Night fell with a weight Kael hadn't felt since the first cycle.
He returned to the village through the back paths. The elders still spoke of Rilo's collapse, the children played quieter now, and Veyna—the Pathkeeper—had not yet announced her suspicions publicly.
She was waiting.
Testing.
Kael only had one option: Bind the seventh thread before she exposed him.
But the Whisper Root's warning lingered in his mind.
Break seven fates.
He had bound six.
Breaking the seventh… would require a thread not just stolen, but sundered—torn from the Loom itself.
He could only think of one.
Sera.
The girl who had once poisoned him. Who, in three lives, had saved him instead. She was unstable, her destiny frayed in every cycle. A perfect candidate.
He found her standing by the village well, staring into the water.
Kael stepped beside her, quietly.
"You see it, don't you?" he said.
Sera turned. Her eyes were dark-ringed. Tired. "I see nothing."
"You feel it," he pressed. "The tension. Like something's wrong with the path under your feet."
She didn't answer.
He placed a hand on the stone rim. "What if I told you we could be more than what the Threads dictate?"
She laughed bitterly. "That's how witches talk."
Kael leaned in. "Maybe. Or maybe it's how the free speak."
Then he offered her a vial.
It shimmered with the sixth thread's residual power.
"Drink this," he said. "And see for yourself."
Sera hesitated.
She took it.
The moment she drank, the thread inside her lit up—golden-orange, vibrant, full of passion and betrayal. It writhed in her chest.
Kael raised the shard.
"Forgive me."
He cut.
Her scream wasn't loud—it was deep. A rift in the air. A protest of fate itself.
Kael caught the thread.
Bound it.
The seventh thread was not silent like the others. It roared—echoing through the diagram, flooding his limbs with fire and vision and clarity.
He dropped to his knees, gasping.
Sera collapsed beside him, unconscious.
But breathing.
Alive.
Barely.
Kael whispered, "One more."
One more binding.
Then he could weave.
Then he could challenge the Loom itself.