The air in the Loomhall was different now.
He could feel it—subtly wrong, like a harp with one string tuned just slightly off. The Loomfires pulsed quietly, subdued, their flames casting strange shadows that bent in impossible angles. Ashardio stood still in the center, breath shallow, thoughts unraveling like smoke.
He had not spoken of the dream. He couldn't. It wasn't something meant to be shared—not yet. Not with the other guardians. Not with the celestial minds or the Dreamkeepers.
The Absolute Void pulsed in his blood now.
And it was listening.
Ashardio stepped forward, toward the old Loomtable. Ancient threads curled in silence across its surface—strands of existence from the outer realms, fates both fulfilled and fractured. He raised his hand, fingers trembling with something between reverence and fear. Then he pulled one thread toward him.
It was a simple thread.
Frayed at the edges.
A child's thread. Died young. A sickness born of realm corruption. One the Weavers had recorded and released. An "acceptable loss."
He stared at the soft glow of it—the heartbeat within the strand, flickering like a candle that never got to bloom into flame.
"Let me try," he whispered.
His palm shifted.
Not in fire. Not in shadow. But in stillness.
The Absolute Void opened within his hand—silent, slow, patient. It didn't devour the thread. It touched it. And suddenly, Ashardio saw the thread differently.
He saw the girl the thread belonged to. Laughing, once. Playing in the pools of her realm. A song on her lips. A hope in her eyes. Her death was not dramatic—just quiet. Like a story unfinished.
Ashardio reached into the strand with his will, not weaving, not altering, but remembering.
And then—
He reversed it.
The thread pulsed. The frays pulled inward. The heartbeat returned.
For a moment, she lived again.
He saw her in the Loomflame's vision—running back through the corridor of her memory, her mother's arms open wide, the sickness fading like mist.
And then…
Snap.
The thread tore itself away.
Ashardio recoiled, eyes wide. The Void in his palm flickered—rejected. Not by the world, but by the thread itself. It had refused to remain. Refused to return.
The Loomfires cracked.
Ashardio fell to one knee, breathless, heart thundering in his chest. The vision of the girl lingered for a heartbeat longer—and then collapsed into ash.
Gone.
Completely.
Not even a memory remained.
He had undone her death… and in doing so, unwound her existence.
He had not saved her.
He had erased her.
Ashardio trembled. The silence in the hall felt heavier now. Not judgmental. Not cruel.
But watching.
When all things become yours to end or preserve…
The one thing you must fear…
Is the thread you cannot cut.
He staggered to his feet, and in that moment, he understood.
The riddle was not just about power.
It was about consequence.
Some threads can be mended. Some can be severed.
But some…
Some are tied to the foundation itself. Holding meaning not just to those they touch—but to the shape of reality around them. To touch them was to challenge everything.
And some…
Could not be rewritten.
Could not be returned.
Could not be unmade without unmaking more.
Ashardio looked down at his palm, where the Absolute Void still pulsed faintly.
He had the power to unmake kings.
To resurrect the forgotten.
To break time's spine and silence death itself.
But the question now haunted him like a whisper on every thread:
Would he know the thread he could not cut… before it was too late?
He left the Loomhall in silence.
Outside, the night had folded itself into a stillness too perfect to be natural. Stars blinked above, cold and watchful, and the mountains in the distance held their breath.
Ashardio walked along the edge of the sacred lake. Its waters mirrored not the sky, but the past—memories surfacing in ripple and shimmer.
He saw his mother's face. The throne of Vaes'Theron, abandoned. The council of kings casting their sentence in cold light.
And he saw a child.
Not the girl from the thread.
Another one.
Eyes that held no fear of the Void.
A memory or a vision—he couldn't tell.
But he knew, then, that the thread he could not cut would not be an enemy's.
Nor a stranger's.
It would be someone he loved.
And when the time came to choose…
It would be his undoing.
From the shadows across the lake, something stirred.
A watcher, cloaked in celestial ink.
Eyes narrowed.
And far away, within the ruined halls of the forgotten thirteenth throne, a voice whispered from stone:
"The Weaver remembers."
"The Void stirs again."
"Soon… he will choose."