Kael stood in a silence deeper than any he had known.
No hum of power.
No pulse of the Loom.
No whisper of time.
He blinked—and realized he hadn't moved. Because movement required a world, and this place... had none.
He was in a version of existence where he had never been born. A version shaped by absence, not presence.
The light in his hands flickered, trying to recall its form. His armor dimmed to shadows. Even his memories fought to remain coherent, as if the threads that wove his story were fraying strand by strand.
> What am I without my story?
"Kael?"
A voice. Faint. Familiar.
He turned and saw Lyra, but not as he remembered her. This version wore mortal robes, her eyes dull with grief. Her lips didn't carry strength, only silence. She walked through him like mist.
She didn't see him.
In this world, he never saved her from the Abyss. He never rose to stand between the threads and the void. Without him, she had suffered in silence, forgotten by fate.
A shiver coursed through Kael's being.
"Is this your doing?" he growled into the dark.
Nyros's voice coiled around him like smoke.
> "No, Kael. This is your undoing."
> "You were a divine error. A story forced into a tale already told. I'm simply restoring the original script—without you."
Kael clenched his fists. "You speak of stories. But you forget—characters change stories."
He looked again at Lyra. Though this version of her was broken, her spirit hadn't fully dimmed. Beneath her pain, he sensed something else: a flicker of what could have been.
Of what still could be.
"I exist," Kael said aloud, voice echoing into the void. "Not because the story welcomed me but because I fought to belong in it."
Golden strands sparked around his feet.
Faint at first.
Then brighter.
He took a step forward and the void pushed back, roaring with windless pressure. Reality resisted. But Kael pushed harder.
With each step, memories returned: the war of the Weavers. The forging of the Celestial Core. Lyra's laugh. Valen's reckless grins. Tyrnex's grim loyalty.
"I am the God of Woven Light," Kael declared, summoning his blade once more. "You may erase my name but not the marks I've left on others."
The blade ignited.
Reality trembled.
Then—
He split the void.
A brilliant line of celestial energy tore through the nothingness, revealing threads tangled, denied, buried, but still present.
Kael grabbed hold.
And with all the strength of the rewritten, the rejected, the reborn—he rewove himself back into the story.
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