I. The Fracture
The city of Velharim never truly slept, yet tonight, every flame in its glass towers flickered with unease.
Deep within the Grand Cathedral of Threads, High Seer Valthis awoke screaming, cold sweat soaking the silk wrappings on his brow. His bed was torn, eyes wide with a terror he had not felt since the day the Prophetic Loom first sang his name.
"The thread… the thread snapped—" he gasped, clawing at the air. "He walked outside the script."
Attendants rushed in. He shoved one aside, stumbling toward the obsidian scrying mirror. The room dimmed as the glyphs around the relic flared.
The Loom should have shown him futures—countless rivers of fate branching and converging in divine harmony.
But all it showed now was static.
No, not static. A shape. Wings, burning and broken. Eyes that did not blink. A name the Loom had forgotten how to spell.
"Azrael…"
He fell to his knees, bleeding from the nose.
II. Kale Wakes
Kale awoke alone, half-buried in frost and ash.
His back rested against a stone obelisk, cracked with age. Charred symbols marked the ancient shrine—none of them familiar, all of them quietly weeping strands of silk-light into the air.
His chest ached. His mind felt… tangled.
"Azrael?"
No response. The voice that had once roared in his bones was silent, distant.
Kale rose slowly, body trembling. His reflection didn't appear in the pool at the shrine's base. No wind moved his hair. Even the birds overhead flew around him—as if they feared his presence might unwrite them.
"What am I now…?"
The last thing he remembered clearly was the power—how it had poured through him like lightning in a dead tree. A contradiction, Azrael called it.
But power always had a price.
And now, the world no longer felt real.
III. The Blind Woman
He wandered from the shrine, stumbling through the frozen forest. Hours passed, or maybe minutes. Time moved strangely here.
Then he saw her.
An old woman, blindfolded, sitting calmly at the base of a frostwood tree. Her robes were made of prayer scrolls, stitched together with golden thread.
"I felt you fall," she said before he could speak. "Like a star breaking orbit."
Kale stopped. "Who… are you?"
She smiled. "A forgotten prophet. I once glimpsed the whole Loom. Saw your thread… and watched it end. Long ago. On a battlefield that no longer exists."
He stared. "You saw me die?"
She nodded. "But now… you exist. Threadless. Impossible. Alive."
She reached up and touched his cheek, gently.
"You are a paradox. And paradoxes draw predators."
IV. The Unravelers Awaken
Far away, in the Unseen Layer of Loomspace, a bell tolled once.
The Chamber of Edits shimmered open. Three beings stood in the dark:
Serran – the blindfolded knight, golden chains wrapped around his limbs, speaking in syllables that reversed themselves in time.
Mii – a small child, whose stitched eyelids leaked soft red light, carrying a lantern that glowed with every possible death Kale might face.
Azaelith – silver hair spun like thread down her spine, voice humming a lullaby that made stars flicker out above her.
"Threadless anomaly detected," intoned a mechanical chorus in the chamber walls.
"Violation Level: Red. Directive: Correction."
The three bowed. The world around them bled open into a gate of spinning silk.
"The glitch walks," Serran whispered, words folding backward."Let us bring silence."
V. The Threadless Prepares
Kale sat by a fire, the blind woman having long vanished without a sound. He felt… hollow. Not weak. Not broken. But unfinished.
Azrael, he called again.
And this time… he felt something stir.
"I see you're still breathing," the voice said. "Interesting."
"Why did you disappear?"
"You used a truth your body wasn't ready to hold. That power bends the laws. And the laws bend back."
Kale stood, hands trembling.
"I don't know what I'm becoming."
"You are becoming what they fear. And now—they'll come."
"Who?"
"The Cleaners. The Unravelers."
The ground beneath him shivered.
And then—he felt it.
A presence. No, three.
Time twisted, the air becoming thick like syrup. Light bent at odd angles. The campfire flickered and froze in mid-flame.
He turned.
And there they stood.
The blind knight. The child with the lantern. The woman with the humming voice.
Their presence warped reality.
"Kale Elurien," said Azaelith, calm as silk.
"You are a contradiction. A wound in the Loom."
"We are the correction."
End of Chapter 12