Chapter Eight: The Thread That Shouldn’t Be

The world was unraveling.

Yren felt it beneath his feet, in the trembling walls of the Threadspire, in the air that no longer moved the way it should. Seams was fraying—its fabric splitting apart as if the Loom had never held it together at all.

The Weaveless One stood before him, shrouded in shifting threads of darkness and light. The Loom was still, its golden strands limp, severed. And yet, in the midst of the breaking world, Yren felt something else.

A thread.

Invisible, weightless, but there. It wasn't part of the Loom's weave. It wasn't something Mareth had ever taught him about. It was something other.

And it was his.

"You feel it now, don't you?" the Weaveless One murmured, watching him with its hollow, faceless void. "The thread that shouldn't be."

Mareth's breathing was ragged, his golden-threaded robes flickering like dying embers. "Yren—whatever it's telling you, don't listen."

But Yren wasn't listening. Not to the Weaveless One. Not to Mareth.

He was listening to the thread.

It hummed at the edge of his senses, silent but waiting.

Not part of the Loom. Not part of the unraveling.

Something else entirely.

The Weaveless One took a step closer, and Yren barely noticed. The tear in the sky pulsed, the land beyond it twisting and shifting, but it felt… distant.

All that mattered was the thread.

He reached for it.

Mareth's hand caught his wrist, his grip shaking. "Yren. If you pull something that is not woven into the Loom, you may not survive it."

Yren met the elder's gaze. There was fear there. Not of the Weaveless One. Not of the unraveling world.

Fear of him.

And in that moment, Yren understood.

The Loom had never woven him in.

He had never been stitched into Seams the way the others were. He had felt it his whole life—the way the magic shifted strangely around him, the way he didn't fit into the patterns of the world.

Because he wasn't supposed to be here.

He was a loose thread.

And now, the choice was his.

Let Seams unravel. Let the Loom fail. Let everything fall into the void.

Or pull the thread.

And rewrite everything.

Yren inhaled.

And pulled.