The sky had never been quiet in the Threadlands.
It rippled like a waking dream, stitched with shifting stars and fraying clouds. But now, it screamed.
The blade of light—first seen as a falling star—grew larger by the second. It wasn't falling.
It was aiming.
"It's not just memory," Kaelen said, eyes narrowed. "That thing's alive."
Davin squinted toward the heavens. "How do you kill a weapon with a will?"
Ashrel answered grimly. "You don't. You survive it. Maybe."
Lira said nothing.
She could hear it, clearer than the others—its song.
A piercing, beautiful melody made from everything she had forgotten.
It sang to her in every tongue she had ever dreamed.
"You are not the Loom, little girl. You are the thread."
The Loom beneath their feet began to fray.
The threads of rewoven names trembled like candle flames in wind.
Lira stepped forward, lifting her hands.
"If it's memory that gives it shape, then memory can reshape it."
The Loom replied with a pulse—approval, or warning, she couldn't tell.
She called out:
"Tell me the Severer's name!"
And the Loom, reluctant but bound, whispered:
"Myelren."
The moment she spoke it, the sky cracked.
The blade split open midair.
From its core unfurled wings of burning script, each letter a fragment of a name long deleted from the world.
And from within emerged a shape—neither man nor woman, neither ghost nor god.
A being made of precision.
Clad in obsidian armor inscribed with every name it had ever severed.
Myelren—the Severer.
"You are not the first to try to mend the broken tapestry," it said, voice like falling glass.
"You will fail as they did."
Ashrel stepped forward. "We don't fall as easily as the old world."
Myelren didn't move. It didn't need to.
The air folded.
Kaelen vanished—no flash, no cry. Just… gone.
"KAELEN!" Lira shouted, spinning around.
But there was no trace.
No footprint. No echo.
Only a hole in the weave.
Davin ran forward in panic—only for Ashrel to grab his shoulder.
"It's testing us. Trying to unravel us before we resist."
"So what do we do?" Davin whispered.
"We hold," Lira said. "And I speak its name again."
She closed her eyes.
Summoned memory.
And shouted, not just the name, but the truth:
"Myelren, First of the Unmakers. Cast from the Loom for severing mercy from fate."
The being staggered.
It blinked—flickered.
One wing folded in.
Ashrel exhaled. "It's not invincible…"
"No," Lira said. "But it's not alone."
She turned slowly.
More rifts were opening.
Three. Then seven. Then twelve.
From each emerged a lesser form—fractured Myelrens, pale copies.
"What now?" Davin asked.
"Now," Lira said, setting her hands alight with the Loom's glow, "we fight to be remembered."
Far to the south, Eren paused atop a dune.
He had felt the Severer arrive.
"Too soon," he murmured. "They sent it too soon."
He touched the blade at his side.
"You're not ready yet," he whispered. "But neither is she."
He turned his eyes toward the Threadlands.
"Hold on, Weaver. I'm coming."