Ahri awoke in fire.
Not the searing kind that devoured, but something slower—almost gentle. Ash drifted like snow through a colorless sky, and the ground beneath her feet was scorched earth, laced with glowing embers. The world shimmered with a faint heat haze, as if clinging to the memory of something that had burned long ago.
She stood alone.
The temple, the Elder, Jin, Kael—gone. Only the scent of soot and something older, like burnt thread and dusted incense, lingered in the air.
She blinked. Her golden thread pulsed faintly on her wrist, frayed now at the edges. It trembled like a compass needle, tugging her forward.
Ahead, blackened pillars rose from the earth, twisted into impossible shapes—spirals, helixes, broken loops. They looked like remnants of a ruin that had once tried to defy time itself. Between them, the flame danced—not wild, but steady. A small hearth of blue fire, burning without fuel. Around it, names etched into stone, most unreadable. But one stood clear.
Yun-Ah Seo.
Her breath caught.
She reached out, hand trembling, when—
"You shouldn't have come here."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. A figure emerged from the haze. He wore crimson robes trimmed with faded symbols and bore a lantern on a chain wrapped around his arm. His eyes were milky white, and yet they stared into her as if seeing more than just the present.
"Who are you?" Ahri asked, voice dry from the heat.
"I am Sol," he replied. "The Lantern Archivist." Keeper of Broken Names."
He gestured to the flame. "This is Emberwake. The first to forget and the last to remember."
Ahri stared at him, uncertain. "Then… my mother's name…?"
"Was nearly lost. She burned it here, in the old way. Names bind threads. Threads bind fate. She wanted to be free of both."
"She abandoned me," Ahri said again—but the words came out hollow now, lacking the heat they once held.
"She hid you," Sol corrected. "From what was coming. From what even the Loomkeepers could not contain. She believed your thread might lead somewhere new."
Ahri turned back to the flame. "Is she here?"
"No," Sol said softly. "But she left something behind. All who cast their name into Emberwake leave behind an echo—a choice."
From the ashes, something stirred.
A small thread—burnt at both ends—rose from the flame and drifted toward her. As it touched her skin, memories flooded in.
A lullaby under moonlight. A woman in a fox mask whispering, "Your name will outlast mine, little spark."
Then darkness. Fire. Severance.
Ahri staggered, heart pounding.
"She was one of the Severed," she murmured.
"She was more than that," Sol said, lifting the lantern. "She questioned the Tapestry before it tore. And that is why she was hunted."
Ahri looked up sharply. "By the Elder?"
Sol's silence was answer enough.
Something shifted behind them. The sky darkened, and a ripple passed through the land. In the distance, Ahri saw them—three silhouettes watching from the edge of Emberwake's reach.
The Hollowed.
They didn't speak, but their presence was weight enough.
Sol turned to her. "You don't have long. The longer a living soul stays here, the more they forget who they are. Speak the name you seek, or burn it forever."
Ahri looked into the flame again.
Her hands trembled.
To reclaim her mother's name meant reweaving a thread long buried.
But to do so would invite every danger that thread had once faced. The Severed, the Loomkeepers, and the Tapestry itself.
Behind her, the Hollowed began to move.
She had to decide.