The shattered skyline of Virelyss loomed like a city plucked from time's memory and cast adrift in a storm of arcane distortion. Buildings floated midair, frozen in collapse. Streets bled into rivers of starlight. Echoes of lives once lived flickered like broken illusions.
Kael tightened his grip on his staff, his heartbeat a counterpoint to the dissonant hum of the broken city.
"Where are we?" Lira asked, voice hushed. Her breath misted despite the warmth.
"Not when," murmured Zereth. "Where is irrelevant. This place exists between time's threads."
They moved cautiously through the suspended wreckage, stepping over cobbled streets that rippled like water. Kael sensed it—the air pulling at him like an undertow, not of gravity, but of memory. Past. Future. Possibility.
Then they saw her.
A figure in silver-grey robes stood at the center of an archway made of drifting stone and root-like veins of light. Her hair was dark, eyes impossibly ancient. Her presence silenced the storm.
"I've been waiting," she said, gaze locked onto Kael. "The Loom called you."
"Who are you?" Kael asked.
"Seren," she said simply. "Once a keeper. Now… a remnant. The Loom frays, and I remain."
As Kael stepped closer, the scenery shimmered. In an instant, he stood alone in a vast chamber where strands of golden thread stretched across infinity. They twisted, knotted, and vibrated in rhythms he felt in his soul.
He saw himself—past, present, possible futures—all tangled within the Loom.
A dark thread pulsed nearby, poisoned and thrashing, devouring others.
Kael reached out.
The moment his fingers touched the golden line, the Loom shuddered. Pain lanced through him. Visions flashed:
A continent burning under a crimson sky. Zereth's mask cracked in half. Lira screaming as shadow overtook her form.
The vision snapped.
Kael staggered back into the distorted streets of Virelyss. Seren caught him.
"You touched the wound," she said. "The corruption you fight isn't born of this world alone."
Zereth appeared beside them, eyes sharp. "Wraiths incoming."
The shadows lengthened. Six spectral figures emerged, gliding soundlessly across fractured stone.
Seren raised her hand. Light bloomed—cold and lunar—but the wraiths kept coming.
"We must go!" Lira shouted, eyes wide as half their group vanished in a blink, consumed by a rift of light and dust.
Kael looked to Seren. "Can you get us out?"
She nodded grimly. "But not all at once. The tear widens."
Kael's heart pounded. Behind the veil of reality, something moved.
Seren's parting words echoed in his mind as the spell began to surge:
"You have seen the Loom, Kael. You know what waits at its unraveling. Choose carefully which threads you follow—some are already claimed."
With a final pulse of magic, the remnants of Virelyss twisted and folded. The group fell into light, scattered by fate's merciless hand.