The mountain was visible long before they reached it.
It rose out of the Rift like the jagged spine of some long-buried god, its peak splitting the ashen sky, shrouded in coils of drifting mist that glowed faintly even in daylight. The locals called it Valthorr's Crown, though none remembered who—or what—Valthorr had once been.
Kaelen knew better.
He could feel it pulsing through the earth, echoing beneath his feet.
Not life.
Memory.
He and Aelira stood at the base of the path leading upward, where stone steps half-swallowed by time wound between broken pillars. Strange runes, faded and half-buried, marked each step—a dead tongue only Kaelen could partly decipher now.
"The Loom marked this place," Kaelen murmured, running his hand along one of the glyphs.
Aelira glanced around warily, her hand resting near her blade.
"It's not just a ruin," she said. "It watches. Like it remembers every step taken on its surface."
Kaelen's smile was thin.
"That's because it does."
Hours later, they climbed.
The wind grew colder the higher they rose, and the sky above began to warp—streaks of color flickering through clouds that pulsed in and out of shape like breathing lungs. A storm was gathering.
But it wasn't weather.
It was a Rift-breach. And the mountain was feeding it.
The deeper they ventured, the more the landscape grew unnatural—stone warped into smooth curves, trees with no roots frozen mid-sway, and echoes of voices caught in the wind.
Sometimes the voices whispered Kaelen's name.
He didn't answer.
They found the first guardian at the temple gate.
It wasn't a creature.
It was a thought.
A wall of pure will, woven from memory and anchored to the Weave.
Kaelen reached out—and his mind was seized.
In an instant, he was elsewhere.
Inside a memory not his own.
He stood in a hall of light and stone, surrounded by people wearing robes of starlight and skin inked with living sigils. They chanted around a pillar of glowing Weave-thread.
"Anchor the Titan," someone ordered. "If its mind unravels, we all fall."
Kaelen blinked.
He wasn't a participant.
He was an observer—pulled into the memory as a foreign node.
The Titan came into view—a colossal being of shimmering crystal and void, bound in chains of song. Its mind was breaking. Its thoughts were leaking into reality, warping space, drawing in timelines like water down a drain.
Kaelen felt its pain.
Then it looked at him.
"You," it said in a voice older than the Rift. "You were there. You will be again."
He snapped back to the present, gasping.
Aelira had her hands on him.
"You stopped breathing," she said. "For minutes."
Kaelen looked past her to the gate—now open.
"I saw... the Titan," he muttered.
She stiffened. "A Rift-Titan?"
"No," he said, rising to his feet. "The Titan. One of the first beings to carry a domain before the collapse. It was used to anchor the First World's Weave. They called it the Spine."
He stared toward the temple, eyes narrowed.
"And its mind was broken by the Pattern. But pieces of it remain... here."
Inside the temple was not what they expected.
There was no sanctuary, no altar, no sign of worship.
Only a library.
But not one of books.
Each shelf held crystalline obelisks—fractured, humming faintly, flickering with color.
Kaelen approached one.
When he touched it, the world shivered.
Another memory.
This time it was his.
Not of his current self—but one he had never known.
He stood atop this same mountain, alone, facing the storm. But he wore different clothes—black robes threaded with sigils that shimmered like oil. His hair was longer. His eyes… were empty.
He had no companions.
No Aelira.
Just silence.
And an act of defiance.
He raised his hand.
And the sky broke.
Shards of time fell like hail.
Then darkness.
Kaelen released the obelisk.
The vision had left a mark—his fingertips bled ink.
Aelira moved close.
"You've done this before," she said. "Haven't you?"
Kaelen nodded slowly.
"Some version of me has. Probably more than once."
He turned to the shelves.
"This place stores failed attempts. Alternate Weaves. Memories of things that shouldn't have survived."
He stared at the rows and rows of crystalline thoughts.
"And yet... I did."
They spent the night in the temple's heart, a chamber where light bent in circles and gravity warped inward. Kaelen used his Matter Domain to seal the entrance with twisted metal and glyph-infused dust. It would not stop a true Riftborn assault—but it would delay one.
Aelira sat beside the mirrorfire, her gaze on the spiraling roof.
"You keep finding places that remember you," she murmured. "What happens when one doesn't want you back?"
Kaelen looked at her.
"I make it forget."
They descended into the Titan Vault at dawn.
It lay beneath the temple, sealed behind glyphs that responded to Kaelen's blood.
Inside: a coffin the size of a city, embedded in the stone.
And within it… something stirred.
A heartbeat that pulsed once every few minutes.
Each beat warped the Weave.
Kaelen knelt beside a console etched with intertwining strands—mathematics, prophecy, and raw spatial code.
"I can access part of it," he said. "The Titan's mind is fragmented, but there's a node—an anchor. A sliver of its core thought."
Aelira watched warily.
"What if it sees you as the enemy?"
Kaelen smirked.
"Then we fight."
He pressed his palm to the node.
And the world ripped open.
Kaelen stood in a place without form.
A liminal space between thought and time.
Before him floated an eye the size of a cathedral—cracked down the center, leaking light.
"Little Weaver," the voice echoed, distant and heavy. "You return. Again."
Kaelen stood firm. "I came for knowledge. For memory. Yours."
The Titan blinked once.
"And what price will you pay?"
Kaelen bled from his palm.
"I'll give you the moment I first felt love."
The Titan considered.
And accepted.
A pulse of fire carved a memory from his soul.
In exchange, the Titan opened.
And Kaelen saw it.
The truth.
The First Pattern wasn't broken.
It was sacrificed.
By beings who knew that to maintain perfection meant stagnation.
And they created Kaelen—across timelines, across failures—not as a ruler, but as a catalyst.
Not to fix the Weave.
But to force it to evolve.
He returned, breathless and shaking.
Aelira caught him as he stumbled.
"What did it show you?" she whispered.
Kaelen met her gaze, something like awe in his voice.
"That I'm not an accident."
He looked back toward the coffin.
"That I'm... necessary."
As they left the Vault, Kaelen glanced at the obelisks once more.
He whispered a word in a dead language.
One by one, the crystal memories extinguished.
A mercy.
For the versions of him that failed.
Outside, the storm had passed.
The sky was blue again—unnaturally so.
Kaelen stood beneath it, watching the wind scatter ash across stone.
"This mountain remembered me," he said softly.
Aelira moved beside him.
"And now?"
Kaelen smiled faintly.
"Now it forgets."