The Loom's chamber breathed like a wound that had never healed—slow, shuddering inhalations that seemed to drag the air through centuries of dust and whispered grief. Ahri stood at its heart, her fingers trembling inches above the golden weave, its strands trembling as if they could feel her hesitation.
Jin lingered near the archway, his shadow stretched unnaturally far, clinging to the wall like an accusation. He didn't speak, but Ahri felt him—the weight of his gaze, the way his silence pressed against her skin. The Voice in the Loom had not faded. Its last words still clung to her like a curse: You can mend the tear… but the thread will bleed.
Before her, the Needle appeared. Not a tool in the ordinary sense, but a thing of pure intention. It hung in the air, weightless, its shaft formed of black steel that caught no light, its point so sharp it seemed to pierce thought itself. She reached for it, but the moment her fingertips brushed the metal, memory surged—unwanted, unstoppable.
Baek Hyun-tae's final breath.Aya's trembling hands when she spoke of the Hollowed Realm.The day Ahri's mother's voice fell silent forever.
Each image did not simply return; it pierced her. She understood now—the Needle's power was not to stitch threads together, but to draw them through pain. Every repair left a scar. Every act of mending demanded a price from the mender.
"Don't," Jin finally said, his voice low and edged. "Once you begin, you don't come back the same."
Ahri turned to him, the Needle still hovering between them. "And if I don't? The tear widens. The Hollowed Realm spreads. You've seen it."
Jin's shadow writhed. "You think I don't know? But the Loom's wounds aren't just in the fabric of the world. They're in you. And that Needle—" he stepped closer, eyes dark—"doesn't just sew cloth."
The chamber dimmed, as if the Loom itself was listening. Ahri felt the truth settle in her chest like a stone: to repair the wound in the Loom, she would have to offer part of herself to it. Not in the abstract. Not in some distant, philosophical sense. The Needle would take what it needed.
She thought of her visions, her connection to threads, the way she could see lives as woven patterns. Would that be the cost? The very sight that had defined her?
The Needle pulsed faintly, as if sensing her doubt.
Ahri stepped forward. "If I lose what I am… then I lose it. But I won't stand here while the wound grows."
And with that, she took the Needle in hand.
The world snapped.
The golden weave shivered violently. Strands pulled taut, groaning like rope under strain. Her hand moved without her willing it, plunging the Needle into the rent in the Loom. Light bled out, but it was not warm—it was cold, deep, endless. The tear screamed. The sound was not in her ears but in her bones.
And then she felt it: the first thread she would sacrifice. A memory, fragile but luminous—the sound of her mother humming as she worked by lamplight. It was pulled from her, unraveling, the edges fraying until the melody was gone. She gasped, but the Needle did not stop.
Jin moved toward her, but a force like a gale threw him back.
"Ahri!" he shouted, but her grip only tightened.
The wound in the Loom closed one stitch at a time, each one pulling something from her: the smell of rain on her childhood street, the exact hue of her father's eyes, the warmth of a friend's hand in winter.
By the time the final stitch was made, Ahri was on her knees. The Loom lay silent, the tear gone. The Needle hovered above her palm for a moment, then dissolved into black dust.
Jin knelt beside her, his shadow settling around them both. "What did it take?" he asked quietly.
Ahri stared at the weave. "I… don't know," she said. And that was the worst of it—she could feel the absences but not name them. Parts of her had been erased, leaving only the ache where they had been.
The Loom pulsed once, almost in gratitude.
But in its depths, something stirred.