Chapter 9: Embers of the Forgotten, the beginning of a new arc in the Nullshade saga:
The veil between worlds had thinned.
In the wake of the Loom's destruction, reality no longer adhered to its old laws. Wild realms now bloomed at the edge of existence—half-formed dreams, abandoned timelines, and memories that had grown teeth.
Krael Virex had wandered for years—by foot, by rift, by starlight. His name, once spoken in reverence or fear, was now mostly myth, carried in whispers by those who remembered the war. He had sworn not to draw the Severance Edge again... and for a time, he kept that oath.
Until the sky bled.
It happened in a quiet realm called Elaris, a once-forgotten echo nestled between dying stars. The people there lived simple lives, unaware they had even been erased once. But now, threads—old, forbidden threads—were returning. Not weavers. Not shadows.
Something worse.
They called it The Hollow Flame.
It did not burn. It consumed meaning. Villages awoke to find their history rewritten overnight. Loved ones unremembered. Statues changed shape. Songs sang themselves backward. It was not death. It was nulling—the slow erasure of a reality's soul.
And at the center of it, a new symbol: a flaming eye wreathed in unraveling threads.
It wasn't just haunting Elaris.
Across the multiverse, fragments of the Loom's broken design had begun reassembling themselves.
Krael arrived in Elaris under twilight.
He had come not as a warrior, but as a witness. Yet even he could feel it—the pulse beneath the soil, the hum in the sky. A resonance he'd only felt once before: the Loom's heartbeat.
But this time, it wasn't weaving anything new.
It was stitching backward.
In the marketplace of Veir Hollow, a cloaked figure waited.
"Severance Knight," she said. Her voice was cracked, haunted. "The Flame wants you."
He stared into her eyes—and saw endless fire, devouring timelines one by one.
"They're trying to rebuild the Weaver," she whispered. "But this time... as a god."
The rebellion had scattered, its members retired, vanished, or reborn.
But now, as realities trembled once more, a call stirred in the blood of those who had fought before. Krael sent word across dimensions, through the remnants of the Archive:
"The war is not over. The threads burn again.
Come. One last time. For all of us."
In the distance, lightning carved symbols into the sky.
The age of freedom had begun with fire. Now it risked ending the same way.
But Krael had faced gods before.
And he had cut them down.