Chapter 279: Fractures in the Loom

The morning after the Herald vanished, the air in Stonehaven was unnaturally still. The monoliths had crumbled, and the Witnesses were nowhere to be found. But Kael knew better than to believe it was over.

Change like this never settled without consequence.

Ashara sat at the edge of the east wall, legs swinging over the sandstone edge, polishing her blade. "They vanished too easily," she muttered. "Like smoke pretending to be shadow."

Veyna, seated beside her with maps and runes spread like a fan, didn't look up. "Or like people who got the answer they didn't want and went home to rewrite the test."

Kael approached, carrying a carved obsidian shard from the broken altar. Its surface still shimmered faintly, reacting to his presence. "They didn't lose. They withdrew."

He handed the shard to Veyna. It pulsed once in her palm, then dimmed. She hissed softly. "Still active. The Pattern's memory isn't gone. It's dormant."

Ashara's eyes narrowed. "So they'll be back."

Kael nodded.

But when? And in what form?

That question haunted the days that followed. The people of Stonehaven resumed repairs and rebuilding, but a quiet tension lingered. They had defeated an idea, not an army—and ideas, Kael knew, had a way of creeping back in, wearing new masks.

A week later, Kael received a visitor.

Not a Witness.

Not a soldier.

A child.

She was no older than ten, her clothes frayed and dusty. Her eyes, however, were too old for her face. She approached the gates and simply said: "I need to speak to the one who bends the Pattern."

Ashara and Veyna stood guard as Kael led her inside.

She introduced herself only as Lira.

And then she spoke five words that made the air turn cold:

"I remember the Fourth Shape."

Kael froze. He hadn't told anyone about that phrase. Not even Ashara.

He sat slowly. "How do you know that name?"

Lira closed her eyes. "Because I lived there. Before it was unmade."

For hours, Kael listened to her story. It sounded impossible. Like a myth within a myth. But as she spoke, her voice triggered memories in Kael he didn't know he had—images of a world of endless sky, of towers made from song, of creatures that existed between heartbeats.

She spoke of the Fourth Shape as a time that had been folded out of the Pattern. Not destroyed, not lost—sealed.

"Why was it sealed?" Veyna asked carefully.

Lira's answer chilled them.

"Because the people there learned how to feel each other's pain."

Ashara blinked. "That's… good, isn't it?"

"Too much," Lira said softly. "They broke. Empathy became unbearable. It turned joy into guilt. Sorrow into madness. So they cut it out. Folded it under. They called it the Sorrow Weave."

Veyna looked at Kael. "You think that's where the Witnesses came from?"

Kael stood, restless. "Or what they fear most. If the Fourth Shape still echoes beneath the Pattern… someone could bring it back."

Ashara sheathed her sword. "Then someone probably already is."

That night, Kael dreamed.

He stood in a vast chamber, a loom the size of mountains before him. Threads of memory, time, and possibility stretched in every direction. And in the center: a figure cloaked in radiant silver.

Not a Witness.

Not a Herald.

But something older.

"You've touched the Pattern," it said. "But you haven't seen what lies beneath."

Kael tried to move, but the threads held him in place.

"You call yourself a shaper. But the Fourth Shape wasn't shaped. It was felt."

Then the figure placed a thread in Kael's hand.

It burned. It bled. It sang.

And Kael woke, gasping, blood running from his nose.

The next morning, he gathered his allies.

"There's something beneath all this. Not just a secret—but a wound. The Fourth Shape didn't vanish. It was buried alive."

Veyna nodded slowly. "Then maybe it's time we unearthed it."

Ashara cracked her knuckles. "Where do we start?"

Kael looked at Lira, who had been silent until now. "The place they sealed it. The last door."

Lira whispered one word.

"Orren."

A name Kael hadn't heard in lifetimes.

Ashara groaned. "That cursed place? The old empire's heart? It's nothing but ruin now."

Kael's eyes burned with certainty.

"Then we start digging."

They left Stonehaven two days later.

The path to Orren was long-abandoned, swallowed by sandstorms and ancient wards. The sky seemed to frown on their journey. Birds flew in silence. Shadows moved on their own.

At night, Kael felt the thread again—the one from his dream—curled inside his chest, humming. It hurt, but it also guided him.

On the fourth night, they reached the outskirts of Orren.

It was worse than they'd imagined.

Not ruins.

Not decay.

But frozen echoes. Time there had stopped, as if the city had inhaled and never exhaled.

And across the skyline, hovering like a mirage, was a shape that did not belong.

An impossible spire—spiraling, luminous, cracked with sorrow.

Ashara stared. "That's not a building."

Veyna whispered: "It's a memory."

Lira stepped forward, her voice hollow.

"The Weave is opening."

And the Fourth Shape was calling.