The threads began to fray again.
Not from within the Realms—but from beneath them.
Lyra felt it in her dreams—shifting pulses at the edge of the tapestry, beyond even her reach.
This was no echo of Serian, nor remnant of the Shattering. It was older. Hungrier.
The Voidborn had awakened.
It began on a quiet Realm.
A remote place called Qirineth, untouched by the wars and the Weaving, known only as a myth to scholars and song-weavers.
But there, something screamed.
A silent scream, not of fear—but of absence.
Kaelen, Lyra, Elian, Nysera, and Vaelion arrived through a tethered thread, pulled directly from Loomheart.
The moment their feet touched Qirineth's soil, they knew: this place had been unmade.
There were no buildings.
No corpses.
No ruins.
Only shadows.
And a coldness not of temperature—but of concept.
Qirineth had been erased.
But not forgotten.
"This isn't decay," Vaelion muttered, kneeling to touch the darkened earth "It's anti-Weave."
"Unmaking, then?" Elian asked.
"Worse," Nysera answered "Refusal. The threads here were never allowed to form."
"How is that even possible?" Kaelen growled, scanning the blank horizon.
"Because something is cutting them," Lyra whispered, her voice distant "And it's learning."
In the center of the lifeless plain stood a spire of onyx.
Smooth.
Glossy.
Impossible.
It reflected no light, no warmth—only the twisted echoes of the ones who gazed upon it.
They approached cautiously.
The Threads around Lyra hissed, vibrating at a frequency she'd never felt before. Painful. Rejected.
"This spire is consuming them," she said "Thread by thread."
"Then we destroy it," Kaelen said, drawing his sword.
He stepped forward—and vanished.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then Lyra felt his thread—still intact—but… scattered.
Frayed at dozens of edges, as if reality were trying to forget him.
"He's still alive," she said "But disconnected."
"Can you follow him?" Elian asked, hands already raised with a chord ready to play.
Lyra nodded.
She pressed her palm against the spire—and let the Threads pull her in.
It was not teleportation.
It was unraveling.
She awoke in a place that should not exist.
A hollow realm—no stars, no ground, no sky. Just layers of shifting static.
And in the center, suspended by invisible strands, was Kaelen.
Unmoving.
Surrounded by them.
Voidborn.
Not beasts.
Not beings.
But concepts made cruel—shapes given to hunger and silence.
They had no eyes.
No mouths.
Only hollows where connection should be.
They circled Kaelen, brushing his essence with their anti-thread limbs, unraveling his past in slow motions.
Lyra didn't scream.
She wove.
The Fragments within her ignited, threads of flame and memory leaping forward, forming a shield around Kaelen's suspended soul.
The Voidborn recoiled—not in fear, but in irritation.
They recognized her.
They remembered her.
"She's the Weave," one hissed, though it had no voice "The Bound, The Stitcher."
"Unmake her," another pulsed "Undo the Error."
"She binds the endless," a third murmured "She must be unwritten."
They surged.
Lyra summoned flame—not just fire, but memory.
She wove Kaelen's name into every strike. Not just his body, but his story.
The day he stood against Serian.
The night he wept alone beneath a broken moon.
The way he had reached for her hand without needing to be asked.
She remembered him—and with each remembrance, she pulled him back.
The Voidborn howled.
Not in pain.
But in defiance.
They began to unravel the realm itself, forming a cocoon of nullity.
And Lyra, desperate, opened herself.
Not to power.
But to every Thread across the Realms.
And they answered.
Elian's song pierced the veil.
Nysera's oaths bound the breach.
Vaelion's sword carved a path back through the impossible.
Together, they reclaimed Kaelen.
Together, they tore through the hollow.
Together, they stood as the Weavebound.
And the spire shattered.
Qirineth breathed.
Not as it was, but as it could be.
Flowers bloomed from soil that had never known roots.
Sky formed above a land once abandoned by even gravity.
And the Loomheart pulsed.
Back aboard the Stellar Vow, Kaelen stirred.
"Did we win?" he croaked.
"No," Lyra said gently "We survived."
"Same thing sometimes," he muttered.
But Lyra knew the truth.
This was no final battle.
This was a warning.
The Voidborn had only just begun.
And they feared her.
But they did not fear alone.
Because in the moment she faced them, she had seen something deeper—
A figure behind the void.
Cloaked in forgotten threads.
A Weaver like her.
But older.
Darker.
And utterly… alone.