Whispers in the loom

The Midnight Citadel loomed against the violet sky, its dark spires piercing the heavens like fractured bones. The air hung heavy, as though the world itself was holding its breath. Beneath the ancient arches, Mirelha stood still, her blackened wings softly unfurling at her sides, the silver of her halo a quiet, distant glow.

Dacre was a shadow beside her—tall, unyielding, his presence a storm on the verge of breaking. The faint hum of his apocalyptic aura crackled like distant thunder. His hand, rough and calloused from battles fought and won, hovered near hers but did not touch.

Their bond was a scar across the fabric of the universe—one the Celestials refused to acknowledge and the Riders sought to break.

"You shouldn't be here," Mirelha whispered, her voice a tremor lost to the vast emptiness of the corridor. "If they find you—"

"They won't." Dacre's voice was a promise laced with defiance. "Not yet."

She didn't believe him, but she didn't argue. Love had long ceased to be a gentle thing between them—it was a wound that refused to heal, a secret that gnawed at the edges of their souls.

And then, it happened again.

A tear in the air—small, almost imperceptible—flickered at the edge of Mirelha's vision. It rippled like silk being unraveled, a thin line of dark light seeping into the world before vanishing in a blink. It was as though the sky itself had gasped.

Dacre saw it too. His jaw tightened. "The threads are… breaking."

"No," Mirelha said, though her voice wavered. "That's not possible."

But it was the third time in as many days. First, a star had disappeared from the northern sky. Then, a small river outside the citadel had reversed its flow for a brief moment—until the universe righted itself, as though embarrassed by its own slip.

Now, this.

The Loomkeepers would claim it was the result of their forbidden love—a disruption in the cosmic threads meant to bind them to their destinies. But this was something else, something deeper.

Something older.

"They think it's us," Dacre muttered. "But this… this isn't our doing."

Mirelha's hand found the edge of a stone column, her fingers tracing an ancient symbol carved into the surface. She'd never noticed it before—an ouroboros swallowing its own tail, but fractured at its center. The snake's head bled into a series of dots that spiraled outward, vanishing into nothingness.

"What is this?" she asked softly, her voice breaking like a delicate thread.

Dacre leaned closer, his brow furrowed. "It's not Celestial… not Rider either."

There was a chill behind the symbol, an emptiness that didn't belong to their world. It felt vast, as though staring at it too long would unravel their very thoughts.

And then—just for a fleeting moment—Mirelha thought she heard something. A whisper, like the sigh of wind in a place where wind should not exist.

Not a voice. Not a language. Just a feeling.

Distance. Immensity. Silence.

She stepped back, her heart thudding like a war drum. "It's from somewhere else."

Dacre didn't respond, but his hand found the hilt of his sword, as though instinctively preparing for a danger he could not see.

---

The Loomkeepers' Shadow

In the hidden halls beneath the Midnight Citadel, the Loomkeepers gathered. Cloaked figures draped in robes of obsidian thread, their faces hidden by masks as smooth as glass, etched only with faint, thread-like patterns.

The leader, known simply as Vareth, stood at the center of the circle. His voice, calm yet sharp, cut through the silence.

"The threads are fraying," Vareth said. "Their love is breaking the balance."

A woman to his right, Sythra, spoke next. "Good. Let them believe it is their doing—it serves our cause."

Their cause: to unweave the threads of reality and weave a new one—a world no longer bound by the fragile balance of Celestial order and Rider chaos. A world without prophecy. Without fate.

Without gods.

But something gnawed at Vareth's mind. The fractures in the threads—some were too clean, too precise. Almost surgical. As if someone—or something—was not just breaking the threads but… severing them.

He didn't speak his doubt aloud.

Instead, he drew a small knife from the folds of his robe—its blade shimmering with an unnatural blackness, as though it swallowed light rather than reflected it.

"We continue with the plan," Vareth said, his voice steady. "The bond between Mirelha and Dacre will be our instrument of destruction."

None of them noticed the thin, imperceptible ripple that ran along the floor—like an echo of something vast shifting in the distance.

---

The Unseen Veil

Later that night, Mirelha stood alone in her chambers. The air felt heavier than usual, like the sky itself was pressing down.

She couldn't shake the image of that symbol—the broken ouroboros—and the whisper she'd heard, if it had been a whisper at all.

Then, for just a moment, the candle flames in her room flickered… not from wind, but from something else. They swayed in perfect unison, as if responding to an unseen presence.

And in the silence that followed, the whisper returned—not louder, but clearer.

Not all threads can be seen.

Mirelha's heart stopped.

It wasn't a voice. It was a thought, a suggestion planted into the very fabric of her mind. A distant ripple from something beyond the world she knew.

She didn't tell Dacre.

Not yet.

Because even though she didn't understand what she'd heard, one thing became painfully clear:

The threads they saw and broke were only a fraction of the weave.

There was something larger… older… watching.

And the Loomkeepers, for all their power, were only tugging at the edges of a far greater design.

A design they didn't even know existed.