The air was still in the attic, where the last red balloon sat deflated in a dusty box.
Tylor stood by the window, watching the sun rise over their Victorian home, the golden light catching the wind chime that hadn't existed in the old timeline. The fractures were sealed. The Collective was gone. But the cost was woven into them now—threads of sacrifice, of love, of the futures they would never live.
Amaira was in the backyard, tracing chalk spirals with quiet contentment. Her drawings no longer revealed symbols or messages—just flowers, cats, stars. She had returned to being a child, but with eyes a little older than her age. Beside her, Kayla sat with a sketchpad, sketching the Loom as it had appeared in her dreams. Its shape was fading from memory. That was the way time healed: not by erasing, but by dulling the edges until it no longer hurt to remember.
Elias joined Tylor with two mugs of tea. "The city's quiet," he said. "No readings. No signals. No Collective remnants."
Tylor nodded. "Good."
A silence stretched between them. Then Elias asked, "Do you ever think it was supposed to happen this way?"
"I used to think there was a 'supposed to,'" Tylor replied. "But now I think time's just… threads. Twisting, tangling, breaking. We choose how to weave them."
A letter had arrived that morning. Old paper, but no sender. Just a seal: a single red thread looped into a spiral.
Inside, one sentence:"You never entered the first fracture."
It wasn't a warning. It wasn't a threat. Just a statement. Tylor folded it and placed it into Elena's journal. His mother's voice echoed softly from old entries—her regrets, her love, her attempt to rewrite fate. She had started it all to save them. And she had succeeded.
That night, the family sat together under the stars. Daniel had been granted a full pardon—his work exposing the Collective posthumously validated by the chaos left behind. He had gone to live by the ocean, but he wrote to them often.
The oak tree stood taller now, its bark smooth with new carvings. Tylor etched one more: a spiral, closed and complete.
Kayla leaned against his shoulder. "Do you think the Weaver was real?"
Tylor smiled faintly. "Real enough."
They watched as Amaira released the last red balloon into the night sky.
It rose, catching moonlight, drifting higher and higher—until it vanished into the stars.
And that was enough.
THE END