Ashardio drifted into sleep as though pulled by a tide he could not see—one that whispered in forgotten tongues. There was no warmth, no cold. No color, no darkness. No edges. Just a space that was not space. A silence that was not quiet, but rather the absence of all things, even meaning.
This was not a dream. It was something older. Something beneath dreaming. The Absolute Void.
He stood within it—alone, yet not. The void pulsed faintly around him, not like a living thing, but like a presence that had simply been waiting. Then, from that stillness, emerged a figure.
It was him.
Not as he was now, but younger. Untouched by the war and wounds. His skin bore no scars, his eyes glowed with something ancient. He stood taller, as if certainty held his spine in place instead of doubt. His voice came like the echo of a falling star collapsing in on itself—soft, slow, immense.
"You're not ready," the past Ashardio said calmly. "But you will be."
A tightness gripped Ashardio's chest, not painful, but deep. Like a memory pushing itself through the bones of his body. Something hidden. Something buried. The Void itself seemed to respond to his awakening memory, unfolding like a thought given permission to form.
With a breath, the void shifted. Patterns bled into the emptiness like oil into water, forming the outlines of an immense castle that hovered in space without support. Its towers spiraled infinitely upward, crowned with torches that held no flame. The stone was etched with moving murals, scenes alive within the walls. Twelve thrones stood in a circle at its center, occupied by majestic beings cloaked in woven cosmos. Each bore a sigil—Time, Flame, Tides, Stone, Storm, and others whose names Ashardio could no longer remember.
But one throne remained empty.
The thirteenth.
"Our family," the younger Ashardio whispered, gaze lingering on the vacant seat. "The line of Vaes'Theron. Once part of the Council of Kings. Thirteenth in power. First in fear."
Images flooded Ashardio's mind like cracked glass letting in light. He saw himself—no, a boy, perhaps him—hands outstretched, weaving light from shadow, bending realms into thread, collapsing entire echoes of time into singular strands of understanding. The boy stood before the kings, not defiant, but curious. Yet their eyes did not shine with wonder. Only fear.
Then, a tribunal held in silence. No voices raised. Only judgments. Only exile.
"They feared us," the past Ashardio said, voice laced with memory and pain. "Not because we sought to unmake existence—but because we heard it whispering back."
He lifted his hand, and in the center of his palm bloomed a singularity. It did not consume. It did not rage. It listened. A void that knew. A void that remembered.
"The Absolute Void," he said, "is not absence. It is the lattice—the memory of every existence that ever was. It is beneath time, beyond space. It knows every death. Every rebirth. Every lie told by history. And we…"
He turned his eyes toward Ashardio, and for a moment, there was only gravity.
"We can rewrite that lattice."
Ashardio staggered. Something within him—perhaps his very identity—shuddered at the words. And then, the visions came like aftershocks.
A world stitched from dead moments, where nothing moved, yet everything watched. A king screaming in reverse, youth devouring his body until he unraveled into nonexistence. A blade—serrated and silver—forged from a heartbeat that never beat, pulsing with the song of forgotten creation.
These were not fantasies. These were possibilities.
"We made endings optional," the past continued, voice now tinged with remorse. "And that… that was our mistake."
Ashardio tried to speak. To beg for clarity. But his throat locked, choked not by fear, but by recognition. Something primal in him knew these truths. Knew them the way a flame knows hunger. And it terrified him.
"You were not banished for what you did," the younger self said. "But for what you could do. You hid who you were. You became a Weaver. You forgot your name, your blood, your power."
"But forgetting does not unwrite the truth etched into your soul."
Around them, the Void began to groan. Not a sound—but a shifting. The dream, the vision, the truth—it was ending.
Desperate, Ashardio lunged forward, hands outstretched. "Wait! What do I do with this? How do I know when to use it?"
The other Ashardio—his past—smiled.
It was not cruel.
It was not kind.
It was the smile of someone who knew what burden truly meant.
"That's the curse, isn't it?"
He stepped backward, swallowed by the closing void, his form fading into unbeing. But just before the silence took him entirely, he whispered:
"When all things become yours to end or preserve, the one thing you must fear… is the thread you cannot cut."
The words did not echo. They did not fade. They engraved themselves into Ashardio's bones. He felt them pulse through his blood, hammer behind his eyes, coil around his breath. A riddle.
One he knew was true.
The thread you cannot cut.
⸻
Ashardio woke with a gasp. The world around him seemed dimmer—less vibrant, as though reality itself hesitated in his presence. The Loomfires, once wild and crackling, now flickered with a quiet pulse, as if they too had heard the truth.
His chest rose and fell rapidly. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from recognition.
The Void lived inside him. Patient. Not hungry, but awake. Waiting.
He sat up slowly, blinking into the embers of the Loomfires, and whispered the riddle aloud, as though it might answer him.
"What thread cannot be cut?"
There was no reply.
Only silence.
But something deep inside him, something older than language, whispered that he would find it.
And when he did…
The world would change.
Forever.