Chapter 27: Fractures in the Thread

Rafael awoke not with a jolt, but with the eerie sense of being gently placed into a reality that didn't belong to him. It was like being slipped between the folds of a book already half-written, pages bleeding ink from different authors.

His eyes opened to a sky stitched with seams—literal seams, glowing red against the deep violet heavens, like a wounded fabric slowly unraveling. Stars flickered behind the tears, blinking in and out of existence.

He lay in a meadow where the grass whispered in equations, and the wind didn't blow so much as recite poetry in voices that sometimes sounded like his own.

He sat up with a groan. His fingers were still tingling from the Map of All Ifs. Around him stretched a horizon that curved unnaturally, as if space itself had been warped into an hourglass. Of Calyx, Lira, or Stanley, there was no sign.

"You are where you were not meant to be," said a voice nearby.

Rafael turned sharply. A woman stood ankle-deep in the murmuring grass. Her dark skin shimmered with runes that moved like constellations. Her eyes were like inverted moons, glowing softly.

He blinked. "You—"

"—were a thread tangled early," she said, finishing his sentence with unsettling ease. "We're both out of place, Rafael. The Map did that. Or maybe you did. It's the same now."

He tried to stand, but the ground undulated beneath him like an uncertain thought. He dropped to a knee, catching himself.

"Easy," she said, stepping forward and offering a hand. "This is the In-Between. A pocket stitched between frayed timelines, orphaned echoes, and unresolved intentions. You belong here less than most."

When he took her hand, something passed between them—an old familiarity he didn't understand, like remembering a song he hadn't heard yet. A warmth, a sadness.

"Where are the others?"

"Scattered," she said. "Lira's caught in a memory-dream, Calyx is... compromised, and Stanley is bargaining with a timeghost over his name."

He grimaced. "That tracks."

She smiled faintly. "You'll need to gather them. This place won't hold for long. The seams you see in the sky? They're stress fractures in the fabric. If too many open at once, this thread unravels—and everyone on it ceases. Not dies. Ceases."

Rafael rubbed his temples. "That's comforting."

"No, it isn't," she said. "But truth rarely is."

She stepped back, and the world shifted with her motion. A loom had appeared behind her—silver and narrow, unlike any he'd seen before. Its frame was etched with names in hundreds of languages, and its threads were broken, yet humming with possibility.

"Weave one truth," she said. "Anchor yourself. Then find the others."

He stared at it. "What happens if I weave the wrong thing?"

"Then you forget who you are," she said without hesitation. "And you become something else's echo."

Rafael took a step toward the loom. His body felt heavy. Not with pain, but with possibility. With futures. He didn't know how to weave—not really—but something deep in his hands remembered. Like a ritual his bones had performed long before memory.

He reached out, gripped a loose thread, and thought:

'I am Rafael. I didn't choose the thread, but I'm here now. I will choose what happens next.'

The loom shimmered. One thread locked into place. A tone like a bell rung backward sounded through the meadow.

The lady began to fade, her body dissolving like mist caught in morning sun.

"Find Dasha," she said as she disappeared. "She remembers too much. That makes her dangerous. And necessary."

Then the world shattered again—but this time, Rafael did not scream.

He blinked, and found himself standing in a hallway. A memory-dream. He knew it instinctively. The walls were lined with portraits, each framed in gold thread and whispering stories in hushed tones. None of the people in the portraits were familiar.

Until one was.

Dasha Woodbanks. Her portrait showed her standing alone in a charred field, a shattered rifle in her hands, her eyes haunted and unyielding. Beneath her image were words etched in silver:

"Every thread has a cost."

A cold shiver ran through Rafael's spine. Somewhere beyond the hallway, he could hear laughter—dry and layered, echoing off nothing.

The Loomshadow.

He turned, breathing hard. There were more doors ahead. More paths. More broken timelines to step through. And somewhere in all of this, his allies waited, frayed and scattered.

He stepped forward.

A door at the far end creaked open by itself, revealing a crimson fog that drifted into the hallway, curling like fingers reaching for him. As Rafael approached, the whispering portraits fell silent. Every footstep sounded like a nail hammered into time itself.

Inside the fog, he saw glimpses of things—Dasha arguing with a copy of herself, Stanley cradling something wrapped in chains, Calyx laughing with glowing eyes. All distortions, or futures? Or memories rewritten by something else? He didn't know.

He took another step. His vision flickered. For an instant, he was outside himself, watching his own footsteps trail into the fog like candle smoke.

The hallway behind him was gone.

Then the fog pulled back, just enough for him to step through.

And there, in the stillness beyond, he saw a figure waiting—half-turned, arms folded, long coat hanging like shadow. The one that he "saw" sometimes ago.

Dasha.

But she wasn't alone.

Echoes stood behind her. Copies? Projections? Rafael couldn't tell. They murmured to each other in fractured voices, repeating half-sentences.

"This time, you don't run."

"Threadbreakers never win."

"What cost do you fear most?"

Rafael stepped forward. Dasha looked up.

And smiled.

"Welcome to the fray," she said. "You're late."

The door behind him vanished.

The next thread was already wound tight with waiting.

***