The Harbinger didn't move. It shifted.
Its form—too fluid, too unstable—rippled through fractured air, its claws slashing toward Leo's throat. Too fast. Too inevitable.
He barely dodged.
The air itself fractured where the strike landed, reality splitting apart like brittle glass. Not space. Not time. Something older. Something deeper.
Leo rolled hard behind the altar, his shoulder smashing against cold stone. His phone skittered across the ground, the screen flickering with symbols he couldn't read but somehow understood.
He was breathing too fast.
He had to focus.
The altar pulsed beneath his fingers.
Not with warmth. With knowledge.
The symbols weren't decorations.
They were equations.
Carved into stone with an intelligence that had never belonged to this world. Dr. Larson's Advanced Quantum Theory lectures flooded his mind.
Eigenstate collapse. Quantum entanglement. The mathematics of inevitability.
This wasn't magic.
This was a calculation.
A proof waiting to be completed.
"Holy shit," he whispered.
---
A Battlefield of Unraveling Reality
Mike stumbled toward the door.
But the shadows moved first.
They struck like living wires—*not ropes, not chains—*but something alive. Something aware. Threads of pure void coiled around his ankles, pulling.
Mike hit the ground hard, his breath torn away in a ragged gasp. His fingers clawed at the floor, but the shadows pulled tighter.
The Harbinger turned.
Its body—if it could be called that—rippled like oil over broken glass, limbs bending too far, too fluid.
Leo felt the pull of the threads all around him.
Not just here.
Everywhere.
In the walls. In the floor. Inside him.
They vibrated—humming with a language not meant for human minds.
Jessica had seen them first.
Now Leo saw everything.
The threads of Millbrook wove through every missing person.
Through every vanished night.
Through Jessica, still screaming, frozen between worlds.
The Weaver's Warning
"Stop!"
Leo slammed his hands against the altar.
Electricity shot through him. No, not electricity—something deeper.
A force older than physics, older than thought.
The threads ignited.
Blinding silver light surged through the patterns, and suddenly—everything unfolded.
The missing people.
The fractured realities.
A spiderweb of probabilities stretched across existence.
And standing at its heart—Riven.
Riven's Offer
He wasn't human.
Not anymore.
His smile was a wound in reality.
His voice was silk stretched too thin.
"Now you understand," Riven said, his form flickering between shadows and something less defined. "The pattern requires balance. A thread severed is a thread rewoven. Life taken—life bound."
Leo's teeth clenched.
"Let them go," he ordered.
The equations beneath his hands burned.
They were more than symbols.
They were truth.
And truth could not be denied.
"You're not creating order," Leo whispered, feeling the weight of everything. "You're tearing holes in the universe."
Riven's smile flickered.
For the first time, he hesitated.
The Harbinger convulsed.
It felt the imbalance.
The threads binding it fractured.
Mike kicked free, slamming his fist into the nearest wall.
Vibrations rippled outward.
The entire house shifted, its foundation groaning. Threads snapped, screaming.
The Harbinger howled—a noise like corrupted code played through broken speakers.
Riven lunged—but Leo moved first.
His hands found the central thread.
The one that held the pentagram together.
The one that connected everything.
And he pulled.
---
Reality Collapses
The walls bent inward.
The room collapsed into itself.
Leo saw through gaps in reality.
The missing people.
Jessica—her face frozen in a silent scream.
Everything tore apart.
Riven's form shattered.
His scream wasn't sound.
It was equations unraveling.
"No!"
His body fractured into threads.
The Harbinger dissolved.
The pentagram burned away.
And then—
Light.
White-hot, silent, absolute.
---
Leo woke to dust and sunlight.
The house—just a house now.
No sigils. No equations. No Harbinger.
Just Mike, coughing against the floor.
Leo's phone buzzed.
Seventeen missed texts.
A campus alert.
"Disturbances reported near Cedar Street."
---
Mike groaned, wiping dust from his face. His hoodie was ripped, covered in something that wasn't quite dust.
"Did we win?" he whispered.
Leo stared at the lingering threads, now flowing like rivers instead of wire.
"We set them free," he muttered.
But in the back of his mind—
A whisper.
Riven's last words.
"The pattern never ends, Watcher."
"It only changes shape."
Leo looked toward the horizon.
He could feel it.
The awakening.
Watchers, scattered.
Waiting.
Somewhere—someone else was seeing the threads for the first time.
And it wouldn't stop.
Not now.
Not ever.