Chapter Five: The Loom’s Warning

The world trembled.

Yren staggered as the tear in the sky pulsed, sending waves of unseen force rippling through the village. The stones beneath his feet shuddered, the air thick with a hum that rattled in his bones. Around him, the fallen villagers remained trapped in their eerie stillness, their bodies flickering with faint light.

More threads poured from the wound in the sky, twisting and reaching. Yren tightened his grip on his knife, but for every strand he severed, two more took its place. It was spreading too fast.

Then Mareth did something Yren had never seen before.

The elder raised both hands, and the golden threads woven into his robes shimmered. The air around him shifted—warped—as if something unseen had been pulled tight. A faint glow gathered in his palms, and when he spoke, his voice echoed with the weight of magic.

"By the will of the Loom, let these bindings hold!"

A golden thread spun outward from his fingertips, lashing across the square. It struck the nearest dark tendrils, and for a moment, they writhed violently—hissing, straining—before recoiling, as if repelled. The golden thread wove itself through the air, forming a shimmering barrier that stretched around the village square.

The dark threads thrashed against it but could not pass.

The tear in the sky, however, remained wide and unhealed.

Mareth exhaled sharply, his face pale. "That will not hold forever." He turned to Yren. "We need to reach the Loom."

Yren's breath caught.

The Loom. The heart of Seams. The ancient mechanism that kept their world stitched together, hidden deep within the Threadspire—a temple that only the elders were allowed to enter.

"Why?" he asked, but the answer was already pressing against his mind.

The tear. The whisper. The figure beyond the veil.

Mareth looked at him as if weighing something unspoken. Then he spoke the words that changed everything.

"Because if the Loom still spins, this tear should not exist."

Yren swallowed hard. "You're saying—"

"I'm saying the Loom may not be failing." Mareth's voice was grim. "I'm saying something may be breaking it."

Another pulse rippled from the sky, and the golden barrier flickered.

They were running out of time.