I. Echoes Beneath the Skin
The Academy of Primoria slept—or pretended to.
Ashardio's footsteps echoed through the Undercroft, a place spoken of only in passing. The deeper he descended, the less the world seemed to obey its own rules. Walls pulsed beneath his fingertips, their heartbeat matching his own.
His light magic flickered, not in defiance, but in caution.
The fractures weren't just beneath the Academy's foundation anymore. They were inside the stone. Inside the air. Inside him.
"Threads are veins," Eloen used to say.
"When the Loom bleeds, so do we."
He could feel it now. Tiny filaments of golden thread squirming beneath his skin, like worms trying to surface.
Ash clenched his fist, forcing the light to obey. For now.
⸻
II. The Whispering Gate
Ahead, a gate stood where no architecture should allow. Woven from what seemed to be strands of living silver, it breathed softly, inhaling the dust of forgotten ages.
Lilim was already there, her fingers tracing glyphs into the air—carefully, reverently.
"This isn't a door," she murmured. "It's a wound."
Ash didn't ask how she knew. Some truths sat too close to the bone.
With a shared glance, they pressed forward.
The Gate rippled.
It did not open.
It unstitched itself.
And the Fold sighed in welcome.
⸻
III. The Fold Below
On the other side, the world was… wrong.
Gravity stuttered. Colors bled beyond their lines. Ash's light fractured, refracting into spirals he couldn't comprehend. Every breath felt like inhaling threadbare reality.
Shapes moved in the periphery—too fluid, too curious.
"Not Mawspawn," Lilim whispered. "These are—"
"Sentinels," Ash finished, not knowing how he knew.
They didn't attack. Not yet. But the Loom did not forgive trespass.
At the heart of this warped chamber, a Spindle stood. Ancient. Silent. Its threads hung loose, swaying in an unseen breeze.
Ash stepped forward, compelled.
And as his light touched the Spindle—
—it screamed.
⸻
IV. Memory Made Flesh
Visions consumed him.
Eloen, her hands red with her own magic, severing threads to hold back the Maw.
The Artisan, faceless beneath a shifting mask, weaving new patterns with cruel precision.
And himself—Ashardio—dangling like a marionette, light bleeding from his veins into the Loom's dying weave.
The Spindle whispered a single word:
"Unmake."
Ash staggered back, breath stolen, ribs aching.
Lilim caught him, but her gaze was elsewhere—locked on the Spindle, eyes wide.
"It's not asking us to heal the Loom," she said, voice barely audible.
"It's asking us to choose what survives."
⸻
V. A Dangerous Proposition
Later, as they emerged from the Fold's grip, Ash felt heavier.
The fractures had grown.
The Academy's great spires were no longer still; they shivered subtly, like plucked strings awaiting a song.
Lilim's words haunted him.
If the Loom could not be mended, perhaps the only way forward was… selection.
But who was Ashardio to choose what threads deserved to remain?
His light magic wasn't built for precision. It was a blade. A forge.
"Unmake to remake."
Ash wasn't sure if that made him a savior, or a reaper.
But the Loom had spoken.
And so had the cracks beneath his skin.
VI. Threads That Remember
The deeper they walked back toward the surface, the louder the whispers became.
Not voices. Not thoughts.
Memories.
But not their own.
An apprentice weaver, fingers trembling, begging the Loom to undo a mistake.
A war-mage laughing as his own light burned through a battlefield of ash.
A child, faceless, nameless, pulling a single golden thread from the world—and watching it unravel.
Ashardio staggered. His hands weren't his anymore. They moved as if recalling an ancient rhythm, plucking at the air, tracing glyphs he had never learned.
"Ash," Lilim's voice cut through the fog, sharp and steady. "The Loom's testing you."
"No," he said, teeth gritted.
"It's remembering itself through me."
And with every memory, the fractures in his skin glowed brighter.
⸻
VII. The Pattern Beneath Patterns
At the threshold of the Undercroft, where the Fold's breath faded, a figure awaited them.
Hooded. Still.
Yet the threads recoiled around it, as if the Loom itself was afraid.
Ash recognized the Artisan's work instantly. Not through sight, but through the signature of deliberate imperfection. A single misplaced weave in the pattern—like a scar—an intentional flaw that made everything around it… unstable.
"You trespass," the figure said, voice smooth, dispassionate. "The Loom tolerates seekers, not meddlers."
Ashardio's light surged, but the figure only smiled beneath the hood.
"I do not need to strike you. The Loom will do so itself. Every thread you touch, every fracture you carry, unravels you further."
Lilim stepped between them, defiant. "If it's unraveling, it means it was flawed to begin with."
A flicker of approval passed over the Artisan's hidden face.
"Good. You understand. Flaws are truth. Perfection is a lie."
With a gesture, the Artisan dissolved—his form scattering like loose threads.
But his warning remained, woven into the very air.
⸻
VIII. The Burden of the Weaver
Later, beneath the cold light of Primoria's fractured sky, Ash stared at his reflection in a shard of mirror-glass.
The golden threads beneath his skin pulsed slowly now, syncing with the Loom's distant heartbeat.
He wasn't unraveling.
He was being rewoven.
But whose pattern was it?
His?
The Loom's?
Or the Artisan's?
Lilim watched silently. She understood the weight of patterns.
"Ash," she said softly, "The question isn't what the Loom wants. It's what you want to make of it."
Ashardio's reflection smiled without him.
Somewhere, deep beneath the world, the Fold shivered.
Awaiting his answer.