Sleep eluded her, and so Ahri wandered the lower corridors of the temple ruins where the Loom Chamber had been bound. The walls smelled of damp stone and ink, remnants of wards painted centuries ago.
She had thought herself alone until a voice, hoarse and resonant, echoed down the passage.
"You search for answers where none remain."
Her body tensed. A figure stepped from the shadows: cloaked, tall, with threads dangling loosely from his sleeves as though they bled from his very body. His eyes glimmered faintly, carrying the weariness of one who had gazed too long into the Loom.
"I've seen you before," Ahri said, her voice steady despite her pounding heart.
"Yes," the man replied. "You've seen me in the weave, though never whole. I am the Weaver's Shadow—the failure your Elder never spoke of."
Jin materialized instantly, his energy bristling. "You should not be here."
The Shadow's gaze flicked to him, dismissive. "And yet I am. Because the Loom allows it. Because the silence has opened space for what was once severed."
Ahri swallowed hard. "What do you want?"
The man's eyes fixed on her. "Not want. Offer. You believe yourself the Threadseer, but your path is bound by choice, not title. You can weave—or you can cut."
He extended a hand. Threads spilled from his palm like unraveling rope, black and alive. "If you wish to silence the Loom's torment, I will teach you how to unmake its song entirely."
The chamber seemed to constrict around them, as if the Loom itself recoiled. Jin's voice was sharp. "Don't listen. He is a fracture, nothing more."
But Ahri's eyes lingered on the hand offered to her. Part of her recoiled in disgust, yet another part whispered of relief—an end to the burden, an end to the silence.
The Weaver's Shadow smiled faintly, as though reading her conflict. "The first cut is always the hardest. But it is also the most freeing."