They followed the river of night for three days.
It wasn't water, not truly — it was a current of stardust, a path seen only to those marked by the Weaver's glyph. It ran through mountain bones and ancient roots, glowing softly with the breath of constellations long dead.
Cassian rode beside Elara in silence, eyes distant. Since the temple, something in him had closed. Not anger. Not fear. But a kind of grief.
Elara hadn't asked what he saw when time froze.
She was afraid he'd seen her.
The Loom waited at the end of the world.
Not a metaphor.
It hung above the edge of the sky, tethered to a cliff that should not exist — where gravity bent, and space whispered, and the wind spoke languages never written.
They approached on foot.
Lyra and Kaelen stayed behind at the foot of the stairs, unwilling or unable to cross the threshold. Perhaps some things could only be faced alone.
Or together.
Elara reached for Cassian's hand.
He took it.
And they climbed.
The Loom of Stars was not a structure.
It was an event.
An eternal blooming of thread and possibility, suspended in a chamber with no walls, no floor, only space — stitched by celestial hands long gone. Each thread shimmered with lives: lovers who met and missed, wars that never ended, children never born.
And at its center spun the Empty Spindle.
The future.
Unwritten. Untouched.
Waiting.
The Weaver waited beside it.
She no longer wore Elara's face.
Now she was taller than mountains, brighter than suns, her form stitched from nebula and sorrow.
"You are here too soon," she said. "But not too late."
Elara swallowed. "Why did you summon me?"
"To bind the thread that wavers."
The Weaver turned.
Cassian stepped forward — or was pulled. The Loom recognized him. So did the glyph that pulsed in Elara's chest.
"He does not yet know what he is," the Weaver said.
Cassian frowned. "I'm not—"
"You are becoming," she cut in. "You were born of a star. Of prophecy. Of fracture. You are the piece that was never meant to be. And now, you must be chosen or unmade."
Elara felt her knees weaken.
"You want me to decide?"
The Weaver nodded once. "Bind him to your thread — or let him fall back to unformed possibility."
Cassian stepped back, shaken. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Elara said softly, "you'll no longer be just yourself. You'll be... tied to me. In fate. In power. Forever."
Cassian's breath caught. "And if you don't?"
"You die in the unraveling," the Weaver said simply.
The Loom pulsed.
Time thickened.
Elara stepped forward, hand trembling.
Cassian met her halfway.
"You don't have to choose me," he said. "Not for this. Not because the stars want you to."
She shook her head. "This isn't about the stars. It's about us."
He closed his eyes. "Then I'm yours."
She placed her palm to his chest.
The glyph on her skin ignited.
The threads obeyed.
One silver. One violet. Winding together.
And in the Loom of Stars, a new weave formed — unstable, untested, unprecedented.
The Weaver stepped back.
"It is done."
They collapsed together on the obsidian floor that wasn't there.
Elara's heart still beat — but it was slower.
Cassian's hand in hers pulsed with a matching rhythm.
They were now tethered.
Not as lovers. Not even as soulmates.
As constants.
One thread.
The Weaver turned to them both. "Now comes the unraveling. You must return to the waking world. When the Eclipse arrives, you will be the only ones who can stop the fall."
Elara stood, Cassian at her side.
"What do we do?"
The Weaver's voice was a wind through the stars. "You become what you were never meant to be. And hope that is enough."
They woke on the edge of the world.
The Loom vanished behind them.
But the thread remained.
Silver and violet.
Woven.