Night fractured.

Not shattered.

Not split.

Fractured.

Kael felt it as a vibration under his skin—like the world was a porcelain shell, and a hand from the void had finally pressed too hard.

The inn's wooden beams groaned. Lanterns swung. The air thickened until breathing felt like drowning in honey. All sound muffled except for one thing:

A low, rhythmic pulse.

Like a heartbeat.

But far, far too large to belong to anything mortal.

Eira kept Kael's hand locked in hers, jaw clenched. Jorah stood in front of them, blades ready, feet braced against the shaking floor.

"What's the plan?" Jorah said, not breaking his gaze from the warping air. "Because I'd really like to live past tonight, if possible."

Kael wasn't looking at the warping air. He was looking inside it.

The cracks spreading across the sky outside the window were mirrored in the walls of the inn—white-blue lines splitting across wood, floorboards, even the space between their breaths.

"The world is thinning," Kael whispered. "It's pulling apart to let something through."

Eira's grip tightened. "We move. Now."

She turned to bolt for the door—

—but the door dissolved.

Not broke.

Not evaporated.

It folded inward, like paper sinking into water.

Jorah stepped back, whispering, "Okay. Huh. So escape is canceled."

Kael forced his voice to stay steady. "It's not trying to kill us."

Jorah stared at him. "I would really prefer it try killing us instead of—whatever this is."

"It's trying to contain us," Kael said quietly.

Eira's head snapped toward him. "Contain?"

Kael nodded.

"It doesn't want us to interfere with what comes next."

Another crack tore open, this time across the ceiling, dripping pale light like leaking starlight.

The pulse in the air grew louder.

Steady.

Slow.

Ancient.

Eira shifted closer, her shoulder brushing Kael's. "Stay with me."

"I'm here," he whispered.

But something inside him was pulling forward.

Drawn toward the light bleeding through the cracks.

A whisper brushed his ear.

"You were not meant to be."

Kael flinched.

Jorah's eyes widened. "You heard it too?"

Kael swallowed. "It's speaking through the cracks."

Another whisper:

"You are a loose thread."

Wood splintered. A section of the inn's roof peeled back like torn parchment, exposing the warped sky above. Through it, Kael saw the shape again—

The Eye.

Not an eye of flesh.

But of thread.

Of woven time.

A vortex of white-blue fibers spiraling into a center that swallowed meaning.

Looking into it felt like falling into your own memories and losing the ones that mattered most.

Eira yanked Kael back before he could take an involuntary step toward it.

"Don't look," she hissed.

But he already had.

And the Eye…

looked back.

Every thread in Kael's body pulsed in answer.

His heartbeat synced to the ancient pulse in the air.

Jorah grabbed Kael's sleeve and shook him. "Kael! Don't zone out! I need you alive and not cosmically possessed!"

Kael blinked rapidly, breath shuddering. "I'm fine. I— I can hear it clearly now."

"Great," Jorah muttered. "Love that for you."

Eira stepped in front of Kael, bracing her stance against the waves of pressure radiating from the Eye. "Kael, listen to me. Stay here. Stay grounded. You're not alone."

Her hand cupped his jaw for just a heartbeat—steady, anchoring, fiercely gentle.

The world trembled.

The Eye opened wider.

And the inn dissolved.

Not collapsed.

Dissolved.

One breath they were surrounded by wood, tables, terrified villagers—

The next, all of it faded into threads of light, drifting apart like dust motes caught in a sunbeam.

Kael, Eira, and Jorah stood alone in a vast, impossible space.

A horizon of woven light stretched beneath their feet—a tapestry of shifting threads, each strand glowing with a different fragment of reality.

Above them…

The Eye hung like a moon carved from memory.

Eira drew her sword, though her hands trembled. "This is its realm."

"No," Kael whispered.

He stepped forward.

The tapestry rippled under him, threads shifting to form shapes—memories, events, moments of history.

"This is the world. Or what lies beneath it."

Jorah scanned the endless plane. "You're telling me the universe is held together by—thread art?"

Kael didn't answer.

Because the Eye was descending.

Slow.

Silent.

Colossal.

It spoke, but not in words.

In images.

In memories.

Kael's death.

His erasure.

The blank space where his name once lived.

The rewritten histories.

The new false Kael.

The collapsing threads.

Images flashed so fast Eira and Jorah staggered, clutching their heads.

Kael alone remained standing.

Because the memories weren't foreign.

They were his.

He raised his head.

"Why did you erase me?"

The Eye pulsed.

You were not chosen.

You were not meant to diverge.

You were not meant to return.

Eira snarled. "You tried to kill him because he didn't fit your weaving?!"

The Eye pulsed again—

a vibration that shook the entire plane.

Correction.

We did not try.

We succeeded.

Kael's breath hitched.

The Eye continued:

Your death was necessary.

Your existence disrupts the pattern.

Your return endangers the loom.

Jorah shouted, "He endangers YOU, you overgrown cosmic sewing machine!"

But Kael lifted a hand, stopping him.

He stared at the Eye.

"You're afraid of me."

The entire plane stilled.

The Eye dimmed.

Then brightened.

Once.

A denial.

Almost a flinch.

Kael felt a hollow pain in his chest—half fury, half grief.

"You erased me," he whispered. "Not because I was dangerous… but because I was unpredictable."

The Eye trembled with a thousand shifting threads.

Eira stepped closer, defiant. "Too late. He's back. And he's not going anywhere."

But Kael…

Kael went still.

Something tugged inside him.

A single thread.

Thin.

Fragile.

Faintly glowing.

Eira saw it first. "Kael… your chest…"

He looked down.

A golden thread emerged from his sternum—connected to the plane beneath their feet, stretching far into the horizon.

The thread that tied him to the timeline.

The one thing keeping him anchored to existence.

And it was fraying.

Jorah's voice cracked. "No. No no no—Kael, fix it. Do something!"

The Eye pulsed again, and the golden thread unraveled faster.

Eira grabbed Kael's arm. "Hold on—Kael, please—don't let it—"

Kael looked at her.

And he smiled.

Soft.

Small.

Painful.

"It's okay."

"No," she whispered, eyes wide and furious. "No, it's not."

Kael touched the thread with trembling fingers.

Images flashed.

His life.

His second life.

Eira's hand pulling him back from the brink.

Jorah's stupid jokes that kept him sane.

Every breath he stole back from a world that didn't want him.

He whispered, "I won't disappear again."

He grabbed the fraying thread—

And pulled.

The thread snapped.

Light burst across the plane.

The Eye recoiled.

Reality shrieked.

Eira screamed his name.

Jorah lunged toward him.

And Kael fell—

down through unraveling worlds,

down through broken memory,

down through time itself—

—

Darkness swallowed everything.

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