Ahri stood frozen, the distance between her hand and Rin's outstretched fingers barely a breath apart. Around them, the chamber moaned softly, as if straining beneath the weight of a decision that should never exist.
Her golden-violet thread writhed violently, recoiling from Rin's presence like it sensed a fundamental contradiction.
"He is unthreaded," the fox spirit's voice echoed, more sharply this time."Touch him, and you weave a story with no beginning. No end. A wound, not a path."
Rin's expression didn't change. There was no anger in his voice—only calm, eerie patience.
"I was not given a choice when I was unraveled," he said. "I only want what the Loom stole—existence."
"You're asking me to rewrite everything," Ahri whispered.
"I'm asking you to remember," Rin replied. "Remember what the Loom chose to forget. You've seen how it burns lives to light its path. You've felt the pull of the Severed. You know the stories that never got to speak."
Ahri's hand trembled.
"Sol told me fate isn't a prison," she said, "it's a record. Of those who lived, and tried, and chose."
Rin tilted his head. "And what about those who never had the chance?"
Silence.
Ahri turned inward.
She saw Jin, tending the temple gardens under moonlight.She saw the Elder, clutching a tea cup with shaking hands after another lesson ended in silence.She saw her mother, smiling gently through flame and storm.And she saw herself—thread-wrapped, dream-lost, standing between worlds.
Then she saw something else.
A loom—but not the Loom.
A crude version. Fragmented. Built of broken threads and hollow bones. At its heart, a thread of pure white.
Rin's fate, waiting to be written.
"You can shape it," the fox spirit said darkly."But it will shape you."
Ahri turned back toward Rin.
"If I reach out now… what happens?"
He didn't lie.
"You become the first stitch in a tapestry no one understands. Not the Loom. Not the Severed. Not even the fox."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Then why me?"
"Because you've already been both written and erased," Rin said. "Your fate has been pulled too many ways. That makes you the only one who might hold."
Ahri took a step back.
Not in fear.
In clarity.
"I will find a way to weave you into the story," she said. "But not like this. Not as a weapon. Not as a wound."
She raised her hand—and golden light erupted from her wrist, surrounding Rin in a web of memory and flame.
The threads didn't bind him.
They protected him.
Stalled him.
Even he looked surprised.
Ahri turned.
And left.
As she exited the chamber, the light dimmed behind her.
She didn't hear Rin's voice.
She heard the fox.
"You've postponed the unraveling," it whispered."But you've drawn a thread that does not belong. And now the Loom watches you… with eyes wide open."
Back on the path, Sol was waiting.
He looked at her closely—then nodded once.
"You made a choice?"
Ahri nodded.
"I didn't sever him. I didn't weave him."
She looked up at the Hollowed Realm's distorted sky.
"I just refused."