Chapter Seven: The Last Stitch

The figure stepped forward.

Its form flickered like unraveling thread, shifting between light and shadow. It had no face—only a hollow, shifting void where one should be. But Yren felt its gaze, pressing into him like needles threading through fabric.

Mareth inhaled sharply. "No…" His voice was barely a whisper. "It can't be."

Yren's grip tightened on his knife. "You know what this is?"

The elder's golden-threaded robes trembled as he took a step back. "A Weaveless One."

Yren had heard the stories. They were the ones who had fallen from the Loom's design—souls without pattern, without purpose. Fragments of something that no longer belonged. But they were myths. Warnings told to children who wandered too close to the Loom's mysteries.

They were not supposed to be real.

And yet, here one stood.

The Weaveless One raised its hand, and the threads of Seams—those once woven tightly into the Loom—shuddered.

"You were never meant to see this," it whispered, its voice neither harsh nor kind. Just… inevitable. "The Loom was meant to keep turning. The threads were meant to hold. But they lied to you."

Mareth stepped in front of Yren, his hands already moving, golden light weaving between his fingers. "Stay back."

The figure tilted its head. "Still clinging to the old weave?"

A single movement of its hand, and the Loom groaned.

The golden threads trembled, twisting and snapping like brittle silk. The walls of the Threadspire flickered, the space around them shifting. Yren felt the pull of something vast and unseen, as if the entire world was suddenly teetering on the edge of a blade.

Then, the figure turned its faceless void toward Yren.

"You feel it, don't you?" The whisper curled through his mind, cold and knowing. "The frayed edges. The loose stitches. You are not bound like the others."

Yren's heart pounded. "What are you talking about?"

The figure stepped closer. The Loom shuddered in response.

"You are unwoven," it said. "A thread without a pattern."

Mareth moved before Yren could. With a sharp breath, the elder thrust his hands forward, sending a stream of golden threads hurtling toward the figure.

The Weaveless One did not move. It simply raised a single finger.

Snip.

The golden threads unraveled before they could touch it, dissolving into nothing. Mareth gasped, stumbling backward as if the attack had severed something within him.

"You cannot stop this," the figure whispered. "The Loom is failing. And when it finally breaks—"

The walls of the Threadspire trembled.

"—Seams will fall apart."

A violent pulse of energy surged through the chamber. The last golden threads of the Loom snapped.

And Seams… shook.

The sky outside fractured. The floating isles lurched, pulled in different directions, as if something had cut the strings that held them aloft. The air warped, entire pieces of the world bending and twisting like unraveling cloth.

Yren's breath caught in his throat.

The world was coming undone.

Mareth staggered, his voice raw with desperation. "No—no, the Loom cannot stop—"

The Weaveless One turned toward Yren once more.

"There is only one way to stop this," it said, quiet and certain. "And you already know what it is."

Yren didn't know.

But deep inside, beneath the panic, beneath the unraveling of everything he had ever known—

A part of him felt it.

A thread waiting to be pulled. A choice waiting to be made.

The last stitch.

And the moment he touched it…

Everything would change.