The Loom was no longer silent.
As Rafael stood beneath the Core, the threadlight pulsing with chaotic rhythm, he felt the hum in his bones—something deeper than vibration.
It was like a second heartbeat, one he hadn't known he was missing until now. The other Threadbonded bowed their heads, murmuring low prayers in languages that no longer had homes. The amphitheater's structure itself seemed to breathe, alive with ancient memory.
Dasha pressed a palm to her temple. "I feel like I'm bleeding memories."
"You are," Clara said gently, stepping close to them both. "The Loom doesn't just connect. It binds and filters. It burns away lies."
"Great," Dasha muttered. "Just what I need. Psychic detox."
The amphitheater began to shift. Columns of light emerged from beneath the stone, revealing data structures encoded in the very walls.
Holographic shards shimmered in the air—fragmented scenes from old worlds, wars, and extinct species bound into the Maw's long history. Some hovered near Rafael's shoulder: half-remembered skirmishes, glowing with regret.
Kasien raised his gauntlet and the air froze.
"The Loom has awoken. This cycle ends, and a new fracture begins. The Uncore stirs. We must move now—before it finishes unspooling."
Rafael looked around. "Move where?"
"To the Echo Vault," Clara said. "It holds the last intact pattern-map of the Loom. If it's corrupted, we lose any chance of rewriting the anchor."
Rafael exhaled through his teeth. "And if it's not?"
"Then we wake the Cradlesleepers."
The mention sent ripples through the Threadbonded. Dasha raised an eyebrow. "Sounds... ominous."
Kasien nodded. "They are not friends. They are not enemies. They are remnants. Tools. Dangerous ones."
Rafael's gaze dropped to his hands. Threads still shimmered beneath the skin, pulsing faintly. "Then what are we waiting for?"
***
The path to the Echo Vault was a shifting corridor of memorysteel—walls that adapted based on who walked them. The passage reconfigured itself with each step, a living archive.
Rafael saw echoes of his childhood with Clara. Probably loop 6: a broken swing set, the rain-slick roof of their hideout, her bloodied face after the Syndicate raid.
Clara flinched when she saw a different scene: Rafael cradling a small, silent body in Somewhere familiar yet forgotten.
Neither of them spoke.
But their pasts hung around them like fog.
Clara's voice came soft. "In my last life, I died alone. They locked me in the lower decks during the Marianas Collapse. I fought until my blade broke. The Maw didn't kill me. It took me in."
Rafael looked over. "I searched for you. Every cell. Every corridor. I thought I saw your hand through the blast door."
"You did," she said, smiling sadly. "And you left. Because you had to."
He couldn't speak.
Dasha moved ahead, fingers trailing the walls. She paused at a hallway where the steel refused to reshape. "This is mine," she said quietly.
The wall held the image of a crumbling tower, flames spewing from its seams. A small girl huddled beneath rubble. Dasha didn't blink as the image flickered and bled into another: a masked woman dragging her by the arm, fire in her voice.
"I don't remember her name," Dasha murmured. "But I remember the burn."
Rafael placed a hand on her shoulder. "You don't need to carry it alone."
She didn't move. "I already do."
***
They reached the Vault.
It wasn't a door so much as a veil of braided light. Kasien stepped forward, muttered an invocation, and the strands parted like mist. Inside, the Vault was a cathedral of silence—floating crystals held together by threadlight, forming a massive neural lattice. It shimmered with the weight of millennia.
Clara walked toward the central prism. "If the map's still here, it'll respond to your touch, Rafael. You're tied to the Loom now."
He hesitated. "Why me?"
"Because you remember the world before it fell. Because you broke, but didn't dissolve."
He stepped forward.
The moment his fingers touched the crystal, pain lanced through him—not like the Threadbonding. This was sharper, more personal. Images exploded in his mind:
—A woman's scream in a burning tunnel. —A gunshot. His own. —Clara reaching for him through a rain of fire.
He dropped to his knees.
Clara knelt beside him, grabbed his hand. "It's reading your pattern. Syncing. Don't fight it."
He didn't.
The map blossomed.
A lattice of galaxies, timelines, and tangled roots of light. At its center: the Loom, fracturing. Threadlines darkened one by one, severed by something massive. Something waking. Something ancient and hungry.
Kasien's voice trembled. "The Uncore's breach is wider than we feared. One more anchor falls, and it will leak into unbonded reality."
Rafael stared at the patterns. "It's choosing where to fail next."
Clara turned to Rafael. "You've seen it before. That's why you came here. You just don't remember yet."
He looked at her. "Then help me remember."
She nodded. "We will. Together."
Behind them, the Vault doors closed. And the Loom shuddered.
***
In the shadows of the Echo Vault, something stirred—a whisper caught in the folds of light. Unseen by the Threadbonded, a new thread began to weave itself into the tapestry. Not from memory. From prophecy.
The next fracture would not be random.
It would be chosen.
***
Outside the Vault, time rippled.
As the Threadbonded began their march back through the Loompath, Rafael lingered, caught in the gravity of what he had just seen.
His thoughts flashed back to a flicker in the pattern-map—a shadow curled around a memory not his own. He saw Clara, younger, bloodied, holding a journal with the name "Dasha Woodbanks" etched inside. Not as a friend. As a target.
He turned to Dasha. "What did you do before all this?"
She met his eyes, the old steel returning. "We were on opposite sides once. In the last war I remember. You never knew because they wiped your records clean. But Clara… she knew."
Rafael stared. "Why didn't you say anything?"
Clara answered softly, "Because memory is a blade. And some wounds aren't healed by remembering. They're cauterized by forgetting."
Rafael nodded slowly. But deep inside, something else stirred—an unease, a voice not quite his own. A memory locked deeper than any Threadbond could reach.
The Loom was no longer silent.
And neither was he.
***
Lira — The Severed Hall
Lira sat cross-legged beneath the ruined spires of the Severed Hall, her palm outstretched. A dozen threadborn initiates mimicked her posture, some weeping, some whispering to spirits only they could see.
She was teaching them to hold their minds together. Because the Loom was fraying, and they were too new to survive the storm.
Before they were separated, she had tried to follow Rafael and Clara through the breach path at Loomwake's edge. But the anchor collapsed too quickly, and she had been thrown into a fallback shell—a sealed shard of space near the dying edge of the Severed Hall.
But her own threadline had started unraveling.
Every hour, a piece of memory slipped away. Her brother's face. The taste of rain. Rafael's laugh.
She had recorded her teachings in old glyphs. She had bound her name in thread-knot. And now, she carved one final line into her skin:
"Rafael must be still remembers me. That's enough."
Something stirred beyond the Hall. Something... hollow.
Lira stood.
"If Echo wants in, he'll have to tear me apart."
***
Three Threads. Three Fates. All still tied to Rafael.
The Loom had not forgotten them.
And neither had he.
***