The realm shook.
Not like an earthquake—but like a truth being denied.
The sky roared as the thread-wrapped figure descended, its limbs stretching across the void like rivers of fate rerouted. Its voice wasn't sound—it was memory, weight, promise. It was everything that was ever meant to be.
"You are mine," it echoed through me. "My last echo. My final hand. Through you, I will weave again."
I screamed as pain lanced through my chest—not physical, but deeper, like my name was being unraveled from inside me. The mark on my arm flared—violet, gold, silver—all the colors of ancient magic clashing in one.
Kael rushed to my side, grabbing my shoulder. "Sera, stay with me! Don't let it rewrite you!"
But I could barely see him now. The entity loomed taller than the realm itself. I felt myself pulled toward it, like gravity, like guilt, like every what if I'd ever doubted.
Riven stood behind me, chanting something under his breath—old warding spells from the Whispered Tongue. His voice trembled, but he didn't stop.
"You're not some puppet!" he shouted. "You're not a thread. You're Sera. You rewrote fate once—you can do it again!"
I clenched my fists.
The air burned around me.
Memories surged—my parents' voices, the first time I kissed Kael, the sound of Riven's laughter, the pain of losing people, the joy of freeing them.
Desire, pure and real, rose from within me—not the kind the entity had manipulated for centuries, but the kind born of love, and pain, and choice.
"No," I whispered, then louder, "NO!"
The mark exploded with light, white and searing. The realm flattened under its pulse. The thread-being shrieked, folding in on itself. Every thread on its form snapped and fell like dying stars.
And then, silence.
I stood in the center of it all, gasping, sweating, shaking—but free.
Kael caught me before I fell.
Riven knelt beside us, eyes wide. "You didn't just resist it… You unwrote it."
"I didn't want to," I murmured. "But I had to."
Kael brushed a hand down my cheek. "What now?"
I looked around.
The world was blank now. A realm without fate. Without a pattern.
"…Now we write our own."
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