Kael collapsed in the ruins of an abandoned mill, blood soaking through his ribs. Every breath felt like broken glass.
He stitched the wound with regret—literally. The sixth thread, fraying from his failed theft of Veyna's bond, had left splinters inside his lungs. He drew from the fifth thread to anchor the pain, muttering old equations from lives long spent.
It worked.
Barely.
As the sun rose, Kael pushed himself upright.
He needed more than bindings now. The threads gave him leverage, but his body—his mind—was unraveling faster than he could compensate. The seventh binding would have to be precise.
More than that—it would have to be earned.
Not stolen.
That meant turning to something older than the Loom.
The Whisper Root.
A parasitic seed rumored to grow only beneath failed Threads—beneath places where lives had collapsed inward. In life twenty-five, Kael had unearthed one accidentally while burying his own corpse. In life thirty-seven, he'd watched a Seer use it to rewrite three futures with a single spoken phrase.
Dangerous. Cursed.
But powerful.
He found the right soil by dusk.
A sunken glade, where a woman named Mira had once tried to save her sister—and failed. The glade remembered. Even now, Kael could feel the emotional resonance soaked into the roots.
He dug with his hands.
Hours passed.
And then, his fingers brushed it.
A pale, thorny sprout, cold and pulsing with ancestral grief. The Whisper Root.
Kael bit his thumb and fed it blood.
The root curled, then opened like a mouth. Not teeth. No. But a voice poured from it—his own voice, speaking in a tone he hadn't used in decades.
"You will fail."
Kael didn't flinch.
He leaned closer. "What thread do I need to bind her?"
The root paused. Then spoke.
"You must weave your own. Break seven fates. Speak no lies. Bleed thrice beneath the same moon. And then... she will remember you."
Veyna. She hadn't remembered him yet.
But she would.
Kael burned the root after it spoke. No witnesses. Not even to prophecy