The world reinvented itself with a whisper.
Where the Loom had formerly pulsed with stodgy order and regulations long lost to memory, it now breathed—living, uncertain, free. Threads no longer dragged souls along predestined paths. They shone like rivers in moonlight, waiting to be shaped by the will of those brave enough to grasp them.
Kael stood at the edge of the new tapestry, staring into the reassembled web of being. Beneath his feet, the platform had shifted—no longer crystal, but an endless ocean of woven light, crosshatched by endless threads. Above him, the Heartloom drifted, slow and steady in its turn, no longer tied to agony but to choice.
"Elira…" he turned, searching—and found her not behind him, but already moving forward.
She was standing with her back to him, her face lifted to the webbed sky where stars had reappeared—a possibility reborn in every one. Her hair moved in an unseen wind, and the bond mark on her hand pulsed gently.
