Chapter 37: Echoed Threads

The Loom groaned like a wounded god above Needlepoint Hollow, its shimmering veils trembling beneath storms of fractured light.

Rafael stood beneath the broken sky, flanked by Beatrice and Dasha. All around them, the ancient ruins pulsed with unstable glyphs, echoing the rhythmic hum of something waking—or unraveling.

The battle days ago had left its scars. Not just on their bodies, but on the very weave of reality that had once felt firm beneath their feet. Something, or maybe some one, had missing. And they couldn't remember it.

Rafael hadn't slept since the resonance surge near the Weftwild basin. Something inside him had shifted. His threads were sharper now, too responsive, pulsing with stray feedback loops that scorched the air when he flexed his will.

Dasha noticed. She always did. Her glances were longer. Her warding spells circled closer. And her silences, once a sign of calm, now bristled with unspoken worry.

"I know you're changing," she said finally, as they passed beneath a broken arch of twisted sigils. "The Loom's not done with you yet."

"I'm not done with it either," Rafael replied, voice low. He stared ahead, where ghostlight shimmered on the Hollow's edge. "You said you used to dream about this place."

"I did," Dasha murmured. "Before I became a witch. Before I met Clara. Needlepoint Hollow was a cautionary tale then. A bedtime ghost story for children born too close to threadstorms. Now we walk through it."

Beatrice gave a dry snort and kicked a pile of cracked glyphstone. The sparks danced, then died instantly. "Enough reminiscing. If the Uncore is pressing into the east corridor, we need to pull back to the Obsidian Threadline and reroute."

"No," Rafael snapped. His voice struck the air like a chime of cracked crystal. "We hold the Hollow. I'm not giving it up."

The silence that followed was weighty. Even the wind stopped.

"Then you better pray Stanley gets here before the next breach," Beatrice said flatly.

Rafael turned. "Stanley?"

"He's alive," Dasha answered. "And so are Calyx and Lira."

He stared at her. "How can you know them?"

Beatrice drew a small crystal from her belt—a fragment of a locator tether. Its pale glow pulsed with unfamiliar energy, not from the tether's core, but something else. Something older.

"Resonance," she said. "Not just signals. This is memory-thread feedback. And theirs is heading straight toward us."

Rafael closed his eyes, and in that breathless moment, he could feel them—threads once snapped now faintly tugging at him again. Stanley's quiet fury. Calyx's stubborn hope. Lira's haunted silence.

"They made it," he whispered. "After all this time."

"They're coming," Dasha confirmed. "But they'll find more than ruins when they get here."

The ground trembled beneath them. A roar echoed across the stone foundations of the Hollow. At the far edge, where the Loom's corruption was thickest, a pillar of obsidian threadfire erupted into the sky. Echoes poured from it—half-formed limbs, fractured shadows, screamers made of cloth and broken names.

"Threadspawn," Beatrice growled, drawing her blade.

"No," Rafael said, eyes wide. "Something worse."

From the breach stepped a figure.

They were cloaked in dusk-colored robes, the scent of ozone clinging to their aura. A featureless mask covered their face—until they removed it. What lay beneath made Rafael's stomach drop.

"Hello, Rafael," said the Echo.

The voice was familiar, uncomfortably so. The face, older, scarred, but unmistakable.

"You're dead," Rafael breathed.

"I was," the Echo said with a smile that held no warmth. "But this world is a generous liar. You should know."

Dasha stepped forward, magic at her fingertips. "You're with the Uncore."

"I'm using the Uncore," Echo corrected. "Tools are meant to be used. That includes the Loom. And you."

"What do you want?" Rafael demanded.

"Same thing I always wanted," the Echo said, spreading their arms. "To open your eyes. The Loom doesn't serve you. You serve it. Still clinging to this 'protector' delusion? How quaint."

"You don't understand," Rafael growled.

"No," the Echo said, tilting their head. "I understand too well."

With a flick of their hand, they summoned a spiral of corrupted thread. The Hollow itself convulsed, reality curving toward them like a spiral drain.

"Run," the Echo said, already stepping back into the breach. "Or don't. The end is happening either way."

And then they were gone, leaving only the taste of ash and betrayal behind.

Rafael staggered. His legs felt cold, unmoored. "Prepare the defense lines," he said. His voice was thin but steady.

Beatrice and Dasha moved without further question, but the tension clung to all of them like a second skin.

Far to the west, the Threadsinger's tunnel quaked with fresh sound. Stanley was the first to sense it—the Hollow's agony, rising like static. His knuckles tightened around his blade.

"They're close," Calyx whispered, studying the flickering lines on her Anchor.

Lira closed her eyes, face pale in the dark. "I can hear him."

None of them said Rafael's name. But they didn't need to.

Just days earlier, the three had barely escaped the collapse of the Spindle Run. Separated during the great Threadquake, each of them had been forced into solo survival—Lira among the Weavers of Mornvale, Calyx bartering knowledge with rogue Tethermages, and Stanley tracking corrupted wildlife through the Wyrmbraid Pines. But something had drawn them back—an ache in the threads, a pulse of need.

And now they were together again, weathered and wiser, standing at the edge of a storm they couldn't yet name.

Above them, the Loom twisted harder.

And somewhere deeper still, where the Loom and the Uncore touched like fire to oil, something ancient and watching began to stir.

The real war hadn't even begun yet.

But the threads were converging.

And they were not done fighting.

***