The sky was no longer blue.
It wasn't night either — not really.
When Elara and Cassian returned from the Loom, the world they re-entered was bathed in ash-gray twilight. The twin moons, once sisters in orbit, now hovered too close, their edges devouring each other in slow, celestial violence.
It wasn't supposed to happen this soon.
Lyra met them at the pass, breathless and bloodied, her usually meticulous braids fraying from what looked like battle.
"You're back," she rasped. "But we're out of time."
Elara's stomach sank. "How long were we gone?"
"Four days," Kaelen answered grimly, appearing from the shadow of a dying tree. "The Ashen Coil struck on the second."
Cassian narrowed his eyes. "Where?"
Lyra pointed toward the eastern horizon. "Everywhere."
In the city of Astralis, once the jewel of the eastern range, buildings had collapsed into themselves like melted wax. Fires moved backwards. Time stuttered. Survivors wandered, their eyes silvered, speaking in riddles that made your skin crawl.
The Ashen Coil had found the Heart Gate.
And worse — they'd opened it.
"We lost contact with the Moon Guard," Lyra said, leading them through a camp of refugees. "They tried to hold the perimeter, but the void bled through. Half of them vanished."
Cassian's jaw clenched. "And no one thought to close the gate?"
Kaelen gave a hollow laugh. "It doesn't close anymore. The binding glyphs broke when the moons crossed the third mark."
Elara glanced up. The eclipse was slow but constant. A shadow was consuming one moon while the other wept silver light like tears.
"We need to get to the Gate," she said. "If they've opened it—"
Lyra grabbed her wrist. "No. Not yet. Look."
She pulled back her coat.
There, carved into her collarbone, was a symbol Elara hadn't seen in full until now.
The inverted Eye of the Loom.
"You're marked too," Elara whispered.
Lyra nodded, grim. "I think we all were. The moment you bound your thread, something changed in the weave. I started seeing flashes — futures that might be. Or might not. We're tangled now, El. All of us."
Cassian placed a hand on Elara's shoulder. "Then we move forward. Together."
The Heart Gate was a gaping wound.
What had once been a sanctum of runes and crystal, guarded by the descendants of the first astronomers, was now a crater of pulsing void.
A single figure stood at the center.
Draped in ash-colored robes. Skin as pale as snowfall. Hair like unraveling thread.
Veyne.
No longer just a man.
Now... a vessel.
He turned as they approached, eyes empty. "You brought your thread into the fray," he said, voice echoing like broken glass. "How quaint."
Cassian stepped forward, blade unsheathed. "End this."
Veyne didn't blink. "End what? The illusion of order? The tyranny of the Loom? No. I will finish what the stars were too afraid to do."
Elara's voice cracked. "You're tearing the world apart."
"That was always the point."
Then the sky screamed.
Literally screamed.
The eclipse reached its climax, and for a single moment, every star blinked out.
Darkness surged from the Gate like a tide.
Kaelen raised his staff, Lyra her twin daggers. Cassian moved like lightning, but the void swallowed their efforts like sand through fingers.
Only Elara remained untouched.
The glyph on her chest began to burn — not with heat, but with memory.
The thread she'd bound.
The decision she'd made.
"I see you," Veyne whispered.
And then he struck.
The blow never landed.
Cassian stood between them, arm outstretched, the glyph glowing through his armor.
For the first time, Veyne faltered.
"You're bound," he said.
Cassian's eyes flared with violet light. "We are."
And then Elara understood.
It wasn't about power. It was about weaving.
The world wasn't a battlefield.
It was a loom.
And they had just become its newest Weavers.
With a shout, Elara raised her hand, thread flashing like a whip of starlight.
Cassian followed.
Together, they struck the void.
Not with force.
But with pattern.
Order.
Memory.
Love.
The thread unspooled from their joined glyphs, lacing through the wound in the world — and for a heartbeat, the Gate healed.
Just for a moment.
But it was enough.
Veyne staggered back, snarling. "You don't understand what you're binding!"
Cassian's voice was cold. "We don't have to. We only have to stop you."
The void shrank.
The stars returned.
The moons shuddered, but did not fall.
Elara collapsed, breath gone.
Cassian caught her.
Lyra and Kaelen limped over, eyes wide.
"You did it," Lyra said.
"No," Elara murmured. "We bought time."
Above them, the eclipse still loomed.
The final unraveling hadn't come.
But now they had a chance to rewrite it.
One thread at a time.