The threads coiled tighter.Not suffocating — syncing. The core's pulse thudded through Arielle's chest, so deep and steady it almost drowned out her thoughts. Almost.
Selene was still holding her arm, their silver glow dimmed to a whisper, their stitches fraying visibly with every word they forced out. "Arielle… step away. I can hold you together. We'll find another way. Please — don't let this thing hollow you."
Draven didn't touch her, didn't even move closer, but his presence pressed against the air like a second gravity. "And what? Let the Conclave cage her in the Spire? Make her bleed until there's nothing left? She's standing in front of the only thing that can make her untouchable, and you want her to walk away?"
The core's glow brightened, threads rising in slow spirals like luminous smoke. The hum beneath Arielle's skin was no longer a tremor — it was a drumbeat, steady, expectant. She could feel the city through it now. The streets above trembling. The Wardens marshalling in confusion as their sigils sputtered and died. The Spire itself, its controlled lattice flickering like a dying star.
Every pulse she gave back to the core spread outward in waves.
She realized, with a clarity sharp enough to sting, that whatever choice she made wouldn't just decide her future. It would decide Starlight City's.
The first surge of power came without warning.Not violent, not wild — but vast. The core's threads poured through her, weaving around her ribs, her spine, her skull. Her body wasn't breaking under it this time. It was… absorbing it, bending rather than shattering, reshaping to hold what no Anchor had ever been meant to hold.
And in that flood of resonance came visions again — not of herself, but of the city.
The Spire cracking, its white-thread lattice snapping one strand at a time as she pulled the tether's wild roots into herself. Wardens dropping their sigils in shock as the Conclave's entire grid went dark. Citizens staring skyward as violet light replaced the Spire's sterile white glow.
Power. Liberation.
But another vision bled over it — streets buckling, whole districts sinking as the wild threads bucked without the Spire's control. Wards failing. Homes collapsing into the chasms left by a weave no longer balanced. The hum turning from steady to frantic as the city became not hers, not the Conclave's… but a body without a pulse.
Arielle opened her eyes. The core was still before her, luminous and endless, its threads brushing her palms like it had all the time in the world. Waiting.
Selene's voice was quieter now, raw, almost pleading. "If you do this, you don't come back. Not as yourself. Not to me."
Draven's tone softened, but his eyes glinted with something sharp. "Or you stop letting this city decide what you're allowed to be. You become what holds it together. And no Conclave, no Keeper, no Spire will ever threaten you again."
Arielle's hands trembled. The hum steadied, almost soothing now, as if the core itself were saying: decide.
She drew one long, steady breath. And then she spoke.
"I won't be their core. And I won't burn as someone else's Anchor."
The threads around her tightened… and then snapped outward, bursting from her wrists in a shockwave that shook the cavern. The core shuddered, the glow dimming for a heartbeat as she pulled the wild threads away from its center, not into herself, not into the Spire's lattice, but into a spiral of her own making.
The hum spiked — chaotic, deafening — as the core reacted. The cavern walls trembled, cracks racing up the glowing veins. Selene stumbled back, shielding their eyes as silver sparks flared.
Draven's calm broke for the first time, his coat whipping as he threw up a shield of violet constructs. "What are you doing?"
Arielle's voice was steady despite the chaos. "Something neither of you wanted. I'm not binding myself to the Spire. Or to this thing. I'm taking the tether with me."
The spiral of threads tightened around her, a cyclone of silver and violet light. The core pulsed harder, as if resisting — or testing — her resolve. Each surge threatened to tear her apart, but the wild resonance inside her no longer felt like a burden. It felt like a weapon.
The first pulse hit Starlight City above like a silent quake.Lights went dark across half the skyline. The Spire's controlled glow flickered and dimmed. The Conclave's Wardens froze mid-step as their sigils failed, their connections to the lattice severed. The streets didn't collapse — not yet — but every foundation trembled as the weave shifted, redirected, no longer anchored to the Spire or the core beneath the city.
It was anchored to her.
The cavern erupted in violet light as the core's glow fractured, shards of pure weave spinning outward before dissolving into the spiral that encased Arielle. For a moment, everything was still — no hum, no tremor, no sound but her own heartbeat.
And then the tether's pulse returned, not beneath her feet but inside her chest.
Slow. Steady. Hers.
When the light faded, Arielle stood alone at the center of the cavern.The core was gone, its luminous knot unraveled, its veins retreating into the dark walls like roots withdrawing into the soil. Only a faint glow lingered beneath her skin, the threads around her wrists and collarbone weaving themselves into faint, living sigils.
Selene stumbled forward, their glow a mere flicker. Their eyes, though, burned bright as they searched her face. "Arielle… what did you do?"
Draven's expression was unreadable. For the first time, his composure felt brittle, stretched thin. "You didn't merge with the core. You… stole it. Do you understand what that means? The Conclave will see you as a rogue nexus. They'll burn the city to salt before they let that stand."
Arielle exhaled, the hum in her chest calm now, almost quiet. "Then let them come."
She looked up, toward the trembling streets far above, where the Spire's glow flickered like a dying beacon.
"I'm done surviving their way. The city doesn't need a Spire anymore. It doesn't need their lattice. If the tether needs a pulse, it has mine now. And if they want to cut me out of it—"
The faint glow around her wrists flared, silver and violet threads sparking like lightning.
"—they'll have to cut through the whole weave to do it."