The Loom had not sung in days.
Ahri felt it each morning when her eyes opened: that yawning absence where once the threads hummed faintly at the edge of her perception. It was not silence as mortals knew it. It was a silence so complete it pressed down on her chest, a void where resonance should have been.
The temple grounds lay quiet too. Their company had grown smaller, worn thin by loss, and the few who remained kept their conversations muted, as though raising their voices might shatter what little remained of balance. Jin sat across from her by the cold fire pit, sharpening his blade with steady, deliberate strokes. Yet Ahri noticed—as she always did—that the shadow of his movements did not quite match his own.
"Another night without dreams?" Jin asked, his voice carrying more gravel than usual.
She nodded. "Only fragments. Threads that refuse to tie themselves together."
Jin's gaze lingered on her, sharp but unreadable. "Maybe that's the point. Maybe we're meant to walk without a map for a while."
Ahri wanted to believe him. Yet the Loom's stillness was not merely absence — it was a warning. Threads that once shimmered now drifted loose, like strands of silk dissolving in water. She had seen, in fleeting visions, entire villages waking to find their histories erased. Names forgotten. Family bonds severed as though they had never been.
When Baek Hyun-tae died, she thought she had understood what it meant for fate to fray. But this was something else. This was the Loom refusing to weave.
They set out at dusk. The air was brittle, as though each breath might snap against their lungs. Aya walked a few steps behind, the lantern on her belt casting a wavering glow that seemed too fragile to hold back the dark.
"Where are we even going?" Aya murmured. "If the Loom has fallen silent, how do we know what lies ahead?"
Ahri did not answer immediately. She touched the golden thread that coiled faintly at her wrist, its glow weaker than she had ever seen it.
"We're going," she said at last, "to find the knot."
Aya frowned. "The knot?"
"The Loom may be silent," Ahri explained, "but silence doesn't mean absence. When a song halts mid-verse, the echo lingers. Somewhere, a knot holds what the Loom refuses to speak. If we can find it, perhaps we can hear what is hidden."
Jin snorted. "Or unravel everything that's left."
"Perhaps both," Ahri admitted.
That night, as they camped at the edge of a forest whose trees shimmered faintly like glass under moonlight, Ahri dreamed again.
In the dream, she stood before a vast tapestry suspended over an abyss. Its threads were taut, gleaming with impossible colors. But in its center pulsed a knot of darkness, a tangled snarl that swallowed every hue. Voices whispered from within it, not one voice but many, overlapping and contradicting. Some pleaded. Others condemned.
She reached for it — and it pulsed as though alive. Her hand recoiled, burning, as though the knot had bitten her.
When she woke, the mark remained: a faint scorch along her palm, shaped like an eye.
Jin noticed it first. He leaned over the firelight, frowning. "What is that?"
Ahri flexed her hand, hiding the pain behind her composure. "The knot found me."
For the first time in days, Jin's shadow flickered apart from his body, as though it, too, had heard the words.
Aya's lantern dimmed, its flame shuddering. "Then we're already entangled," she whispered.
Ahri stared into the silence of the night, feeling the Loom's absence press heavier than ever.
"No," she said quietly. "The Loom may be silent, but something else has begun to speak."