The silence after the loom's question was not empty.
It was pregnant with weight, with history, with voices that echoed between the threads of time.
What kind of Circle will you be?
The five sat in the woven chairs that had manifested around the loom. They weren't thrones. Not grand or ornate. But each seat vibrated slightly with recognition—as if the threads that made up the loom were acknowledging them not just as individuals, but as possibilities.
"I didn't think it would be so quiet," said the boy, voice small. "I thought... once we sat, the next step would be clear."
"Maybe it is," the healer said gently. "Maybe it's just not spoken out loud."
The stranger leaned forward, fingertips steepled. "The loom isn't a map. It's a mirror. It shows what we bring to it."
"And what we fear," the rogue added.
The ink-fingered girl nodded, then rose from her seat. The loom pulsed once in response.
"We need to speak the shape of this Circle," she said. "We can't act without knowing what we are. Not just what we inherited, but what we choose."
The others turned toward her.
"Five seats," the boy murmured. "Five threads. Five voices. But we're not the same."
"Exactly," she said. "That's why it might work."
She gestured to the center, where the loom's core spun gently, humming with potential.
"We've seen the past," she said. "We've seen Circles fall apart because they couldn't agree—or because one voice tried to speak for all. We don't have to repeat that."
"But we will argue," said the rogue. "We already do."
The stranger's lips curved faintly. "That's not failure. That's friction. And friction makes fire."
The boy reached into his pocket and withdrew the coin he'd offered earlier, though the loom had long absorbed it. He twirled its duplicate between two fingers, watching the glint dance across his knuckles.
"We can't build this on luck. Or improvisation."
"No," said the healer. "But we can build it on choice. On intention."
She stood as well, turning to face the others.
"Let's speak it plainly. What does this Circle stand for? What is our first principle?"
The loom brightened. The constellation threads above them shifted slightly. It was listening.
The ink-fingered girl answered first.
"Memory," she said. "Not just the past, but how we hold it. Remembering matters. We can't act wisely if we don't remember who we were."
The healer nodded. "Care," she said. "For each other. For the worlds we touch. We're not weapons, or judges. We're threads in something larger, and we need to protect what binds us."
The rogue spoke next, arms folded. "Challenge. If something's broken, we name it. We change