The cold settled into their bones days before the snow began to fall.
They'd crossed into the Frostmarch, an untamed expanse of frozen peaks and endless tundra beyond the maps of the old world. The land was older than nations, untouched by the leyline wars or the Harrower's reach. Even Lysandra's sigils offered little insight here—no ancient markers, no buried glyphs. Just wind, ice, and the silence of things that had slept too long.
Elara adjusted her cloak as a flurry of powder drifted across their camp. Her breath fogged the air, but the flame in her chest gave her just enough warmth to bear it.
Maeron stoked the campfire. "This cold feels *wrong*. Not natural."
Ryssa glanced up from where she was sharpening her sword. "Cold is cold."
"No," Aelis murmured, her voice distant. "This is the breath of something dreaming."
They all paused.
Kael stirred the stewpot. "You've been speaking in riddles more often."
Aelis didn't answer at first. Then: "That's because riddles are the only language the wind speaks here."
Elara felt it too—that presence under the ice. Not malevolent, not benevolent. Just *old*. Watching. Listening.
"We're getting close," she said.
***
The first structure emerged two days later, half-buried in a glacial cliff: a shard of obsidian stone, carved with looping runes no one recognized. The circle gathered around it, brushing off frost and snow.
"It's not Keeper," Lysandra said, frowning. "Not Dauthari either. It predates both."
Ryssa traced a finger over the script. "Is it a warning?"
"Or a memory," Elara offered.
Aelis stepped closer and touched the stone. Her eyes rolled white.
"Elara," she whispered in a voice not her own. "You walk the path of the Woven Flame. But there is another. The Thread That Waits. The Frost That Binds."
Elara caught her before she collapsed.
"Aelis!" Kael knelt beside them, checking her pulse.
She stirred a moment later, groaning. "Ow."
"You were possessed," Maeron said.
"Not possessed. *Tuned*," she corrected. "The stone... it's a tether. A remnant."
"To what?" Elara asked.
"To the one who taught fire how to feel."
They all stared.
***
They made camp farther from the stone that night.
Elara sat beside the fire, writing in her journal while the others slept. Her quill scratched slowly across the page.
> "The Thread That Waits." The phrase chills me more than the wind. It's not an enemy—not like the Harrower. But it is power. Vast. Wound in silence.
A crack sounded in the distance. Not a tree. Not thunder.
*Ice.*
She stood, following the noise down a slope where frost glazed the rocks like varnish. There, at the edge of a frozen lake, the ground had split open. A cavern yawned beneath it, warm air curling out into the cold night.
And in the center of that warmth—a light.
Faint. Flickering.
A flame that burned blue.
She stepped closer, drawn to it as if by instinct.
"Elara!" Kael's voice behind her, echoing. "What are you doing?!"
She looked back, but the wind drowned his words.
The flame called.
Elara took one step closer—
And fell.
***
The drop wasn't far, but it knocked the air from her lungs. She rolled, coughing, snow falling from above like stars.
"Elara!" Kael's voice reached again, louder. Then a rope.
She waved him off. "I'm okay!"
She turned.
And gasped.
The cavern wasn't natural. Its walls were smooth, formed of strange blue crystal, glowing faintly. Ice didn't form on these surfaces. In the center, on a raised pedestal, sat a figure—frozen mid-motion.
A woman, clad in robes of woven ice and silver thread. Her skin was pale blue, lips parted as if whispering. Hands extended as if offering something unseen.
And in her chest burned a crystal flame—blue, but warm.
Elara approached reverently.
"What are you?" she whispered.
Her own flame pulsed in answer.
The blue one echoed it.
She reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the woman's hand.
For a heartbeat—
—she was not in the cave.
She stood in a tower of light, surrounded by flame. Not red, not gold, but every color of the spectrum, spinning through glass pillars that sang as they moved. At the center of the room, the woman waited.
"You bear the Flame of Memory," she said. "But you seek the Thread of Meaning."
Elara swallowed. "Who are you?"
"I am what remains of *Fyrasha*, Keeper of the Last Thread. When the world broke, I wove a path through time. You have found the spindle."
Elara blinked. "The what?"
"Not all flames burn," Fyrasha said. "Some *bind*. Some connect. You will need them both."
Elara stepped forward. "For what?"
"To face what lies at the Loom's End."
***
She awoke with Kael shaking her gently.
"You were out for minutes," he said, helping her to her feet.
"I was speaking with her," Elara said, pointing at the frozen woman. "She's not dead. She's *woven*."
Kael looked wary. "You're speaking like Aelis now."
"Then maybe I'm finally listening."
***
Back at camp, Elara told them everything. About Fyrasha. About the Thread of Meaning. About the Loom's End.
Lysandra frowned. "I've read about the Loom only in whispers—myths buried in children's stories. A place where all fate converges. Where time and choice collapse."
"That's where we're heading," Elara said.
Ryssa looked grave. "To stop what?"
"Or start what comes next," Maeron murmured.
Tovan, seated on a rock, spoke for the first time that evening. "If she's right, and this 'Loom's End' is real, then we're not just cleaning up the last war. We're preparing for the next one."
They were silent for a long time.
Then Kael stood. "So let's be ready."
***
Over the next week, they unearthed more. The caverns were part of a buried complex—perhaps a temple, perhaps a sanctuary. They found murals depicting people of fire and frost, hands clasped over threads of colored flame. Not magic as weapon, but magic as bond.
Aelis called it the Forgotten Weave.
"It was the first alchemy," she said, touching a panel with reverence. "Before metals. Before symbols. The weaving of hearts."
Elara's journal grew thicker with notes.
She didn't understand it all.
But she felt it.
And slowly, she began to *see* the threads—in the way Kael paused before speaking, in how Lysandra's hands lingered on forgotten runes, in the tilt of Aelis's head as she listened to the air.
They were *woven* together.
Not by fate.
But by choice.
***
On the last day before they moved on, Elara returned to Fyrasha's chamber.
The blue flame still pulsed, steady.
"I don't know what you saw," Elara whispered. "Or why you chose this place. But thank you. For holding the thread until I could find it."
She placed her hand over her own heart, where the Light Sigil now shared space with something colder, quieter—a second flame, soft and steady.
A gift.
A promise.
She turned.
And stepped back into the snow.
***
They traveled east now, toward a valley Lysandra believed would open into the lost lands near Delnara's northern cliffs—where sea ice gave way to ancient basalt fields.
The wind howled behind them.
But it was no longer alone.
Threads followed in their wake.
Threads of fire and frost, of memory and meaning.
And though none of them said it aloud, they all felt it:
They were no longer just walking a path.
They were *weaving* one.