The Hollowed sky bled a copper glow, as if the very heavens remembered fire. Ahri stood at the edge of a crumbled stone causeway, her lantern casting long shadows against walls scarred with the residue of burned threads. The air smelled faintly of ash and something older—like parchment left too long in dampness, memories disintegrating into soot.
Jin trailed a few steps behind, silent, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. She could sense his unease though he hid it well. His spirit form seemed more translucent here, the flicker of his outline shuddering whenever the ash-winds carried a whisper through the broken columns.
"This place," Ahri murmured, crouching to touch the blackened floor. Her fingers tingled as they brushed remnants of what might once have been threadwork. "It burned once. Long ago."
Mino, the Threadsmith, placed a hand on the nearest pillar. His knuckles whitened as his touch stirred faint sparks across the surface, the residue of something forged and destroyed in the same breath. "Not just threadwork. The First Weave," he said softly. "The Loom itself began here."
Ahri's throat tightened. She glanced at Jin, but his eyes—if they could be called eyes—were fixed on the horizon, avoiding hers. The tension between them had grown ever since the visions of his shadow had surfaced. Now, in this ruin of origin, it pressed heavier.
Aya, quiet until now, whispered, "So much loss… It feels familiar." Her lantern glowed faintly violet, reflecting her fractured memories of the Hollowed Realm.
Baek Hyun-tae's voice seemed to echo from memory rather than air: Every weave is born from fire, Ahri. But it is the fire that consumes its own threads that you must fear.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Ahri tightened her grip on her lantern and rose. "Then we walk carefully. Whatever burned this place may not be gone."
And with that, they stepped deeper into the ashes of the First Thread.