The silence before the storm was fragile, stretched thin like the woven threads that held the Refuge together. Beneath the Loom's soft, amber light, Kai stood before the sword Epoch's Edge laid on a cloth of stilled time. Its blade shimmered not with steel, but memory. When he touched it, he felt every moment it had ever cleaved futures aborted, histories stitched anew.
Lysira approached him, hands behind her back. Her expression had lost its usual calm. There was urgency in her steps.
"We don't have time for tradition," she said. "The Dominion is already at our gates. Your training must begin now."
Kai looked down at the blade. "What do I even learn to fight with this? It's like holding a memory."
"That's exactly what it is." She placed her hand over his. "To wield it, you must stop thinking like a warrior. Think like a threadwalker. You don't cut your enemy you rewrite their moment of triumph."
Lessons in Time
They moved to a chamber where time stood still literally. Inside, everything was frozen: raindrops hung in midair, candles flickered without burning down. The Weavers called it the Moment Vault a sanctuary outside fate's reach.
"Swing the sword," Lysira instructed.
Kai did. The air shivered. The raindrops bent around the arc of his strike and realigned becoming mist, then wind, then nothing.
"Good," Lysira whispered. "Again."
Each swing cut not the present, but what could have been: a bolt of lightning reversed direction, a crack in the stone floor sealed, a falling feather returned to the sky.
"This is power the Dominion cannot tolerate. And why they hunt you."
But as Kai grew stronger, the air began to shift. The Loom at the heart of the Refuge flickered. Time stuttered.
And the first scream echoed from the Gate.
The Assault
The Warden of Forgotten Names had not come alone.
The Hollowborn surged through the unraveling braid of the Refuge's defenses like a tide of absence beings that devoured history, leaving only hollow recollections in their wake.
The sky cracked open as the threads frayed. From the Loom's perch, the Elders sounded the alarms. Bells that rang across centuries tolled once more.
Kai raced toward the gate, Epoch's Edge drawn, its blade already humming.
He saw the Warden, tall and faceless, standing in the center of the storm. Around him, Weavers fell, their names ripped from reality as if they'd never existed.
"You carry the blade of rebellion," the Warden said, voice like rot and thunder. "You will give it to me."
Kai tightened his grip. "You'll have to take it."
The Warden raised a hand. Reality around Kai rippled memories unraveling, moments flickering like dying stars. But Kai stepped forward anyway. The sword in his hand did not tremble.
It sang.
The Battle at the Loom
Lysira fought beside him, threads of light dancing from her fingertips. She wove barriers, illusions, false timelines to throw off the Hollowborn.
Elders summoned ancient weapons made of time-frozen stone and golden ink. The Refuge itself groaned, its foundation unweaving to fuel their spells.
But still, the Hollowborn came. And with every step, the past died a little more.
Then Kai did what no Threadborn had dared: he stepped into the loom.
Time bent.
The blade in his hand ignited becoming not a sword, but a quill.
He struck the ground.
And wrote a new moment into being.
The Warden stumbled, looking down at his chest. Where there should have been absence, there was pain. Kai had rewritten his immunity.
"You remember me," the Warden gasped. "You… you should not…"
"I choose to," Kai whispered.
And he struck.
The Loom pulsed.
The Hollowborn howled.
And for the first time in a thousand years, the Dominion faltered.
The Thread That Refused to Break
Smoke twisted through the air like broken thoughts jagged, directionless, clinging to the shattered towers of the Refuge. The once-immaculate halls where time had flowed in harmonious strands were now fractured, threads snapped, stories untold.
Kai stood in the center of the battlefield, his breath uneven. Epoch's Edge was embedded in the stone beside him, its glow dimmed. But it wasn't exhaustion that held him still it was the silence. The unnatural, aching silence of a world missing something vital.
"They're gone," Lysira whispered, her voice hoarse as she knelt beside a still body. "Three Elders. Unwritten… like they never lived."
And indeed, the memories were already fading. Names were difficult to recall. Faces blurred. Kai's fingers dug into his palms, his fury rising.
"We stopped them. We stopped them," he said.
Lysira shook her head. "No. We delayed them. The Warden wasn't the end he was only a blade. There's a hand that wields him still."
A Moment Stolen
That night, Kai found sleep impossible.
He walked through what was left of the Archives. Scrolls fluttered, pages lost to time, stories leaking into the air like dying embers. And then he saw it a shadow where no light touched.
A figure waited for him, hooded in memories not his own.
"You should not be," it said. Its voice was not human, not entirely alive. "You are a thread that refuses to break. A moment that denies deletion."
Kai gritted his teeth. "Who are you?"
"A Remembrancer. I collect that which is erased."
The shadow approached, and with it, Kai felt fragments rise in his mind. Childhood moments he never lived. Futures he might have reached. Wounds that hadn't healed… or hadn't happened.
"You are not alone, Kai of the Loom," the Remembrancer said. "But they will come for you. The True Dominion. The Timeless Crown."
Kai stepped forward. "Let them."
The Remembrancer tilted its head. "Then you must walk deeper into the thread. To the place even the Weavers fear."
The Loom Below
Hidden beneath the Loom was a second chamber, one that Lysira had forbidden him from entering. A vault sealed by seven oaths and one sacrifice.
But now… the oaths were broken. And someone had already opened it.
Kai descended alone.
He passed murals made of dreams, walked across steps forged from petrified memory. At the chamber's heart stood a mirror not one of reflection, but recursion. In its glass was not his face… but his potential. Ten thousand versions of himself, all alive, all suffering, all making different choices.
"This is the Loom Below," a voice whispered from the dark. "The place of Unwritten Kings. And you, Kai… are one of them."
From the mirror stepped a figure a version of Kai clad in Dominion armor, with eyes like cracked timeglass.
"I chose power," the echo said. "Will you?"