The sky above Ethelara darkened suddenly as if the twin suns themselves were being swallowed. A low rumble crept through the land, a warning felt in the bones of every living thing. Rin and the newly united Echoed erupted from the safety of Spirefall's labyrinthine streets just as a violent Concept Storm began to tear the fabric of reality apart.Time warped and fractured; gravity twitched erratically; colors bled and shifted. Faceless shadows flickered between twisted folds of space. The Thread pulsing within Rin screamed with a fierce urgency."Hold together!" Rin shouted to the group, his voice nearly lost in the chaos. Focused and desperate, he reached deep into his Thread's power, manipulating the very essence of "stability" itself to create a bubble of calm amid the storm.But each pulse of power thinned the fragile strand tethering him to his past. A sharp, aching crack echoed inside his mind as distant memories blurred and fell away. Names, faces, precious moments dissolved.Kaelin adjusted his gravity Thread to anchor the group's footing, Maela wove illusions to mask their presence, and Elira summoned radiant barriers of light. Together, their combined Threads pushed back the storm's roaring edges.For a long, stretching moment, reality itself seemed to hold its breath.Then the Concept Storm receded as swiftly as it came, leaving an eerie silence beneath a sky slowly regaining balance.Rin collapsed, breath ragged, haunted by the knowledge that the power to save Ethelara came at a terrible personal cost.But the battle against the Weaver and the unraveling universes had only begun.
