The first of them leapt, its body a smear of broken threads and ash that tried to form a face but failed, leaving only a hollow where the eyes should have been. Jin's blade cleaved it in two, but instead of dying, the pieces dragged themselves back together, stitching with frantic desperation.
"They're not alive," Jin snarled, cutting again. "They're hunger made flesh."
Ahri stepped forward. The creatures hesitated—not at Jin, but at her. They trembled like moths before flame, threads quivering as if sensing recognition.
One lurched toward her, not to strike, but to press its unraveling chest against her hand. And for a moment, Ahri felt its plea. Not in words, but in the ache of unfinished memory. This shape had once belonged to someone. A fragment torn free.
"Hyun-tae," she whispered. She didn't know why the name surfaced, only that it fit.
The shape writhed, as if in agony, then burst apart into dust.
The others screamed without mouths.
Jin pulled her back, eyes burning. "Don't let them touch you. They'll take what's left of you."
But Ahri couldn't look away. Each shape, each trembling fragment, felt like a person undone—memories stripped of their vessels. Were these the echoes of those the Loom had consumed? Or of those whose threads had been cut before their time?
They are the tapestry's scars, the Voice murmured. The wound cannot forget what it devoured.
Ahri's hand trembled. "Then they're not enemies. They're what we left behind."
The largest shape shrieked, its body fracturing into a hundred twitching limbs. Jin braced himself, but Ahri stepped forward first.
"Enough," she said. And the Loom obeyed.
The shapes froze, trembling.
Ahri raised her hand, though she no longer held the Needle. Instead, she drew from her own thread—the pulse within her chest—and cast it outward. A sliver of herself, shimmering, fragile.
The shapes surged toward it. Not in hunger, but in desperate need. They clung to it, fusing, knitting together into something whole.
For a moment, the chamber filled with silence. And then, standing before her, was one figure. Human.
It looked at her with hollow eyes that slowly, painfully filled with light.
"Ahri…" it whispered, in a voice she recognized.
Baek Hyun-tae.