The saidin was alive.
That was Spencer's first impression — not liquid light, not stored Power, but something with awareness, something that responded to his Codex's touch with curiosity rather than resistance. Pure, untainted, ancient beyond measure. The most beautiful thing he'd ever felt.
[WEAVE INTERVENTION: Tier 1 Nudge — Modified target: Pattern flow (saidin pool). Initiating thread-pocket formation. Warning: High resistance expected. Stamina drain: Accelerating.]
Spencer's Codex Stamina began dropping. 22/36. 18/36. 14/36.
The Pattern pushed back.
It wasn't active resistance — not the way Ba'alzamon had pushed back in the dream, or the way Machin Shin had clawed at his awareness. This was structural opposition, the universe's immune system recognizing an intrusion and mobilizing to reject it. Pressure built behind Spencer's eyes. His vision began to blur.
Hold it. Just hold it.
He focused everything on the Nudge — creating a pocket in the saidin's outflow, a tiny diverted stream that his Codex Inventory could capture. The Eye's power was draining rapidly as Aginor pulled at it from above; Spencer was essentially pickpocketing a waterfall.
Blood began streaming from his nose. 10/36. 8/36.
The pocket formed.
[INVENTORY OPERATION: Slot 5 — Capturing. Contents: Pure saidin (untainted). Quantity: Approximately 5% of remaining pool. Compression: Stable. Warning: Extended operation will cause thread-burn.]
Spencer held for eight seconds. The longest eight seconds of his life.
Each second felt like an hour. The pressure behind his eyes became a knife. His vision went white, then gray, then filled with static that had nothing to do with physical sight. Somewhere above him, Aginor was screaming something about the Power being HIS, and Rand was screaming back, and the world was tearing itself apart—
[INVENTORY OPERATION: Complete. Slot 5: Filled. Contents secured.]
Spencer released the Nudge.
The backlash hit him like a wall.
---
Thread-burn was worse than any pain Spencer had experienced.
It wasn't physical — or it was, but only as a symptom of something deeper. His Codex, the system that had merged with his soul, was overheating. The connection between his consciousness and the Pattern's weave had been pushed past its limits, and now both were suffering the consequences.
[WARNING: Stamina critical. Thread-burn detected. Codex functions degrading. Recommend immediate rest.]
Spencer collapsed against the pool's edge, barely conscious, his vision a blur of light and shadow. Through Thread Sight's static — because Thread Sight was still active, barely, a candle guttering in hurricane winds — he saw the battle reaching its climax.
Rand's golden thread had seized the Eye's remaining power.
Aginor was pulling at it too, the two of them locked in a tug-of-war that neither could win outright. But Rand was the one the saidin wanted. Three thousand years of preservation, waiting for the Dragon Reborn, and now the Dragon was here — untrained, terrified, but chosen.
The connection's rough. Rand's fighting himself as much as he's fighting Aginor.
I can help. One more Nudge. Just one more.
Spencer's Stamina was at 2/36. Attempting another Nudge would crash the Codex entirely. Would leave him defenseless, unconscious, possibly damaged beyond recovery.
He did it anyway.
---
[WEAVE INTERVENTION: Tier 1 Nudge — Target: Subject "Rand al'Thor" channeling thread/Eye junction. Objective: Reduce friction. Smooth connection. Cost: ALL REMAINING STAMINA.]
The Nudge lasted less than a second.
Spencer pushed at the junction point between Rand's inexperienced channeling and the Eye's ancient reservoir. Not strengthening — he didn't have the power for that — but smoothing. Easing. Making the connection flow instead of fight.
For one critical moment, Rand al'Thor channeled like he'd been doing it his entire life.
The Eye's remaining power poured into him — through him — and emerged as something terrible and beautiful. Light blazed from Rand's upraised hands, from his eyes, from his very soul. Aginor screamed as the Power he'd been stealing was ripped away, channeled by the Dragon against the Forsaken with precision that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with destiny.
Aginor burned.
The Forsaken's corrupted thread dissolved under the onslaught, three thousand years of evil unmade in a heartbeat by a farm boy who didn't know what he was doing. The body collapsed, empty, and Spencer watched through failing Thread Sight as one of the most powerful beings in history became nothing but ash.
We won.
We actually won.
[CRITICAL ERROR: Stamina depleted. Thread Sight failure. Codex entering emergency recovery mode. Consciousness: Failing.]
Spencer's legs gave out.
He slid off the pool's edge and fell three feet to the garden floor. His head hit stone — not hard enough to crack bone, but hard enough to add concussion to thread-burn. Through the static consuming his vision, he had one final impression: the Eye's pool, empty now, its light consumed by the battle that had saved them all.
Then the Codex crashed, and Spencer followed it into darkness.
---
The last thing he perceived before unconsciousness took him:
[Thread-burn: Severe. Pattern Correction: Level 2 initiated. Recovery time estimate: 72+ hours. Level 7 → Level 8 threshold: CROSSED. New ability unlocked: Thread Tracing. Entering recovery mode.]
The words dissolved into nothing.
Spencer lay on the garden floor, blood covering his face, his hand still reaching toward the empty pool. He was breathing — barely — but his mind had retreated to somewhere the Codex couldn't touch, somewhere the Pattern's retaliation couldn't find him.
Around him, the garden was silent. The battle was over. Aginor was ash. Balthamel was compost. The Green Man was gone forever.
And in Spencer's Codex Inventory, stored in a pocket between dimensions, the last pure light of saidin waited for whatever came next.
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