~ "Not all monsters are born. Some are made stitched from sacrifice." ~
The path ahead was quiet.
No fog. No echoes. Just stillness.
Spidey and Nyxi walked side by side beneath an archway of silver branches that pulsed with old magic. The Web above shimmered faintly in threads of dusk light, but even it seemed to hush here.
They had passed through mirrors, memories, mothlight, and sorrow. Spidey thought she had grown used to the silence between trials but this was different. This silence felt... held.
Like a secret waiting for its breath.
Nyxi hadn't spoken yet. Her tiny feet made no sound across the webbed path. Her glow, usually restless and flickering, had dimmed to a deep ember.
Spidey finally stopped.
> "Nyxi," she said gently, "what is this place?"
Nyxi paused, her back to Spidey.
> "This is where I end," she said. "Or where I began. It's hard to tell anymore."
---
They stood in a grove.
Ancient and hollow.
No trees grew here, but woven trunks rose like frozen flames skeletal remains of once living things, now suspended in stillness. In the center stood a loom turned to stone, its last thread frayed and bleeding faint strands of red mist.
And at the base of the loom… a small, broken comb. Human sized. Wooden. Scorched at the edges.
Spidey knelt and picked it up.
It was familiar in a way memory couldn't explain. Her fingertips trembled.
> "This belonged to—"
> "Me," Nyxi whispered.
---
Spidey turned sharply.
> "You…?"
Nyxi finally met her eyes.
> "I wasn't always a spider, Spidey. I was once a weaver. A girl with hands calloused by thread, eyes that saw too much of the world's fraying. I lived before the Web was sacred. Before it chose Guardians."
She floated to the ruined loom and perched on its shoulder like it remembered her.
> "I was the first to see it unravel."
---
A memory spilled forth not from Nyxi's mouth, but from the very grove itself.
It shimmered like smoke.
A girl with dark braids and fingers stained with dye sat alone in a crumbling village. Her loom was handmade, her cloth stitched with symbols no one remembered. She wove stories for the forgotten orphans, widows, lost souls who whispered to the wind.
But then the world changed.
Stories began vanishing. People forgot names. Spells fell apart mid sentence. The seams between realms tore.
> "It wasn't war. It wasn't time. It was neglect," Nyxi said bitterly. "People stopped believing in stories that didn't serve them. They only saved the loud ones. The beautiful ones."
Spidey felt her chest tighten.
> "So you… tried to fix it?"
> "I begged the spirits. The Moth. The Echo Trees. Even the Moon. But it was the Web that answered."
---
Another memory bloomed.
The girl Nyxi stood before the living Web. It was wild then. Writhing. Untamed.
And it spoke.
> "One must anchor the Web," it said. "One must become part of it. Sacrifice memory, form, voice. Become guardian. Become thread."
Nyxi had nodded.
Not out of bravery.
But because she was the last one who remembered how to stitch.
---
> "They didn't tell me I'd forget my face," Nyxi whispered. "Or that I'd be reborn like this. Crawling. Cold. Alone."
She turned her many eyes toward Spidey, and for the first time, Spidey saw pain deep, old, quiet pain.
> "But I never regretted it. Not until you came along."
Spidey blinked.
> "Why?"
> "Because you remind me of who I was. And it hurts to remember."
---
Spidey stepped closer and slowly held out the comb.
> "Then remember."
Nyxi stared at it.
And then, without speaking, she touched it.
In an instant, the grove lit up threads of ancient gold unraveling across the branches. The stone loom pulsed once, then cracked. The grove itself inhaled, as if waking.
And Nyxi glowed.
Not with runes.
But with light.
For a brief second, Spidey saw her. Not the spider. Not the guardian.
But the girl.
Tired eyes. Dyed hands. A voice that once sang lullabies into thread.
Nyxi's true self.
And then it passed.
---
Nyxi shrank back, curling her legs in.
> "I can't stay like that. The Web needs me like this. As its monster."
Spidey knelt and looked her in the eyes.
> "You're not a monster. You're a thread that chose to hold when everything else fell apart."
Nyxi didn't answer.
But she rested her forehead against Spidey's hand.
> "Thank you for seeing me," she whispered. "Even now."
---
Above them, the Web shifted.
A new thread formed.
Twisted from sacrifice and story, memory and magic.
It linked Spidey to Nyxi.
Not as guardian and chosen.
But as survivors.
Weavers of a world both lost and worth finding again.
---
As they left the grove, Spidey felt something change in the air.
Not heavier.
Not darker.
But clearer.
And in her chest, a new truth stitched itself:
> "Not all monsters are born. Some are made. And some choose to stay monsters... to keep others from becoming one."
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
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