The world beyond the mountain wasn't land.
It was thread.
Strings of color, stretched across nothing.
And yet they could walk on it, carefully.
Flick poked one.
It rang like a bell.
Varn whispered, "This is the Looming."
"What's that?" Elira asked.
"It's where stories get sewn into the world."
The thread-paths moved.
Some grew.
Some faded.
Some broke before your foot touched them.
But one thread—gold and quiet—waited.
It hummed to Elira.
She stepped on it.
The world didn't fall.
It welcomed her.
As they walked, stories formed below the threads.
Flick's first fire.
Sera's first war.
Amaryn's lost lullaby.
Solin's mirror.
Varn's guilt.
And Elira—
Nothing.
No thread.
No tale.
Just… silence.
"Why don't I have one?" she asked.
The Looming answered.
But not in words.
In a figure.
It stepped from the thread below.
Cloaked in black flame.
Eyes like empty wells.
The others stepped back.
Elira stayed still.
"Do you know me?" the figure asked.
She shook her head.
"I named you."
Elira blinked.
"No one named me," she whispered. "I chose it."
It smiled.
"You picked a name. I picked the hole."
The figure moved like smoke, like ink spilled backward.
"You were born in story," it said.
"But someone wanted power more."
"Your father."
Elira's breath caught.
"He gave me your name. To take you from the tapestry. You became un-threaded."
Elira's knees felt weak.
"You're a hole," the figure hissed. "An echo. A girl no thread remembers."
The others stepped forward.
Sera's blade.
Amaryn's voice.
Flick's fire.
Solin's shadow.
Varn's light.
They stood around Elira.
"She made us remember," Amaryn said.
"She changed our threads," Varn added.
"She's not a hole," Flick said. "She's a spark."
The figure hissed.
"You cannot undo my name."
Elira stepped forward.
"I don't want to."
"I'll just make a new story."
And with that, the gold thread beneath her bloomed.
Colors leapt from it, crimson, silver, sky-blue, fire-orange, and deep green.
They weren't from her.
They were from everyone she touched.
The figure screamed.
Not in fear.
In fear of being forgotten.
It tried to leap.
But the thread broke under it.
And it fell.
Back into the places stories go to die.
Elira stood on a new platform now.
It wasn't thread.
It was ground.
Earth grown from memory.
Around her, the Looming faded.
But a trail of gold stayed behind her, winding all the way back.
"Why didn't it show my story?" she asked.
Solin smiled softly.
"Because it hasn't ended yet."
They walked forward.
And somewhere, in the soft hum of stories unwritten, a new thread began to glow.
This one—bright.
This one—strong.
This one… named.