The Loom was alive with light.
Where once its threads shimmered in steady cycles, now they pulsed like veins under skin, coursing with the rhythms of newly remembered stories. Each color—each thread—was a song finding its voice again.
The Circle stood in silence beneath it, still marked by what they had done.
But the Loom was not finished with them.
Without warning, the threads above twisted inward, spinning together with dizzying speed. A vortex formed—glowing, whispering, pulling.
The boy stepped back. "Is it another broken story?"
"No," said the ink-fingered girl, clutching her journal to her chest. "It's something else. A reflection."
"What do you mean?" asked the rogue, already tense, her hand resting on her blade.
The healer closed her eyes, sensing the threads beyond their visible form. "It's not drawing us toward the past… it's pulling us into ourselves."
And then the vortex opened.
A hole in space, not dark but full of light and memory.
Without speaking, they stepped forward together—five voices, one will.
The chamber around them vanished.
In its place: a hall of mirrors.
But these mirrors were not made of glass. They were made of story.
Each panel shimmered with a scene from their lives—not as they remembered it, but as others had experienced it. Moments refracted through other hearts, other perspectives.
The boy gasped.
There, in the mirror, was his first choice to run instead of stand—seen not through his own eyes, but through the eyes of the one he left behind. A look of confusion. Betrayal. Sorrow.
"I didn't know they looked at me like that," he whispered.
The rogue turned sharply as her own mirror ignited.
A failed job. A face she'd stolen from. But now she saw the ripple of what she'd taken—not money, but trust. Safety. A future derailed.
"I thought it was just a score," she muttered. "Just survival."
"It was," the stranger said, voice quiet. "But stories don't end where our intentions do. They continue—sometimes in silence, sometimes in pain."
The healer knelt by her mirror, where a scene of comfort played out. Her own face, offering kindness to a dying figure. She remembered the moment vividly.
But in the mirror, the dying woman's eyes weren't full of peace.
They were full of fear.
"I thought I helped," she said, voice shaking. "I thought she passed on gently…"
"She didn't," said the ink-fingered girl. "But you stayed. And that mattered more than the ending."
The stranger approached his mirror last.
It showed nothing at first.
Just darkness.
But slowly, light emerged—thousands of voices whispering around him. Not condemning. Not praising. Just… watching. Waiting.
He nodded. "My story isn't singular. It's made of the pieces I've gathered."
Then he turned.
And looked at the others.
"These aren't punishments," he said. "They're invitations."
"To what?" the rogue asked.
"To remember that we aren't the only authors."
The ink-fingered girl had already begun to write.
On the surface of each mirror, she etched words in invisible ink—acknowledging the pain, the misunderstanding, the unspoken regrets.
"I'm not rewriting the past," she said. "I'm weaving new understanding into it. Perspective can't change what happened, but it can change what it becomes."
And slowly, the mirrors changed.
They didn't vanish.
They became threads.
Each one braided into a vast tapestry rising from the floor—depicting the Circle not as individuals, but as a whole.
Connected.
Scarred.
Real.
"I don't understand," the boy said. "Why show us this?"
"Because healing is not just for the broken," said a voice.
A new figure emerged from the far side of the tapestry.
Tall. Hooded. With a robe made of woven letters, like pages fluttering in wind.
"I am the Echo," they said.
"The echo of what?" asked the healer.
"Of your own impact. Of every ripple you've caused in the stories around you. You seek to restore worlds—but you must understand the cost of each thread you pull. This is not a loom of perfection. It is a loom of truth."
The stranger bowed his head slightly. "Then we ask one question, Echo: Are we worthy of this task?"
The Echo smiled, faint and solemn.
"Worthiness is not a gate. It is a question you must keep asking—together."
Then they stepped forward, raising one hand.
The tapestry of echoes unfurled completely—and from its core, a single door appeared. Plain wood. Brass handle. Inscribed with a single word:
"Together."
The ink-fingered girl looked around. "Do we step through?"
The rogue gave a short nod. "That's what we do."
The boy hesitated.
Then said, "Wait. Just a moment."
They turned to him.
"We've restored a broken thread. We've seen ourselves—who we've hurt, and who we've helped. But what if the next world we find doesn't want to be saved? What if we are the danger?"
The stranger stepped close, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Then we listen before we act. And if we are the danger… we stop."
It was quiet again.
Then the healer placed her hand on the door.
The rogue beside her.
The ink-fingered girl, the boy, the stranger—all pressing forward.
The thread shimmered in their hands.
Still glowing.
Still guiding.
And the door opened.
Not into a new corridor.
But into a storm.
Wind howled.
Rain struck in horizontal sheets.
A world mid-collapse, screaming for help—but too proud to ask.
The rogue drew her blades. The boy tightened his grip on the thread. The healer reached out to calm the wind. The ink-fingered girl turned to a fresh page.
And the stranger smiled.
"Let's begin again."
And together, the Circle stepped into the storm.