The Hollow grew still.
Not the peaceful stillness of sleep, but the brittle silence that comes before a great unraveling. Morya sat beneath the Loom Tree, its roots pulsing with the grief of a thousand forgotten names. Around her, even the Watchers seemed wary.
Only one trial remained.
"Are you ready?" Erielle asked quietly.
Morya didn't respond immediately. Her eyes were fixed on the sky above, where two stars had dimmed—and where a third now shimmered faintly, flickering.
"No," she said. "But I'll go anyway."
At dusk, the roots parted.
Not to a mirror. Not to a stone.
But to a stairway carved from ash and wind, descending into the earth. Each step was lined with threads—living, humming, whispering her name in broken syllables.
Morya descended alone.
The deeper she went, the darker the air became—not with absence, but with truth. The kind too ancient to write. The kind that bleeds into dreams.
She arrived in a cavern without edges. A place older than the Loom itself.
And there, standing at the center of a spiraled altar of thread and bone, was a woman.
She looked just like Morya.
But her eyes were hollow. Her hands were stained red.
"You came," the woman said.
"I always do," Morya replied.
This was not a memory. Not a fragment.
This was the origin—the part of herself buried so deeply it had been renamed as myth.
"Who are you?" Morya asked.
"The first thread you cut."
"I… don't remember."
"Because I am the thread you were never meant to hold."
The woman stepped forward, her face shifting: sometimes a mirror, sometimes her mother, sometimes the flame-eyed Weaver who first taught her to bend thread.
"The Loom didn't choose you," the woman said softly. "You took it. When you unspooled the soul of your dying sister to save your own life."
Morya staggered.
"That's not true."
"It is. The Loom is built on sacrifice—and yours was stolen."
Suddenly, the cavern lit with woven images of the past.
She saw her sister, Layen, small and bright-eyed, bleeding from the Thread Fever. She saw herself—desperate, trembling, placing her hands on Layen's chest.
Then came the moment no one ever spoke of:
She took her sister's lifethread.
Not to save her, but to escape death herself.
"This is the truth beneath all threads," the woman said. "You are not the chosen. You are the thief."
Morya dropped to her knees, overwhelmed.
"So what am I now?"
"That is the final question. Will you carry the truth—or bury it again?"
Silence.
Then Morya rose.
She reached into her own chest, pulled out the silver needle one last time, and pressed it to her heart.
"I will carry it."
"Even if it breaks you?"
"Especially then."
She sewed the truth into her skin—every shard, every shameful flicker. As the thread pierced her, blood mixed with light, and the Loom shivered above.
The false self vanished.
And in its place… she remained.
Whole. Unforgiven. But real.
Morya returned from the depths.
She stepped into the Hollow where all had gathered. Nima. Erielle. The Watchers. The children of the weavers.
She did not speak. She only raised her arms, and from her fingertips, new threads spun—clear, strong, honest.
The Loom flared.
The final star went dark.
Then dawn broke for the first time in a thousand years.