The wind changed.
Not outside. Inside the world itself.
Ayame felt it first in her bones—an ache like an ancient bell ringing from too deep beneath the earth. The same feeling from the orb. From the dreamspace. From the voice that had warned her.
The Weaver was no longer distant.
It was *here*.
—
They gathered one last time at the rooftop garden. Even the wind was still, as though the school itself knew it was the last breath before unraveling.
Kael leaned against the railing, his eyes on the horizon. "I always thought the final battle would be more... dramatic."
Mio sat cross-legged, flipping through one of her grimoires. "You want dramatic? Give it five minutes."
Yuzu balanced on the edge of a bench. "I feel like we should be doing a power pose or something."
Haru said nothing.
He sat at the far end of the garden, one hand gripping his knee, the other curled into a trembling fist.
Ayame approached him quietly.
"You okay?" she asked.
"No." His voice was flat. Honest. "But that's not new."
Ayame lowered herself beside him. "You felt it again, didn't you?"
Haru nodded. "The pull. Like something's trying to unmake me."
"Because you're not meant to choose," she said softly. "You're meant to *be* the choice."
He turned toward her, eyes haunted. "What if I don't want that? What if I don't *make* it?"
Ayame took his hand. "Then we'll make it together."
Behind them, a low rumble echoed from deep beneath the earth.
Kael stood straight. "That's it."
—
The entrance wasn't in a temple. Or ruins. Or a magic forest.
It was in the subway.
Line 9. Abandoned for twenty years.
They slipped through the cracked turnstiles and down into a tunnel veined with moss and flickering lights. The Weaver's influence was strongest here—threads clinging to the walls like spiderwebs, each one humming softly with memories.
Ayame brushed one and saw a child's drawing of a cat with wings.
Another—a first kiss beneath cherry blossoms.
Another—a scream into a snowstorm.
Kael touched her shoulder. "Don't linger."
At the end of the tunnel, the path opened into a chasm.
Below them stretched a spiraling staircase of glass and gold, descending into a hollow that pulsed like a heartbeat.
At the very bottom—they saw it.
The Loom.
A tree taller than mountains, its roots woven into the fabric of reality. Threads of all colors shimmered from its branches, singing softly.
And beneath it—
The Weaver.
It had no shape, only suggestion.
A face with a hundred eyes. A body woven from cloaks and masks and flickers of forgotten names. Its voice was many, but it spoke as one.
*"You have come to cut."*
Ayame stepped forward. "We came to choose."
*"The threads are not yours to sever."*
Kael drew his blade of light. "Then why do you fear us?"
The Weaver pulsed, its form fraying. *"Because you carry memory. And memory resists."*
Yuzu cracked her knuckles. "Yeah, well, resistance is kinda our thing."
The Weaver extended a thousand threads toward Haru.
*"Crimson. You are mine. Return, and I will unmake your pain."*
Haru stepped forward.
And then—
He cut the air.
A single thread severed.
The Loom *screamed*.
—
Everything *shattered*.
The ground fractured. The sky inside the cavern turned upside down. Time ran backward and forward.
Ayame saw Kael as a child. Mio standing in a library of fire. Yuzu vanishing into stardust. Haru, crying in a hospital hallway.
And herself—alone, forgotten, threadless.
She grabbed the orb from around her neck and held it high.
"Serephine!" she shouted. "Guide us!"
Light burst outward.
The Weaver shrieked.
And the tree... bled.
Golden sap spilled from the branches, revealing two threads now pulsing at its core—one gold, one crimson.
Ayame stepped forward. "This is the choice."
The Weaver's voice split into a thousand cries. *"You cannot bear the cost."*
But she was already holding both threads.
Gold in one hand.
Crimson in the other.
Tears streamed down her face. "If we choose the golden... everyone remembers. The pain, the loss. Serephine, Rhiannon, all of it. The world bears its scars."
She turned to Haru. "If we choose the crimson... we forget. We start again. No pain. But no love either. The cost is the bond."
Haru looked at her, trembling.
"I don't want to forget you."
Ayame nodded. "Then remember."
She released the crimson thread.
And wove the golden into the tree.
—
The Weaver wailed.
But the choice was made.
The Loom burned gold, brighter than the sun, and threads realigned.
Not rewritten.
*Reclaimed.*
Every memory Serephine preserved returned.
Every echo.
Every love.
Every pain.
The world shifted—not into something new, but into something *true*.
—
Ayame awoke lying in grass under the open sky.
Her friends lay around her, slowly stirring.
The world felt... heavier.
But clearer.
Kael sat up, breathing hard. "We did it."
Ayame looked at the sky, now threaded with faint golden lines.
"No," she whispered. "*She* did."
Above them, drifting slowly into starlight, was the last vision of Serephine.
Smiling.
Finally at peace.
---