The core's glow filled the cavern like a rising tide.Each pulse sent tremors through the air, shaking loose dust from the veins that lined the walls. The threads spiraling out from the luminous knot brushed Arielle's arms, her face, the mark beneath her collarbone — cool, weightless, but thrumming with such raw resonance she swore her skin might split.
She didn't pull back.
The hum inside her wasn't fighting anymore. It had settled into the same rhythm as the core, a steady drumbeat that felt less like something alien and more like… her own heartbeat reflected back a thousandfold.
Selene's voice cut through, tight and frayed. "Arielle, don't. That's not a stabilizer. It's a feeder. Touch it, and it will make you part of itself. You'll disappear into the weave."
Draven stepped closer, his hand raised slightly, palm toward her, but not in warning — in invitation. "Or she becomes more than herself. Every Anchor dreams of harmony like this. Most die chasing it. You don't have to. You can take it and end the Conclave's leash over every soul tied to their Spires."
The core pulsed brighter, almost in answer. Threads wound upward, gentle coils of light, looping around Arielle's wrist, her waist, her shoulders. Not constricting. Not yet. Just… waiting.
She looked at Selene — silver light flickering like a candle guttering in a storm — and then at Draven, steady and unyielding, violet glow painting his face.
And then she reached forward.
The instant her fingers brushed the core, the world vanished.
Not in darkness — in light.
Every thread in the city, every pulse of the weave, flooded into her senses at once. Starlight City unfurled like a living map, its streets veins of energy, its people glowing nodes of resonance, each one tethered by invisible strands to the Spire, to the Conclave, to each other.
She saw the Conclave's network, a lattice of white-thread control anchored deep within the Spire. She saw the wild threads the Conclave had never managed to cut, running like hidden rivers beneath the streets. And deeper still, she saw the tether's true body — an ancient root system, vast and sprawling, not bound to the city but holding it up, its pulses keeping the lattice from collapsing under its own weight.
And she saw herself, a bright point of light at the center, the wild threads already coiling tighter around her, linking her pulse to the core. Her body, her mind, were no longer just hers. She could feel the entire weave responding — bending.
It felt… infinite. For a moment, the thought of what she could do with this power burned through her, intoxicating and terrifying all at once.
She could unmake the Conclave. Shatter the Spire and free every Anchor they controlled. She could weave new wards, new bonds, new laws for the city itself. She could make Starlight City hers, down to its bones.
But then the visions shifted.
She saw herself not as Arielle but as something else.
Her body dissolving into threads, her voice fading until all that remained was the hum, endless and impersonal. Her thoughts slowed, stretched, became one with the core's rhythm. She was no longer a person — no longer she — just a pulse in the weave, an unblinking heart that would beat for centuries.
Selene appeared in the vision, standing at the edge of the core, shouting, reaching for her — but Arielle could no longer hear their voice. Draven stood beside the core, hand resting on its surface, his face calm, almost reverent, as though this had always been the ending he wanted for her.
The image cracked, flickering, splitting into two paths:— One where she stayed Arielle, fragile but free, risking collapse and death as the Conclave hunted her to the end.— One where she became the core, untouchable, eternal… but gone.
The hum swelled, a deep, endless resonance that wasn't a voice but carried meaning all the same:
Choose. Anchor or core. Self or eternity.
Her breath came ragged as the vision dissolved. The cavern returned. The core pulsed before her, threads still twined around her limbs, waiting for her decision.
Selene was at her side now, their glow so faint it was nearly gone, voice hoarse but firm. "Arielle, don't let it take you. You're not a tether. You're not a Conclave construct. You're you. I'll keep you alive, even if it kills me. But you have to step back."
Draven's voice slid in like a whisper at the back of her skull. "Or you can stop running. Stop fraying. The core isn't taking you — it's offering you permanence. No more Conclave, no more bleeding Keepers, no more fear. You'd be beyond all of them."
The core's glow flared, threads tightening around her wrists like a heartbeat, waiting for her to finish what she'd started.
For a long moment, Arielle said nothing. The hum inside her and the core's pulse were one now, steady and calm despite the weight of the choice.
And then she drew a slow breath, her fingers curling tighter around the threads.