Silence tore itself apart.
Elara's strike ripped through the loom's core, and the world convulsed like a living thing. Chains exploded into dust. Faces shattered into sparks. The great heart of silence cracked open, spilling not darkness but a flood of white fire.
Elara and Tomas were hurled into it, weightless, tumbling through a storm of unstitched reality. There was no sky, no ground, only memory and ruin, whirling around them like broken glass.
She clung to him with both arms, pressing him to her chest as his body convulsed. Blood bubbled at his lips, his eyes half-shut.
"Elara…" His voice was a whisper she could barely hear above the collapsing void. "Did… we do it?"
She wanted to answer yes. But the truth was burning around them. The Hour wasn't gone. It was unraveling, but its unraveling was the world's unraveling.
The light shifted.
Suddenly, she wasn't falling but standing—no, dreaming—upon a plain of glass. Tomas lay beside her, unconscious but breathing, his chest barely rising.
And across from her stood a figure she had never seen before.
Not Aldric. Not a keeper. Not even human.
It was a child, faceless, draped in chains that trailed into infinity. Its voice was both whisper and thunder:
You think you struck me down. You only opened me. Now you see what I am.
Elara's sun-eye burned, and she saw beyond the child—into a memory older than earth.
A village in the first dawn. The people prayed for silence, to end war, hunger, grief. They begged the sky for peace. And something answered.
Not a god. Not a demon. A void that listened too closely.
They gave it names. They gave it chains. They gave it children. And the silence grew, feeding on their worship.
I am their wish, said the faceless child. Their fear. Their love. You do not end me. You only inherit me.
Elara's knees buckled. She whispered, "No. I won't."
The child tilted its head, as though curious. Then watch him die.
Behind her, Tomas coughed blood. His skin was pale, his pulse flickering. Chains coiled beneath his body, ready to drag him into the fire.
Her heart split in two.
The Hour's voice pressed in harder: Bind me, and I will give him back whole. Break me, and you break him too.
Elara staggered toward Tomas, grabbing his hand. His eyes fluttered open. Even half-blind with pain, he saw the chains, the child, the loom breaking apart.
"Elara," he rasped. "Don't listen. Don't—" His words dissolved into blood.
Her tears fell hot on his face. "Don't make me choose."
His cracked lips curved into the smallest, weakest smile. "You already… chose. From the first night. You held on."
The void trembled.
The faceless child spread its arms, and every chain left in existence converged toward Elara, a storm of silence ready to bind her, to enthrone her, to make her the Hour reborn.
Her sun-eye flared, her hand clutching the burning key.
Her scream tore from the depths of her soul. "I am not your heir!"
She raised the key high.
And as the child lunged, as the chains closed, she struck again—this time not at the loom, but at the child's heart.
The silence shattered like glass.
And everything went white.
The white fire carried them until there was no up, no down, only endless falling. Elara's arms were locked around Tomas, her face pressed against his neck as the storm of unraveling memories whirled past.
A thousand lives shattered around them: a woman kneeling before an altar, her child torn from her arms; a soldier screaming as silence poured through his veins; a keeper binding himself in chains, his eyes burning into suns. Each fragment cut at Elara as though the world itself wanted to graft its pain into her.
Her sun-eye blazed, and she saw through the storm into a deeper truth.
They were not memories. They were threads. Each thread was a life, each strand woven into the Hour's endless body. And now, with the loom broken, all those lives were unspooling at once.
Tomas groaned against her shoulder, his breath rasping shallow. "Make it stop…"
"I'm trying," she whispered, though she had no idea how.
The fire bent, and suddenly they were standing on glass again.
The child of chains waited for her. Its faceless head tilted, its voice pressing into her mind like cold fingers.
You think yourself brave. You think yourself free. But you are only the latest stitch.
Visions swelled around them, layering over the glass plain.
Her childhood home, whole and warm, her mother's laughter filling the air.Tomas, unbroken, standing tall in the sun.A future of peace—no statue, no keepers, no silence.
All of it gleamed like a promise.
Bind me, the child said softly, and this is yours. No suffering. No loss. No death.
Elara's breath trembled.
For one heartbeat, she let herself imagine it. Tomas laughing again, without the hollow sound of pain beneath it. Children with his smile. A home unmarked by shadow.
But then her sun-eye pulsed, and she saw the truth beneath the vision.
The laughter was hollow. The sky was stitched from chains. The fields of gold were corpses buried shallow.
It was not peace. It was silence, dressed in borrowed colors.
Her stomach turned. She spat into the false world. "You call that a gift? It's a cage with prettier walls."
The vision cracked, falling away in shards.
The child's chains rattled. Then you choose suffering. You choose death.
Tomas stirred at her feet, coughing blood. His voice was hoarse but steady: "Better that… than slavery."
The child's faceless head turned toward him. He will die either way. But bound to me, he could live forever. As yours. Whole. Yours to keep.
Elara fell to her knees beside him, clutching his face. Tears blurred her vision. "Don't say it. Don't tell me to choose—"
Tomas lifted a shaking hand, brushing her tear-streaked cheek. "I already chose. You did too. When you picked me up in the square, when you held on. That was it. That was everything."
His hand fell, limp.
Her scream tore the void. "No!"
The child stepped closer, its chains spreading like roots. End this, Elara. Bind me, and he will breathe again.
The key in her hand trembled, its fire almost gone.
She lifted Tomas into her arms, pressing his head against her shoulder. His skin was ice, his pulse faint.
Her voice shook, but it rang with fury: "I will not save him by losing him."
The child's chains whipped forward.
Elara's sun-eye blazed. The key roared alive in her hand, light spilling like fire.
She surged to her feet, raising the weapon high.
And as the child lunged, she screamed her defiance and drove the key into its chest.
The silence split apart like shattering glass.
And everything went white.