The chamber beneath Mystara Academy was unlike anything Vahn Romanoff had seen before. It was ancient—its smooth obsidian walls carved with glyphs that shimmered faintly, as if the very stone drank from the ambient Source. The air thrummed with power, every breath Vahn took laced with the electric tingle of raw potential.
This place was not on any map. It was a myth whispered through footnotes in Leslie's research, a location only made real through her journals and the cryptic Source Catalyst pendant she left behind. Its official name was lost to time, but Leslie had called it "The Heart Loom."
Here, beneath the foundations of Mystara, the Source Weave pulsed like a living thing.
Vahn stood before it—an arcane lattice stretching across the entire chamber like an enormous web, its strands anchored into crystalline cores set in concentric rings. Each strand glowed in a different hue: crimson for flame, cerulean for water, silver for wind, ochre for stone, gold for light, onyx for shadow... and at the center, one thread that flickered in chaotic violet—lightning.
The Weave was broken. He could feel it.
Or more precisely… incomplete.
His sister's last entries described the Source Weave as a stabilizer—something predating the Great Awakening, possibly even the tool responsible for controlling it. Whatever its purpose had once been, it was fractured now, its potential diminished and misaligned. Vahn's intuition screamed that understanding this artifact was key not only to awakening his full power but to uncovering the truth behind the Eleventh Seat and The Circle.
But he wasn't alone.
From the shadows emerged a figure wrapped in tattered robes. It moved like smoke, its voice dry as parchment.
"You have come far, unmarked one. Few find the Heart Loom. Fewer still survive its calling."
"I'm not here to survive," Vahn said, stepping closer to the central node. "I'm here to finish what my sister started."
A pause.
"You bear the sigil. The blood of Romanoff… then it is true. The Echo Flame has passed."
The title stung. Echo Flame—that was how Leslie had signed some of her more private notes. A code name. A prophecy. A burden.
"I need to restore the Source Weave," Vahn said, voice steady despite the whirlpool of pressure around him. "And I need answers—about the Eleventh Seat and the Circle. Everything."
The Custodian raised its hand. Threads of the Weave shimmered, revealing hidden symbols—glyphs of origin, loyalty, and betrayal.
"The Circle is real," the entity murmured. "But the Eleventh Seat… that is no seat. It is a Void. A watcher. A failsafe left by the Creators. It is not occupied. It is... consuming."
Vahn's heart pounded.
"A consuming seat?"
"Every structure built by the Creators had a balancing flaw," the Custodian explained. "The Eleventh Seat was never meant to be sat upon. It exists to siphon the excess. Power too great. Will too absolute. Even your sister feared what would happen if it were ever filled."
"But someone is trying to fill it," Vahn whispered, remembering the sigils marked in blood, the awakening corruption in the western provinces, the hushed rebellion stoked by fear.
The Custodian nodded.
"And you may be the only one who can stop it."
To restore the Source Weave, Vahn needed to reconnect the broken strands with their core conduits. Each element required precise attunement—aligned by will and resonance. Most trained their entire lives in a single element. Vahn, however, was Unmarked.
Unbound.
And that made him the only candidate capable of channeling all affinities.
He placed both hands on the pedestal surrounding the violet lightning strand. It sparked violently in protest, recoiling from his touch like a wild animal. His fingers sizzled, the heat of raw lightning threatening to shatter his bones from within.
Focus.
He closed his eyes. Thought of Leslie's smile. Her belief in the impossible. The pages of the research journal she had never published. The quiet ache of his loneliness.
Then, slowly… the strand bent.
It slid toward the central hub, fusing with a crystalline socket that pulsed once… then dimmed.
The Weave resisted. The other strands trembled.
One connection was not enough.
He needed more power.
He drew upon everything.
The pendant pulsed on his chest, releasing a memory. Leslie's voice, barely audible: "You will be a bridge, not a weapon."
The Core flared.
A circle of Source etched itself at his feet, mimicking the ancient sigil once hidden in their family crest. Purple lightning danced along his arms, leaping from fingertip to fingertip like serpents of divine fury. The Weave answered. Its other strands—fire, wind, water, shadow—reached toward him as if recognizing kinship.
He screamed as the convergence began.
It was not pain. Not ecstasy.
It was rewriting.
A moment of complete unbeing before the strands synchronized.
Then—
Silence.
And light.
The Source Weave flickered… then stabilized.
A new strand formed—one of dual color. A balance of destruction and clarity. The synthesis of opposing principles. This was not an element.
It was Vahn's mark.
A Weaveborn.
When Vahn awoke, the chamber was dark. The Custodian was gone. In his hand remained the pendant, now fused with a small fragment of crystalline weave—shaped like a feather and a bolt.
The Circle had tried to breach the Eleventh Seat.
The Source Weave had fought back.
And now, Vahn Romanoff was its heir.
Back at the academy, the sigils embedded in ancient walls began to stir. Word would spread quickly. That the unmarked boy had touched the root of all power and survived.
But Vahn did not care about politics.
He had seen the thread that connected everything.
And it led straight into the void.
To the Seat that should never be filled.
To the war that had already begun in silence.