Ayame didn't sleep the next night.
Even as dawn bled across her curtains and birds chirped like the world hadn't changed, she sat at her desk, eyes fixed on her notebook—pages and pages now filled with sketches of the orb, the chamber, and the two threads: gold and crimson.
Two choices.
Two fates.
And a warning from a voice older than any she'd ever known.
*When the time comes, which will you sever?*
She didn't know what either thread meant yet, only that both felt irreversible.
She jumped when someone tapped lightly on her window.
Kael.
She opened it, and he slipped inside, moving with quiet familiarity that made her chest twist a little.
"You haven't slept," he said softly.
"Neither have you."
He glanced at her drawings, then at the pendant on her neck. "You're still seeing the visions?"
She nodded. "Bits and pieces. I think the orb unlocked more than just Serephine's memories. I think it... woke something in me."
"You're connected to her," he said. "Not just as a descendant or reincarnation. It's deeper. Like you're carrying her echo."
Ayame didn't speak. She didn't need to. He already knew.
Kael pulled a folded slip of paper from his jacket. "Mio decoded some of the runes from the pedestal. They mentioned the Crimson Thread specifically. It's not a power. It's a person."
Ayame blinked. "What?"
He placed the paper on her desk.
Written in careful script were four lines:
**The golden thread mends,**
**The crimson one severs.**
**But he who *is* the crimson—**
**Shall choose who remembers.**
She whispered the final line aloud. "*He who is the crimson…*"
Kael's expression darkened. "We think it's Haru."
—
Later that day, they gathered in the club room.
Haru had his feet up on a desk, spinning a pencil like he was still pretending none of this was real.
"So let me get this straight," he said after they explained. "I'm a magical thread-person who gets to choose what, reality?"
Yuzu threw a rice cracker at him. "It's not funny."
"I'm not laughing." Haru caught the cracker midair, frowning. "I just… why me?"
Ayame looked at him. "You've always had the strongest reaction in the dreamspace. You're the only one who can disrupt illusions just by touching them."
Kael added, "And the orb showed you as a split echo—like part of you exists *outside* the loom."
Haru stood, pacing. "So what—if I *am* this Crimson Thread guy, what happens if I choose wrong?"
Mio looked down. "Someone is going to be erased."
The words sat heavy.
Ayame's fingers clenched.
"We still don't know what the golden thread represents," she said. "But I'm starting to think it's not good or evil. It's memory versus forgetting."
Yuzu leaned forward. "Then what do we *do*?"
Ayame stood.
"We find the loom."
—
That evening, Ayame returned to the chamber beneath the school alone.
She didn't tell the others.
The orb still floated where she had touched it, pulsing gently.
But this time, she came not to see—she came to *ask*.
She stepped forward and whispered, "What is the golden thread?"
The orb flickered.
Then, a shimmer.
A face appeared.
Rhiannon.
But not the weeping, broken ghost they'd found in the ruins.
This was Rhiannon *before*.
Golden hair braided with flowers. Eyes bright. A girl of light and defiance.
She was standing before a mirror, holding a blade of starlight.
A voice echoed: *"To remember love is to endure pain. To forget pain is to lose love. Which would you choose?"*
Ayame's throat tightened.
The golden thread was love. Memory. All of it.
The crimson… the power to sever that pain.
To cut the bond and free someone from suffering.
The Weaver had woven this dilemma into the foundation of everything.
Because it *fed* on the choice.
Suddenly, the chamber began to tremble.
Ayame turned.
Kael was standing in the entrance, breathing hard.
"I followed you," he said. "You shouldn't be here alone."
She opened her mouth to respond—
But the air split.
A *howl*—not animal, not human.
The dreamspace tore open inside the chamber.
The Weaver was coming.
Kael grabbed Ayame's hand. "We have to go—now!"
The chamber cracked. Thread-light exploded in spirals.
And through the rupture, they saw the future unraveling—buildings folding, faces vanishing, time *melting* into golden ash.
Ayame screamed—
And the world fell apart.
—
They woke in the infirmary.
Ms. Sato stood over them, pale but calm.
"You pushed too far," she said. "It's responding now."
Ayame struggled upright. "The Weaver?"
Ms. Sato nodded. "It knows you touched the orb. It's accelerating. Preparing to complete the Unweaving."
Kael looked up. "Then we're running out of time."
Sato didn't answer.
Instead, she reached into her coat and pulled out a page.
A sketch.
The loom.
Not a machine.
But a *tree*.
Silver-rooted, sky-bound, wrapped in threads of memory.
Hidden somewhere beneath the city.
Ayame's eyes widened. "It's real."
Sato nodded. "And it's waking."
Ayame looked at her friends, all arriving in the room one by one. Haru last.
He held her gaze for a moment longer than usual.
She knew then—he *felt* it too.
He *was* the Crimson Thread.
And soon, he would have to choose:
Preserve the memory of all they'd loved...
Or spare them the pain it carried.
---