Chapter Forty-Four – When the Loom Breaks

The moment my fingers released the thread, the Woven City shuddered.

Cracks raced through the obsidian walls like lightning across a midnight sky. The runes above us flared bright and then burst, one by one, like dying stars. The sky itself seemed to tear open, revealing streaks of color—silver, violet, crimson—that bled into each other like spilled magic.

I had done it.

I had chosen.

But not Kael. Not Riven.

I had chosen me.

And the Loom… it could not accept it.

The Keeper fell to his knees, clutching his chest as the temple trembled. "You... you broke the oldest thread—Desire unbound by Fate."

"Good," I said, my voice steady though my legs were trembling. "Let it burn."

Below us, the streets of the Woven City twisted and unraveled. Buildings folded into themselves. Pathways shifted, reset, vanished. Citizens began to rise into the air, some screaming, some glowing with new life. The city was being rewritten.

"Look," Kael whispered, awe in his voice.

From the shattered sky, threads descended like falling rain—millions of them. And where they touched people, they awakened something deep inside. Memories long erased. Power long caged. Even hope.

Riven stepped beside me, his black coat fluttering in the unraveling wind. "You just ended a cycle older than time."

"Did I fix it?" I asked, voice barely audible.

"No," Kael said quietly. "You freed it."

The Keeper staggered upright. "There will be consequences. The Great Balance... It will tilt."

"I don't care," I replied. "For once, the world will have to shape around our desire—not the other way around."

His eyes—those ancient, tired eyes—met mine. And for the first time, he smiled.

"You may have destroyed the Loom," he said softly, "but you've also begun the Threadless Age. An era where mortals shape magic, not the other way around."

I looked down at my hands. The thread-mark had vanished. But in its place was something new: a symbol that glowed gold and black at once—two halves of power, dancing together.

Desire. Choice. Freedom.

Kael and Riven each took a step toward me.

But I didn't turn to either of them.

Instead, I stepped forward—into the unknown light spilling from the cracked sky.

Let the world shift.

I would write my own fate now.

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