The stairwell had become a battlefield of webs.
Dark threads slashed against threads of light. Shadow blades and fists hammered marble to dust. And in the middle, Rayon Veynar—bleeding, trembling, still grinning—refused to bow.
Alrik's body darted like a phantom, blade flashing, eyes blank under the Construct's control. Every strike was flawless, his instincts now guided by something older, colder, crueler.
Behind him, the faceless Construct stood perfectly still, pulling its luminous strings like a god above puppets.
Another tug slammed into Rayon's chest. His heart lurched. His lungs seized. For half a second his knees hit the floor.
The whispers pressed harder.
You are ours. A Forsaken Seed cannot defy the Web Eternal.
The words clawed at his skull.
Memories bled into his mind—
A world before this one, drowning in endless threads. Men and women turned into puppets of light. A throne not of flesh, not of stone, but of endless strings binding everything.
And among them… him. A boy born gutter-deep, carrying a fragment of that ancient web inside his blood.
Rayon's Hollow Strings weren't just some trick he stumbled into out of hunger and desperation.
They were a curse.
Long before he was born, pieces of a greater web—something vast and ancient—were scattered across the world. Most people never touched them, never even knew they existed. But sometimes, those fragments latched onto the unlucky.
Rayon was one of them.
That was why the Construct's presence dug so deep into his chest. Why its whispers felt like they belonged in his bones.
He wasn't chosen. He wasn't blessed.
He was dragged into this from the start.
A rat in the gutter carrying the blood of a forgotten world.
Alrik's blade carved across Rayon's ribs, drawing blood. His eyes were dead. His body perfect.
But Rayon saw it now—the threads of light that bound him. Laced through his muscles, woven into his nerves, a web inside flesh.
The Construct hadn't just killed him. It had rewritten him.
Every motion was a string pulled. Every strike a command.
That's what the Forsaken did to all things.
That's what Rayon had been fighting against since the day he was born.
His Hollow Strings trembled—not from weakness, but from change.
The pressure was too much. The pull too strong. The Construct was forcing him past his limit.
And something inside snapped—
—or rather, unlocked.
The Hollow Strings spread from his fists to his whole body, weaving through his veins, his nerves, his senses. Not just extensions of him—they were him.
He didn't just pull strings now.
He pulled perception itself.
The stairwell flickered. Time slowed. Alrik's blade, once a blur, now moved like dripping water. The Construct's threads, once overwhelming, now hung visible in the air like cracks in glass.
Rayon's hollow eyes widened, black threads glowing faintly violet.
"…Perfect Control."
Alrik lunged. Rayon stepped aside with impossible precision, fingers brushing a thread of light. With a sharp tug—snap!—one of the bindings on Alrik's arm broke.
The Whisperblade's strike faltered.
Rayon grinned, teeth bloodied. "You're not untouchable anymore."
He lashed his Hollow Strings into Alrik's chest, not to kill—but to cut the foreign web inside. Threads of light shattered one by one.
The Construct twitched violently. Its faceless head tilted, almost in anger. More strings lashed out, dozens now, whipping through the stairwell.
Rayon didn't flinch. His perception flowed perfect, his body sharper than it had ever been. Every movement was predicted, every thread countered.
For the first time, he wasn't just surviving.
He was winning.