The air thickened like syrup as the masked figure stepped fully through the portal. Its golden threads shimmered with raw power, each strand humming with a frequency that vibrated in the marrow of Kiel's bones.
Riven instinctively pulled Nyra behind him. "We're not accepting anything from your false god."
The figure tilted its head, voice soft and unhurried. "I expected resistance. The Loom always allows for deviation... briefly."
Kiel narrowed his eyes. "Say what you came to say before I unravel you."
The figure chuckled. "So eager to fight. You are children playing with scissors at the foot of the Great Tapestry. The Weaver King offers you a choice—cooperate… or be clipped."
Zaira's lips curled. "He's scared. Otherwise, he wouldn't send one of his puppets to talk."
"I am no puppet," the figure said, its threads rippling like muscles under cloth. "I am Vael, First of the Rewoven. A Threadwalker who accepted true purpose."
Riven raised an eyebrow. "Translation: you sold your soul for power."
"Incorrect," Vael replied calmly. "I traded chaos for clarity. Pain for order. You resist the Second Weave because you fear it—but fear is an outdated variable."
Kiel's blade was halfway out of its sheath. "And what exactly is this offer?"
Vael stretched out a hand. A vision formed in the air—glimpses of the Second Weave.
A world of balance. A world without war. Cities floating peacefully in harmony. Fates carved cleanly into strands. No unknowns. No struggle. No suffering.
Too perfect.
Too controlled.
Riven scowled. "You call that peace? That's programming."
Vael nodded. "Exactly. A code without bugs. A system without rebellion."
Nyra stepped forward then, eyes locked on Vael's.
"You can't program a soul," she said quietly. "You can force behavior, but never truth. Never meaning."
Vael's face twitched beneath the glyph mask. "The child speaks boldly. But your fate is not yet yours to command."
"Then we'll make it ours," Kiel said, stepping in front of Nyra. "We're not accepting your stitched-together nightmare."
Vael's form pulsed—threads flaring gold. "Refuse this gift, and you sentence yourselves to obsolescence. The Nullborn girl will be hunted. Your temple will fall. And your names will be unmade from the Tapestry."
Riven smiled coldly. "We've been unmade before. Still here."
"Then suffer," Vael said, and vanished into a thread that snapped like lightning, leaving a burn across the stone floor.
The silence that followed was deafening.
---
Zaira slumped against the wall. "He came to intimidate us—but he also gave us something."
Kiel looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?"
"The Second Weave. It's still incomplete," she said, breathing heavily. "He wouldn't try to recruit us if it were finished."
Riven nodded. "That means we can still stop it. We need allies. More Nullborn. More Threadwalkers who haven't pledged themselves."
"But how do we find them?" Kiel asked.
Everyone turned to Nyra.
The girl's hands were glowing softly, her fingers weaving a shape in the air—a map. Not of places, but of names.
Faint points of light scattered across it.
> "Others," she whispered. "Like me."
---
Kiel looked at the glowing strands. "They're scattered. All over the realms."
Zaira's eyes widened. "The King isn't the only one recruiting."
Riven grinned. "Then it's time we started building our own rebellion."
---
Far away, in the depths of the Second Weave, the Weaver King sat before an ever-growing pattern.
Vael knelt before him, head bowed.
"They refused."
The King traced a thread with one hand.
"Good," he said, voice devoid of warmth. "The strongest threads are forged in resistance."
He plucked a single glowing strand—Nyra's.
And smiled.