They told her the door would appear in silence.
Not in thunder. Not in light.
Just silence — the kind that made your own heartbeat sound offensive.
So when the world around her dimmed to breathless hush, Elara knew.
She was being summoned.
The others were still asleep in the ruins of the Virellian Temple. Cassian's form was curled beside the fire, his brow furrowed even in dreams. Lyra murmured in her sleep, blade resting across her chest. Kaelen sat upright against a broken pillar, eyes half-closed but always watching.
None stirred when she stood.
None heard the silence take her.
The Labyrinth waited.
It wasn't a place, not really.
More a wound in reality. A knot of memory and forgotten prophecy woven by the First Weaver — the celestial who spun the very laws of time, love, and consequence.
To enter was to face yourself.
All versions.
Even the ones that never were.
Elara stood at the threshold.
The door was stitched from starlight and shadow, pulsing with a rhythm older than breath. She laid her palm upon it. The glyph on her chest flared in answer.
The door unspooled.
She stepped through.
The world collapsed into thread.
Not darkness, not light — just texture. Emotion turned tangible. Thought made color.
The floor beneath her was woven from songs never sung. The walls shifted with images: herself as a child, lost in a library of locked tomes… herself older, kneeling by her father's bed… herself, hand in Cassian's, under falling meteors.
And others.
Versions of her that never existed.
One wore a crown.
One held a blade stained red.
One sat alone, surrounded by ash.
Elara turned away.
She walked, and the Labyrinth walked with her.
Every corridor whispered. Every turn peeled back a memory.
She found herself before a mirror.
But it did not reflect her.
It reflected Cassian — if she had never met him.
He stood atop a mountain of corpses, face pale with loss, eyes dead. The moons above him had shattered.
"Elara Thorne," he whispered through the mirror. "You saved me. And doomed me."
She reached out—
—and the glass rippled, then dissolved.
She fell.
Or rose.
Or became.
Hard to say in a place where direction was emotion.
She landed in a garden.
It looked like Earth. Her Earth.
She knew this place: the garden behind her grandmother's cottage. Daisies, worn swings, the rustle of bee-laced lavender.
But there was someone there.
A woman.
Sitting with her back to Elara.
Silver hair braided into a crown. Hands weaving a tapestry that glowed.
"Elara," the woman said without turning. "You're late."
Elara stepped closer. "You're the First Weaver."
"Yes. And no. I am you, before. I am the thread you were meant to be, had the stars not broken."
Elara's throat tightened. "Why am I here?"
"To choose."
The First Weaver rose and gestured.
Before Elara bloomed three threads:
One gold — pulsing with light, stability, and the promise of peace.
One black — volatile, humming with destruction, temptation, raw power.
And one silver — flickering between the two, unstable, undefined.
"This is the weave of what comes next," the Weaver said.
"One grants you dominion, but alone."
"One grants you love, but at a terrible cost."
"One grants you neither — but may save the worlds."
Elara stared.
"Which is real?"
"All of them."
"Which is true?"
"Only the choice."
Her hands trembled as she reached.
She didn't choose gold.
She didn't choose black.
She chose silver.
The Labyrinth exploded into light.
When Elara opened her eyes, she was on her knees in the temple ruins.
Cassian was beside her, holding her.
Her cheeks were wet.
"Where did you go?" he asked, voice shaking.
She looked at him — really looked.
And smiled through her tears.
"To a place where I almost wasn't me."
That night, as the wind stirred ancient banners and the stars hummed louder than ever before, Elara felt the silver thread pulse beneath her skin.
She didn't know what it would cost.
Only that she had chosen it.
And that meant everything.