Khurram's breath caught in his throat as he watched the darkness swallow Aarifa whole. One moment her hand was in his and the next, only air. Her scream still echoed in his ears, not from pain, but fury. He did not know what to do ot what was happening.
"No," he whispered, the word torn from his lungs. "Aarifa!"
He lunged forward, only to be met with emptiness. The threads she had vanished into shimmered faintly before falling limp, like snakes turned to ash.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
He turned.
Mumtaz.
She stood calm and composed, wrapped in silks so fine they shimmered like the Threads Between themselves. But it was not the softness of her expression that stopped him, it was the look in her eyes. Cold. Knowing.
"You knew," Khurram said, voice low, trembling with rage. "You knew this would happen."
She tilted her head, the perfect image of regal serenity. "Of course I did. I orchestrated it."
The silence between them cracked like glass.
Khurram stepped toward her. "Why? What has Aarifa ever done to you?"
Mumtaz's smile barely touched her lips. "She exists. That is enough."
"You said you wanted unity and peace."
"I want control," she said simply. "Peace is just a side effect."
He stared at her, the truth sinking in like ice. "You used me. Used all of us."
Mumtaz's gaze did not waver. "And you let me."
Before he could respond, a violent tremor tore through the palace floor. Somewhere in the distance, screams rang out—short, sharp, then silenced. The moonlight that had bathed the courtyard outside vanished, replaced by an eerie crimson glow.
Khurram reached for the hilt of his dagger.
"Where is she?" he demanded.
Mumtaz only stepped backward into the shadows. "Where she belongs. With the rest of the broken threads."
And as her form dissolved into black mist, a single word whispered through the air, laced with venom and prophecy:
"Let her weave her own doom."
Khurram turned toward the palace gates, where the air itself had begun to shimmer and twist.
Something was coming through.
The gates of the palace groaned, not from the wind, but from something beneath. The sky above churned like blackened silk torn by lightning. The crimson glow deepened until the entire courtyard was bathed in blood light.
Khurram drew his blade.
Then the gate exploded.
Not in fire. In threads.
Golden ones.
Dozens, maybe hundreds, of glowing strands shot outward like veins, lashing into the ground, the pillars, the very air. And from their center, something began to emerge.
A silhouette.
A figure wrapped in golden thread, levitating inches above the courtyard stone. The threads trailed from its shoulders like tattered wings, its face hidden beneath a veil that shimmered with a strange familiarity.
Khurram stepped forward, blade steady. "Who are you?"
The figure didn't answer.
It lifted its head slowly, deliberately.
And then, the threads parted.
And Khurram's heart stopped.
"Aarifa…?"
It was her.
And it wasn't.
Her eyes glowed with the same green from the Threads Between, but her skin had taken on a sheen of unnatural perfection, like she had been sculpted; not born. The air around her crackled with power far beyond anything she had wielded before. She hovered, motionless, unreadable.
"Aarifa," Khurram whispered again, lowering his blade. "It's me."
She tilted her head slightly, studying him like one might study an echo from another lifetime.
Then she spoke.
But it wasn't her voice.
It was layered, like two voices speaking at once. One was Aarifa's: familiar, trembling with restrained emotion. The other was deeper, older, inhuman, woven with the resonance of the Threads Between themselves.
"You called for me," the dual voice said, echoing through the courtyard like a chant woven into thunder. "And I have returned. But not as I was."
Khurram's blood turned to ice.
"What have they done to you?" he asked, stepping forward, voice cracking. "Aarifa, fight it, whatever this is. I'm here. I found you."
She—no, it—lowered to the ground. The golden threads around her unwound in slow spirals, revealing her form entirely. She looked like Aarifa, moved like her, even carried the same tension in her jaw. But the air around her bent in unnatural ways, rippling like heat off desert stone. Something else—someone else—shared her body now.
"Aarifa," he pleaded again, reaching out. "Come back to me."
She blinked.
And then smiled, but not with kindness.
"Why would I return," she said, her voice no longer layered, but sharp, cold, entirely her own, "when I finally understand what I am?"
A shockwave pulsed from her body, sending Khurram stumbling back as golden threads lashed out across the palace walls, embedding into marble and steel like living roots.
"I saw it, Khurram. I saw the truth. I was never meant to be free. I was meant to be used. By them. By her."
He steadied himself. "Who?"
She didn't answer.
She didn't have to.
Because behind her, stepping through the same rent in the fabric of the mortal realm came Mumtaz Mahal.
Clad in mourning white, her veil billowing like a serpent, she strode forward with the grace of a queen and the precision of a puppeteer.
Khurram turned sharply. "Mumtaz?"
Mumtaz smiled.
But there was no warmth in it.
Only triumph.
"You always underestimated me, husband," she said. "You thought I was only your wife. But I was always the true Weaver."
Khurram looked between them: Aarifa, shimmering with power, and Mumtaz, calm and dangerous.
"You used her," he said, voice low. "You twisted her fate and fed her to the Threads Between."
"I elevated her," Mumtaz corrected, stepping past the shattered threshold. "She was born to carry destiny. I simply ensured she carried mine."
Aarifa stood silent, unmoving.
And Khurram, betrayed, furious, but still reaching for hope whispered her name one last time. "Aarifa…"
Her gaze flickered. Just for a heartbeat.
Then she raised her hand.
And golden threads snapped taut around his throat.