The Threadvault ruins sat beyond the Ridge of Echoes, buried in a dead zone where no threads flowed. It felt like walking into the spine of a ghost.
No birds.
No wind.
Only silence.
The entrance to the vault was sealed with obsidian threads, scorched black and coiled tight.
Riven placed his hand on them—and winced. "They bite."
I took the black-thread coin Lyra left and pressed it to the barrier.
It unraveled.
Inside, the air was thick with thread rot.
And in the center of the cavern, beneath broken sigils and shattered looms, stood a machine unlike anything I had ever seen:
The Unmaker.
It looked like a loom made of bone and bronze, suspended over a pit of broken memories—actual threads of people's pasts, ripped from their owners and stitched into the machine.
"We shouldn't be here," Kael muttered. "This place is cursed."
"No," I said. "It's proof."
We moved toward it carefully. As we got closer, the threads inside began to twitch.
Then… a voice echoed from the dark.
"You shouldn't have come."
Lyra stepped from behind the machine—eyes glowing with that pale, haunted gold. But she wasn't alone.
Dozens of figures emerged from the shadows—each one Marked, each one cloaked in threadless black.
The Fracture Court.
"You had a chance to remake the world," Lyra said. "Instead, you softened it."
I stepped forward. "We chose to heal, not destroy."
"Then you'll burn with it."
And behind her, the Unmaker roared to life—threads screaming as it pulled at the very air between us.
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