The storm of threads lashed the chamber, threads twisting and writhing like spectral serpents. Light fractured through the webbed chaos, and Ahri's vision blurred at the edges—flashes of memory, of unfamiliar sorrow, of burning temples and falling stars.
Miran stood at the heart of it all. Her cracked fox mask hung from one hand, swinging like a pendulum. The glow in her eyes was unnatural—not madness, but something older, deeper. A truth too heavy to bear.
"You said… Yun-Ah," Ahri breathed. Her voice was barely audible above the howl of unraveling fate. "Why?"
Miran didn't smile, but there was something soft—almost reverent—in the way she stepped forward.
"She was the last to see the flame and not flinch."
Ahri's breath hitched.
"My mother is—was—named Yun-Ah."
"Not was," Miran said. "She is."Then, quieter: "And she was one of us."
The Elder's staff slammed into the ground with a thunderclap, forming a protective barrier around Ahri, Jin, and Kael. "Lies," he barked. "You speak of the dead as if they still walk."
"She walks," Miran said, voice unwavering. "But not in your world. Not anymore."
The chamber began to shift. The loom behind them twisted into something new—threads folding into walls, light bending into symbols Ahri couldn't read. It was becoming a gateway.
Kael's eyes widened. "She's opening a passage—one meant only for the Severed."
Jin moved beside Ahri, her threads glowing in defensive arcs. "We can't let her finish."
But Ahri didn't move.
Her hand hovered over the charm at her side—the fox mask her mother left behind. It pulsed now, like a heartbeat. She could feel it—her mother's presence. Not a memory. Not a ghost. Something closer, buried under layers of forgotten fate.
"Miran," Ahri called, her voice steadier now. "What happened to my mother?"
Miran tilted her head. "She chose to burn her thread rather than let the Tapestry claim her path. She fled into the Hollowed Realm with me. To break free of what the Elders demanded."
"She abandoned me."
"No," Miran said, stepping closer to the edge of the barrier. "She saved you. She cut her fate so that yours could live. But fate doesn't forgive such rebellion."
Ahri's vision flashed—a memory not her own:A woman cloaked in gold and shadow, fleeing through a burning temple, clutching a child swaddled in thread.
The golden thread. Her thread.
The Elder stepped forward, voice strained. "Don't listen to her, Ahri. She speaks half-truths and twisted echoes. The Severed would see the world fall to silence."
"Would you rather the world be deaf to its own lies?" Miran hissed.
And then, with a sudden wave of her arm, Miran flung her gathered threads outward. They struck the barrier like jagged blades, cracking the sigils and flaring sparks into the air.
Jin grabbed Ahri's arm, ready to run, but Ahri didn't move.
She took a step forward instead.
"Ahri, don't!" Kael and the Elder shouted in unison.
But she reached past the failing barrier and held up her mother's mask.
"I don't know who to trust," she said. "But if there's even a chance she's still out there, I have to find her. Even if it means walking into fire."
The golden thread around her wrist blazed with sudden light.
And Miran smiled.
"Then come," she whispered. "And remember: your thread was never just yours. It was hers first."
The chamber shattered.
Not in stone—but in meaning.
Reality folded inward, and the floor beneath them dissolved into a sea of memory-threads. Ahri fell—not into darkness, but into flame.
A flame shaped like a doorway.
A voice followed her, older than her name, whispering through the fire:
"Find me, and I will show you what fate tried to forget."