Mumtaz's voice rang behind her like a blade unsheathed: "You see now. She's exactly what I wove her to be."
Aarifa turned, slowly. The golden veil that had shrouded her mind was fraying. Not because of Mumtaz.
Because something else was calling.
The Saanjh.
They moved beneath the surface of her thoughts like silent guardians, old as nightfall, threading through the spaces Mumtaz hadn't touched. The oldest looms—the true looms—had begun to stir.
And they were choosing her.
Her hands trembled. Not from weakness, but from too many truths colliding at once. Mumtaz wanted her to be a weapon. The Threads Between had marked her as a vessel. And the Saanjh… they were whispering another truth: you are neither.
You are the Threadbreaker.
"Aarifa," Khurram choked out, barely upright, golden threads still tight against his throat. "Fight her."
She looked at him—really looked. Not with the eyes Mumtaz had carved, but the ones born beneath the loom in Burhanpur. And for a single heartbeat, she saw him not as a prince or a pawn, but as the one who had always reached for her. Even when she vanished. Even now.
The threads around his neck loosened.
Behind her, Mumtaz's voice darkened. "Don't forget what I gave you."
"I haven't," Aarifa said. "You gave me chains. And called them fate."
The courtyard cracked beneath their feet as energy surged. Mumtaz raised her hands to summon the Threads Between—but the looms had awakened.
From the air itself, a wind unlike any earthly storm howled. It carried the scent of burnt jasmine and thunder.
Then the Saanjh arrived.
They didn't appear; they unfolded into being. Robes of dusk. Eyes gleaming with loom light. Threads spiraling from their palms, weaving symbols into the sky. At their front, the Speaker of the Pattern walked forward, her veil glinting with starlight.
Mumtaz stepped back. "No."
"You meddled with the Pattern," the Speaker said, voice clear as temple bells. "Now the Pattern responds."
Aarifa swayed, caught between forces that wanted to claim her.
And then—
A shattering cry pierced the sky.
From the rooftops behind the palace, the child from the alley appeared, eyes glowing black, holding a spindle of thread darker than night.
And behind him, the shadowed army emerged—faces blurred, sigils burned into their chests. Betrayed threads. Forgotten weavers. Unclaimed futures.
They did not walk.
They descended.
And at their helm, the shadow with the bound falcon sigil spoke one word:
"Unmake."
The threads screamed.
The sky split.
And Aarifa had to choose.
The world tilted.
Not from motion, but from memory.
Aarifa stood unmoving, yet within her, centuries collided. Loom fires long extinguished reignited in her veins. Threads from forgotten lineages coiled around her spirit, each demanding a voice, a vengeance, a victory.
The golden courtyard flickered one breath a battlefield, the next a sanctum, the next a loom house drowned in blood.
And above it all, the sky wept threads.
From that torn tapestry of the heavens, the Saanjh descended like prophecy made flesh.
The Speaker of the Pattern stepped forward. She carried no armor. No crown. Only the woven blade in one hand, and the weight of history in the other.
Aarifa turned toward her. The threads obeyed the motion like a tide answering the moon.
"You called me," she said. Not confused, not angry, but curious. Dangerous.
The Speaker inclined her head. "We never stopped."
Beneath the palace arch, Mumtaz Mahal narrowed her eyes. "You meddle in what is mine."
The Speaker laughed softly. "You mistook the Pattern for property. That was your first sin."
Mumtaz stepped forward. "And your last will be underestimating me."
A scream split the courtyard.
It was not human.
It came from the gate.
From the Forgotten.
They spilled through the breach like ghosts unshackled. The boy with threadless eyes, the bride who bore fire in her mouth, the man with hands that still bled ash. They did not march. They flowed. Each a memory once denied, each a stitch unpicked from a tapestry no one wished to remember.
Khurram pulled himself upright. The threads at his throat had slackened, but not vanished.
And Aarifa…
She turned toward the sound of the Forgotten with something like recognition. Or regret.
The leader of the Forgotten—the shadow with the chained falcon sigil—stepped into the light.
"Do you remember me, Weaver?" he asked.
Aarifa did not answer.
But the threads behind her quivered.
The Speaker raised her blade. "You were cast out, yes. But you were never silenced."
The Forgotten leader's laugh was dry, bitter. "And now we speak. In unraveling."
The courtyard convulsed.
Stone cracked. Trees twisted. And high above, the frayed sky tore wider.
From that breach came a sound like a loom snapping mid-spin.
A great, shuddering silence.
And then…
The Pattern itself screamed.
Threads of gold and green and black whipped through the air, colliding, snarling, entangling. History itself had risen to war.
Mumtaz raised her arms. Threads coalesced around her fingers like serpents. "Let the Pattern break. Let the old looms burn."
"No," Aarifa said, quiet.
Everyone froze.
Even the wind.
"I've seen what happens when it breaks," Aarifa continued. "You don't find freedom. You find a thousand pieces of yourself too jagged to hold."
She raised her hand.
And the threads answered—not Mumtaz's, not the Saanjh's, not the Forgotten's.
Hers.
All of them.
For a moment, she was not a vessel.
She was the spindle.
A center in the storm.
"I will not be your weapon," she said to Mumtaz.
"I will not be your memory," she said to the Forgotten.
"I will not be your savior," she said to the Saanjh.
"I am the weaver of my own fate."
And she snapped her fingers.
The golden threads burst outward in a shockwave.
Not destruction.
Redirection.
Mumtaz staggered back, veil whipped from her face, revealing eyes wide with fury.
The Forgotten screamed, unraveling into smoke, but not vanishing; changing, called elsewhere.
Even the Speaker stumbled, her blade dimming to a glow.
And Aarifa…
She stood alone.
Hair wild, eyes lit with memory and will, her body burning not with power, but decision.
The Pattern pulsed beneath her feet.
And it waited.
Then a voice, soft, human, broke the quiet.
"...Aarifa."
Khurram.
He took a single step forward, past ash and light.
She turned.
This time, her eyes were only hers.
And they were wet with tears.