The rebellion sailed across fractured stars.
Ashira's fleet cut through the skeletal remains of dead constellations and time-frozen realms, where laws of physics bent like reeds under the weight of forgotten gods. Krael stood at the helm of the lead vessel, The Mirrored Flame, his cloak flickering between light and void. Beside him, Naira studied a living map—a constellation of timelines that rearranged itself with every decision made across the multiverse.
"There," she pointed. "The outer edge. Timeline 0-Null-Apex. It's the only reality that never collapsed... but it vanished."
Erisin nodded, grim. "The Archive calls it The Last Thread. It's where the Weaver failed utterly. And it's where the last you lives."
Krael's jaw clenched. "I need to see him. If he survived... then maybe he knows how to end this."
They pierced the veil of Final Pattern space.
What awaited them was not a world—but a wound.
A realm torn open and left to bleed across eternity. Gravity spiraled like a whirlpool of dying thoughts. Buildings drifted sideways. Time stuttered. And in the center stood a tower of black glass, rising endlessly, covered in ancient sigils no one had written.
They entered.
The interior was endless reflection. Mirrors that didn't show your face—but your fears, your failures, your other selves.
And then Krael saw him.
A man, older. Battle-worn. Hair silvered at the temples, but his presence burned like the heart of a star. His left eye was gone—replaced with a shard of shattered possibility. A version of Krael who had survived everything.
"You came," the elder Krael said, without turning.
"You knew I would."
"I was you."
They spoke for hours inside the mirrored hall.
The elder Krael—called Virex Prime—revealed the final truth: he had once led a rebellion too. He'd seen the multiverse nearly free itself... but the Weaver reset the cycle. Again. And again. And again.
"No matter how many times we won, it always rewrote us. I tried to escape time. I tried to forget. But the only way out... is through."
He pointed to a blade embedded in the tower's core—The Severance Edge. A weapon forged from a collapsed timeline, capable of cutting the Loom itself.
"But it can't be lifted by me anymore," he said. "I've been bound to this realm, a constant to preserve the pattern. But you... you're still volatile."
Krael stepped forward, hand trembling as he gripped the hilt. The blade hummed—not with power, but memory. The stories of every being who had ever fought back, cried out, or refused to fade.
"I won't be your repeat," Krael said. "I'll be your ending."
Outside, alarms sounded across the fleet.
Weaver Enforcers—a new breed—had breached their defenses. They weren't machines or constructs. They were reclaimed rebels, overwritten by the Pattern. Twisted mirrors of what Krael and his allies might have become.
The rebellion was no longer fighting puppets. They were fighting themselves.
Ashira's voice crackled through the comm-rune. "Krael, if you have the blade—now's the time to use it."
Krael turned to Virex Prime. "You coming with us?"
The elder shook his head. "No. My story ends here. But yours... burn it into the stars."
With the Severance Edge pulsing in his grasp, Krael returned to the battlefield.
He was no longer a lone knight. He was the center of a storm, the spark in a cosmos ready to ignite. The rebels rallied behind him, their timelines howling with fury and faith.
The Weaver's reset was imminent.
But for the first time, reality itself was ready to fight back.