The Loom of Ash

The ruins of the Loom of Ash felt wrong.

Ren had sensed the Loom before—thin, silver threads that existed just at the edge of his perception. But here?

Here, the threads weren't just visible. They coiled around the ruins like living things, frayed and twitching, whispering of something buried, forgotten, waiting.

He shivered.

The deeper they walked, the more his own body reacted. His skin tingled, his veins thrummed, his own threads pulled tighter, like they were being tested.

Something was calling to him.

And it was not the Weaving Order.

Aldryn walked ahead of him, his posture tense. "We shouldn't be here long."

Ren barely heard him.

His gaze was locked on the monolith at the center of the ruins.

Unlike the other crumbling structures, this one still stood tall, cracked but unbroken. The frayed threads of fate curled around it, weaving in and out of its surface like tangled roots.

It was alive.

Or rather, something inside it was.

Ren took a step forward. He didn't mean to.

But his own threads pulled him closer.

Aldryn swore under his breath. "Ren—don't touch it."

But it was too late.

The moment his fingers brushed the monolith's surface—

The world shattered.

For an instant, Ren wasn't in the ruins anymore.

He stood in an endless void of woven golden light. Threads stretched in every direction, pulsing like veins beneath the skin of reality itself.

Then—they turned on him.

The threads of fate lashed toward him, searching, testing, demanding.

"Who are you?"

"You do not belong."

"Your thread is incomplete."

Ren gasped, his knees buckling. The Loom was judging him. Measuring him.

He felt his own threads unraveling, separating strand by strand, as if fate itself was deciding whether to accept him or erase him.

Then, from the heart of the monolith—

A single, broken fragment detached.

It was not just a relic.

It was a severed strand of the Loom itself.

And it was about to fuse with him.

Pain exploded through Ren's body.

The broken strand didn't just enter him—it tore through him. His own threads frayed and snapped, struggling to accept something so foreign, so ancient.

But the shard wasn't trying to replace them.

It was weaving into them.

Merging.

Strengthening.

Ren's body burned, but he could feel it—his threads growing denser, more stable, no longer fragile strands but something stronger.

He gritted his teeth. This was power—but it came with a cost.

Then—the Loom accepted him.

The golden threads stilled.

And Ren knew—he was no longer the same.

As the vision faded, a final whisper crawled through his mind.

"Now you are seen."

Ren's eyes snapped open.

Aldryn was dragging him away from the monolith, his face pale.

"Ren! Move!"

The ruins were shaking. The Loom of Ash was rejecting them.

Then—the sky cracked open.

The air cracked open.

Threads of fate snapped and coiled, twisting violently as a spiraling rift tore into the sky above the ruins. A wound in the Loom itself.

Ren stumbled back, his breath caught in his throat. He could feel them before he saw them.

Not just Spellweavers.

Something worse.

The Loom bent for them.

The moment the first figure descended, Ren felt the world shrink around them, like reality itself had tightened to accommodate their presence. Their robes weren't just woven—they shifted, the symbols on their fabric burning and flickering as if their very existence was being written and rewritten with each breath.

Aldryn swore under his breath.

Ren had never felt fear like this before. Not the kind that made his pulse spike in a fight, not the kind that came from danger.

This was primal.

A force so absolute, so terrifyingly controlled, that even the broken threads of the Loom of Ash hesitated to move.

Two figures descended.

The first landed gracefully, though his movements weren't natural—they were too precise, too preordained. He didn't just step onto the ground—the Loom carried him forward, ensuring each footstep was already set before he made it.

His golden-threaded robes hummed with power, as though they weren't fabric, but a piece of the Loom itself.

Aldryn's grip on his staff tightened.

"Master Loomwright."

Ren swallowed. The words meant nothing to him, but the way Aldryn tensed, the way the air seemed heavier, told him enough.

Then the second figure moved.

She didn't walk.

She glided—not like a specter, but like something that wasn't bound by the same laws of movement as everything else.

Where she passed, the Loom warped beneath her feet, threads twisting and knotting, as if fighting against their own nature. Her robes were black—not just dark, but empty, an abyss stitched together in the shape of a person.

Black threads coiled around her fingers, shifting like living things. But they weren't woven strands of fate.

They were something else.

Something wrong.

Aldryn's breath was cold.

"Voidspinner."

Ren's entire body locked up. He didn't know what that was—but he knew enough.

The way Aldryn stiffened.

The way his grip turned white-knuckled on his staff.

The way the ruins themselves seemed to resist the presence of these two beings.

This was beyond him.

The Master Loomwright—Olreth—cast a bored glance across the ruins, his gaze detached, as though the scene before him was nothing more than an old story he had already read a thousand times.

Then, his eyes found Aldryn.

"Aldryn Cael." His voice was smooth, effortless. "I should have known you'd crawl out from the wreckage of the past eventually."

Aldryn's grip tightened. "You still talk too much, Olreth."

The Voidspinner—Sylva—smiled faintly.

"And you still fight too much."

Aldryn's teeth clenched. "You should've stayed out of this, Sylva. I see you finally abandoned the light entirely."

Sylva let out a slow breath.

"The light abandoned me first."

Ren barely followed the exchange.

They knew each other.

These weren't just enforcers of the Weaving Order.

They were something deeper—something older.

Olreth's gaze flicked toward Ren.

The moment his eyes locked onto him, Ren felt it.

A tug.

A pressure, deep inside his chest.

The threads within him—his very existence—shuddered.

Not pulled.

Rewritten.

Ren gasped. His body flickered at the edges, unraveling and being rewoven into something else.

"They're not just erasing me. They're changing me."

Olreth tilted his head slightly. "Interesting. You shouldn't be able to withstand that."

Sylva's eyes narrowed. "It's the shard."

Olreth hummed. "Ah. The boy stole something from the Loom of Ash."

Ren barely heard them. He was barely holding on.

His vision wavered. His hands flickered in and out of focus. Like he wasn't entirely real anymore.

Aldryn snarled.

"Back off."

Aldryn moved first.

His staff slammed against the ground—

A shockwave of silver threads exploded outward, the ruins cracking apart beneath the force.

He didn't just attack.

He wove.

The shockwave didn't dissipate.

It fractured—splitting into hundreds of smaller threads, weaving into a fate-binding web, coiling toward Olreth and Sylva, set to crush their Looms in an instant.

Ren felt the weight of it.

This wasn't raw force.

This was fate-layering—a forbidden technique.

Aldryn wasn't just attacking.

He was locking Olreth and Sylva's futures into a pre-determined path.

A death they couldn't escape.

Olreth didn't even react.

He lifted a single hand.

And the moment his fingers twitched—Aldryn's attack unraveled midair.

Ren's blood turned to ice.

They didn't block it.

They rewove it.

Aldryn's bindings weren't broken—they had never existed in the first place.

Olreth had rewritten the moment before they formed.

Sylva tilted her head slightly, the black strands around her fingers stretching outward, latching onto the ruins themselves.

Ren watched in horror as the ground beneath them changed.

The broken stones stitched themselves back together, but not into ruins—into something else.

The battlefield itself was being rewritten.

"This isn't a fight. This is them playing with reality itself."

Olreth's voice was calm.

"This fight is already over, Aldryn. You are an echo of an age that no longer matters."

Aldryn snarled.

"Then let's see if this echo can still break your jaw."

His next attack was faster.

Silver threads snapped forward, but this time, instead of launching raw force—they looped, layered, bending over each other in intricate formations.

Ren barely had time to register it before a spectral spear of fate-threads formed in Aldryn's grip.

He threw it.

Olreth lifted a finger.

The spear vanished.

Not broken. Not deflected.

It simply ceased to exist.

Olreth didn't just counter the attack.

He made it so the attack never happened.

Ren's breath caught.

Then—Sylva moved.

Black threads coiled outward.

Ren barely saw it.

Then Aldryn's own Loom started shifting against him.

Sylva wasn't fighting him.

She was erasing him.

Aldryn's Loom flared silver, breaking her hold, but she was already moving again.

Olreth sighed.

"Enough of this. The boy comes with us."

Aldryn's stance shifted.

"Not while I breathe."

Sylva smiled faintly.

"Then let's change that."

Aldryn's fingers twitched—

And Ren's world shattered.

A force launched him backward, hurling him away from the ruins.

Aldryn's voice rang in his ears.

"RUN!"

Ren didn't hesitate.

Because if he looked back—

He might never stop running.