The portal pulsed like a heartbeat—deep, slow, and wrong.
Ahri stood before it, scroll ash still clinging to her fingertips. The space beyond the rift wasn't darkness or light—it was absence. Like an unfinished sentence. The edges shimmered with threadwork so ancient even Sol stepped back.
"This wasn't supposed to exist," he murmured. "The Forgotten Loom… it was a myth."
Ahri glanced back. "You've heard of it?"
"Only in half-buried chants. They say it was the first place where fate was ever written. Before temples. Before even the foxes."
"And why was it forgotten?" she asked.
"Because even fate fears what was first."
Behind them, Namu watched silently. His usual calm had shifted—his fingers twitched slightly, as if resisting the urge to reach for something he didn't trust.
"You don't understand what you've done," he said softly, eyes narrowing on the rift. "The Forgotten Loom weaves not just threads of life—but of unmade stories. If it remembers your name... it might also decide to rewrite you."
Ahri turned back to the portal. The golden thread on her wrist flickered again—but now it was tangled with streaks of violet.
A sign.
The fox spirit was stirring.
But not in warning.
In invitation.
"I need to go in," she said.
Sol frowned. "Alone?"
She nodded. "I think… whatever my mother did, she hid something here. Something even the Severed couldn't find."
With a deep breath, Ahri stepped through.
The world twisted.
Threads passed through her—memories she didn't own, choices she'd never made.
She stood suddenly in a field of suspended looms—each one massive, celestial, webbed with stars and thread. Some spun themselves. Others had snapped mid-weave, fraying into chaos. And at the center stood a single, unfinished tapestry. It pulsed slowly, like a breathing thing.
Her thread—gold and violet—was woven through its heart.
Something shifted behind her.
A presence.
Familiar.
Not the fox.
Her mother.
Yun-Ah Seo stood by the unfinished weave. Not whole, not ghost. Something in between. A soul-thread echo.
She turned. Her expression was soft, but her eyes—glowing like a twin flame to Ahri's—held a weight that bent time.
"You found it," Yun-Ah said. "Then my gamble wasn't in vain."
Ahri stepped forward. "What is this place?"
"The birthplace of all thread," Yun-Ah said. "The Loom that remembers what the Tapestry forgot."
Ahri swallowed hard. "Why did you leave me?"
A long silence.
Then: "Because I was marked. I could no longer shape fate—I could only destroy it. But I could protect you. I gave the Loom a thread it couldn't refuse. Yours."
Yun-Ah reached out. Their fingertips brushed—and for a moment, the loom behind them began to move. Slowly, a new thread began to form.
But then—
A scream tore through the realm.
A scar opened in the tapestry.
Miran.
She appeared, cloaked in Severed shadows, her cracked fox mask leaking smoke.
"You," she hissed at Yun-Ah. "You weren't supposed to touch the weave again."
Ahri stepped between them.
"No. She didn't. I did."
Miran raised her hand—and the threads around them recoiled. Her severed fate crackled like lightning.
But the Loom stirred again.
Not in rejection.
In recognition.
It began weaving. Fast. Wild.
Ahri's golden-violet thread spun upward—and bound itself to a new, unborn thread of violet fire.
The fox spirit's essence.
And then—a voice:
"Not all who break fate are villains. And not all who guard it are right."
The Loom flared—
—and everything went white.