38: THE LAST THREAD KEEPER

AYLA – POV

He didn't speak at first.

He let the silence speak for him.

The wolves who had stopped moving knelt—not in obedience, but in reaction, as if the very shape of his presence pulled them down.

The Keeper walked across the ash as if it had been laid for him. Each step left a dark spiral burned into the earth.

Kael drew his blade. Callen lifted her hand, but the spiral on her wrist quivered.

I stood still. Because I knew this one, his face and his echo.

Every spell that sealed my name, every bond that twisted like a chain, every rule that turned choice into submission—he had written them.

He was the Last Thread keeper, and he had come to undo me.

"You weren't supposed to survive," he said.

His voice was silk and rot. Smooth and decayed.

"You weren't supposed to remember."

"I did more than I remember," I said.

He smiled. "You rewrote."