The under-levels of Aether City were a labyrinth of forgotten purposes, a kingdom of rust and shadows existing beneath the gleaming spires. Kaelen stumbled through this realm, his body a vessel of pure agony. The Paradox Burn was a living entity coiled around his nervous system, its venomous fangs sunk deep into his brain. Each jolting step sent fresh waves of nauseating pain through him. He was a machine that had executed a command from a higher dimension, and its wiring was now melting, its processors frying.
He finally collapsed in a recessed doorway, hidden behind a stack of leaking chemical barrels. The acrid stench of corrosion was thick enough to taste. He curled into a fetal position, trembling uncontrollably. The memories played behind his eyes on a relentless loop: the dissolving wave, the beautiful, impossible butterflies, the silent, horrifying clink of the singularity marble. He was a murderer. A monster. The part of him that had found the act not just necessary, but instinctively right, was the most terrifying thing of all.
For hours, he drifted in a feverish delirium, trapped between waking nightmares and the searing pain. But as the initial, overwhelming tide of agony receded to a constant, grinding ache, a new awareness began to dawn. The Axiom Spark, now fully active, was not just a source of power; it was a new lens through which to perceive reality.
He opened his eyes, and the grimy under-level was transformed.
The world was overlaid with a shimmering, ethereal luminescence. Aether. It was everywhere, coiling through the air like phantom silk, seeping from the cracks in the pavement, bleeding from the ancient, groaning machinery. He could see the energy of life and power. The few other inhabitants of the under-levels shuffling past had weak, guttering flames in their chests—the dim Nexuses of the Unwoven or those who had never cultivated past Spinning the First Thread. But a scavenger sifting through a pile of scrap had a brighter, steadier light that pulsed with a dull, metallic grey—a low-level Matter-Weaver, using his Loom's Foundation to enhance his strength for manual labor.
And he saw himself. Or rather, he saw the absence. In his own chest, where a Nexus should be, there was a void. A perfect, black sphere of nothingness. But at its very center, pinprick small yet blazing with impossible intensity, was the Spark. It was a hungry, desperate thing, a black hole pulling at the Aether around him, but with no structure, no Loom, to channel it. He was starving in a sea of plenty.
A memory surfaced, not his own, rising from the depths of the Spark like a long-lost data-file. It was a simple, primal pattern. A technique. The first step: Spinning the First Thread.
Gasping, he forced his trembling, pain-wracked body into a crude approximation of a lotus position, his back against the cold, damp door. He closed his eyes, pushing the ever-present wail of distant sirens from his mind. He inhaled, but this was not just an intake of air. With his will, he focused on the shimmering Aether around him, willing it to enter his body along with the oxygen. It was like trying to breathe thick, heavy liquid metal. He felt a tiny, almost imperceptible trickle of cool, silken energy enter through his nostrils. It was a sensation so foreign and so profoundly soothing, a balm on the burning pain of the Paradox Burn.
He held the breath, and with his mind, he tried to guide that trickle of Aether down, through the empty pathways of his body, aiming to build the first frame of his Loom in his dantian. On the exhalation, he tried to complete the circuit, visualizing the energy cycling back up and out. But it was useless. The Aether slipped away, dissipating into his mundane flesh like water into desert sand. He was a sieve. A broken vessel.
He tried again. And again. For what felt like an eternity, he sat in that filthy, stinking doorway, cycling and failing. His body grew stiff with cold and fatigue. Despair began to creep in, a cold fog threatening to extinguish the Spark itself. What was the point? The Chronos Guard would find him. They would dissect him, or worse, hook his Spark to their central reactor, draining him for eternity to power the very regime he abhorred.
But the Spark refused to be extinguished. It was an unwavering blueprint, a perfect template of what he was meant to be. It provided the pattern, the divine intent. He just had to provide the grueling, mortal labor. On what must have been the hundredth attempt, as the first hints of a synthetic dawn tinged the smog-filled sky above with a sickly orange glow, he felt it.
A single, complete circuit.
The Aether didn't vanish. It flowed down, cool and calming, pooled in his dantian, and instead of dissipating, it left behind a minuscule, shimmering residue. It was a single, glowing thread of silver light, the first strand in the vast, empty void of his being. The ravenous hunger inside him, which had been a roaring cacophony, softened to a persistent, manageable ache. The Paradox Burn, while still present, felt distant, as if this new thread was insulating him from its worst effects.
He had done it. He was no longer one of the Unwoven. He had taken the first, crucial step on the path. He had entered the first stage of cultivation: Spinning the First Thread. He had begun the work of building his Loom. It wasn't power, not yet. It was potential. It was a foothold on an infinite cliff. And for the first time since the alley, Kaelen felt a flicker of something other than terror and pain: a fragile, defiant hope.