The Loom's Heart
There were places even the stars dared not look upon.
And beneath the sacred Loom—buried in the roots of the world—lay one such place.
Amira, Kelu, and Morya descended the spiral beneath the shrine in silence. No torches. No magic. Only the soft, pulsing light from the Ninth Chord wound around Amira's wrist like a living thread.
"This isn't just under the earth," Morya said softly. "This is under memory."
Indeed, the deeper they went, the more the walls pulsed—not with life, but recollection. Faces blinked from the stone—old kings, long-dead weavers, children whose songs were buried before they were born.
And in the center of the cavern below, they found it.
A tree made of bone and silver-veined wood, with roots that whispered names in every forgotten tongue.
The Woundtree.
The first Loom's heart.
The beginning and the end of all weaving.
The Weeping Root
Beneath the tree, knelt a figure—frail, veiled in moth-wing robes, her hands held out like she was cradling something that no longer existed.
It was Serai's sister, believed lost in the Skyfall War.
Her name: Veora.
And she whispered, "You shouldn't have come. It dreams still."
Amira stepped forward. "What dreams?"
"The Root," Veora said without looking up. "It holds the memory of the first betrayal. Before the Architects. Before the Nine Strings. Before even the moon."
Morya shivered. "That can't be. There was no 'before the Nine Strings.'"
Veora looked up.
Her eyes were blind, but her voice was clear:
"Then how do you explain the Tenth String?"
The Forgotten String
Amira felt it.
A resonance just below consciousness. A vibration that wasn't light or sound, but... silence made real. An anti-note.
The Tenth String.
It was older than the Loom, never played, never sung. It was the chord that unmade.
And beneath the Woundtree, it began to stir.
Kelu's blade began to warp. Morya's shadow detached from her body. Even Veora began to fade, whispering, "You've awakened the wound beneath the world."
And then it spoke.
A voice, like an echo from the birth of the stars. Neither male nor female. Neither living nor dead.
"I remember the First Music.
I remember when the stars betrayed me.
I remember you, Amira."
The roots split open.
And from the heart of the Woundtree rose a being draped in robes of echo and ash—
The Unstrung One.
The Tenth.
The Forgotten God.
Amira stared into its face—a face with no mouth, only strings stretched across its skin like the silent harp of a dead world.
Kelu raised his blade. Morya stepped into the circle. But Amira... she lowered her harp and said:
"If you remember me, then tell me—was I your weaver... or your wound?"
The Unstrung One did not answer.
It simply reached toward her—
And the Ninth Chord shattered.