Morning did not come with sunlight.
It came with wind.
Dry and slow, coiling around the highlands like an old song. The tactical field stretched across the hill's crown—rows of wooden and metal training dummies lined in perfect silence. Spears pierced the earth like iron trees. Scorch marks and gouges in the soil spoke of past battles, past tests, past tempers.
Ashardio stood at the center.
Alone.
No weapons in hand.
No armor on his shoulders.
Just the Absolute Void whispering beneath his skin like a second heartbeat.
This was where guardians practiced their kills. Where future realmwalkers honed control through blade and blaze.
But Ashardio wasn't here to train.
He was here to remember.
He had asked the others to leave the grounds untouched today. No apprentices. No instructors. No curious eyes.
He needed silence.
And movement.
He began slowly—palms raised, feet bare, his breathing measured.
The dummies around him waited, unmoving.
And then—he struck.
Not with fists.
But with thought.
The threads beneath the field shimmered. Faint lines, unseen by most, but now glowing faintly violet in his mind's eye. Every object—every dummy, blade, stone—was suspended in its own thread of existence. Its own rhythm.
And he reached into them, testing.
The Absolute Void extended from him in a single motion—like ink spilling through water, gentle yet sovereign. A wooden dummy splintered not from impact, but from forgetting itself. The moment he willed it, the thread that kept it solid tired of being wood.
And so it broke.
Another dummy burst into flame—though he had conjured no spark.
He had remembered a fire that never happened—and made it so.
Time, memory, consequence—blurring.
But still, his breath remained steady.
He did not yet use the power fully.
He was measuring it.
He approached a steel mannequin—its core reinforced, used by master tacticians. Ashardio circled it once, fingers grazing the air. He did not attack.
Instead, he closed his eyes.
And whispered.
"What are you, beneath what you are?"
And the Void answered.
The steel faded—not melted, not shattered—but peeled away, atom by atom, until what remained was a core of sand, and then, of dust, and then…
Nothing.
It was not destroyed.
It was unwritten.
Ashardio exhaled, staggered slightly.
Even now, the price revealed itself—a memory fading in his mind. One he did not choose.
He no longer remembered the scent of his mother's hair.
He paused.
The field grew still again.
The Absolute Void had not been tamed.
It had been entertained.
And it had taken something in return.
He sat down in the center of the field, surrounded by silent, ruined dummies.
And he wrote.
Not on paper—but on the earth.
Symbols in an ancient script—the language of his bloodline. Half-Loomweaver, half-Vaes'Theron. Lines of time and thought woven together into questions.
If I bring back what was never meant to return…
What disappears to make room?
If I cut a thread before its fate arrives…
Is the echo stronger than the act?
If I undo a death, does life accept it…
Or does the Void reclaim the lie?
And beneath all of them:
What is the thread I cannot cut?
He stared at the questions as the wind scattered dust over them.
And then—
Someone stepped into the field.
A shadow cast long across the ruined ground.
Ashardio didn't look up. But he knew.
Not a guardian. Not a Dreamkeeper.
A figure wrapped in the high colors of a noble house—robes of white veined with ancient crimson. A crest burned into his shoulder:
House Askerion.
One of the twelve loyal clans.
Loyal to the Council.
Enemies to the thirteenth.
"Interesting technique," the figure said, voice smooth, amused. "Not quite Celestial. Not quite mortal. Something… in between."
Ashardio stood slowly, not threatening.
Not yet.
"You're trespassing," he said quietly.
"No," the man replied. "I'm witnessing."
Their eyes met.
And in that brief moment—both of them knew:
They were not strangers to each other's lineages.
Enemies in memory.
Outliers in blood.
And perhaps…
Necessary to each other's fate.
Ashardio's hand pulsed faintly with the Void.
The stranger's palm rested near a blade.
But neither moved.
Because something deeper than battle was about to begin.
High above the field, unseen by either, the Loomfires stirred.
And the celestial winds whispered:
"The Weaver has begun to test the threads."
"And one of them… will cut back."