Nowhere
No time.No fate.No self.
Kale drifted in the hollow between threads — the Deathspace, where things that should not exist were unraveled and discarded.
His body was gone.His soul was unstitching.But some part of him refused to vanish.
Reflections of Failure
Around him floated shattered versions of himself.
One Kale screamed in chains of silver — a puppet that never rebelled.Another wept as he became a weapon of the Loom, executioner of the innocent.One simply knelt in the dark, blood on his hands, whispering,
"I never deserved to survive."
"They're you," said a voice, soft as falling ash. "Fragments that accepted fate."
Azrael emerged from the void, wings folded like broken blades.
"But you didn't die. Not really."
The Offer
"Why?" Kale rasped, voice made of thought and ruin. "She killed me. My thread was cut."
Azrael nodded.
"So let's rewrite you."
The void pulsed. A single thread — black, pulsing, singing in reverse — curled around Kale's soul. It didn't belong to the Loom.
It never belonged anywhere.
"This is a thread that should not exist," Azrael said."It is rebellion made manifest. I saved it for you."
Kale stared at it. The thread pulsed in his presence. It offered power, but not for free.
"What does it cost?"
"Your innocence. Your anchor to what was.""You'll become the Contradiction — a creature of paradox, ungraspable by fate or law."
"You'll never be human again."
Decision
Kale thought of Vael.
Of the way she moved before time. The way his life ended in a blink.
Of how she didn't kill him out of rage.
She corrected him.
And some part of him… burned at that.
"I accept."
He gripped the black thread.
It screamed.
So did he.
Becoming
The thread unraveled inside him — not stitching a new form, but twisting existence around his broken soul.
Kale's eyes became voids that bled reversed light. His voice cracked reality when he spoke.
His body reformed not through healing — but through refusal.
The Loom tried to reject him again.
It failed.
Return
In the real world, Vael turned to leave the ruined sanctum.
The job was done. Correction complete. Thread cut.
She took one step.
Then froze.
The air behind her bent.
Her thread — flawless gold — quivered.
Something re-entered the pattern. Something that had been deleted.
Behind her, the severed head of Kale floated in the air — eyes open.
He smiled.
And whispered:
"Try again."
The head ignited in black fire — and a new body stepped out from it.
End of Chapter 9