The scent of char and ash greeted them before they reached the gates.
Emberlin burned.
Smoke curled above the southern ridge, thick and acrid, blackening the once-blue sky. The town's familiar silhouette—rooftops sloped like folded wings, spires capped with copper—was now marred by flame and ruin.
They broke into a run.
"Faster!" Elara shouted, already ahead of the group. Her boots hit frost-hardened soil, heart hammering as fear tore through her. Behind her, Ryssa and Maeron moved in sync, blades unsheathed, eyes narrowed. Kael lagged only a step, his hand never leaving the hilt of his dagger.
The main gate stood ajar, half-splintered and creaking in the wind.
Elara pushed it wide.
Emberlin—her home, their stronghold—was under siege.
But not by the Harrower.
Not by armies.
By shadows.
***
The streets were quiet. Too quiet.
Fires crackled from collapsed buildings. A well near the center square had been tipped over, water frozen mid-spill in jagged sheets.
And then they heard it.
A *lullaby*.
Soft. Sweet. Sung in a voice too smooth to be human.
"Do you hear that?" Aelis whispered.
Kael nodded, sword already in hand. "It's coming from the Cradle."
They moved quickly, past the broken remains of the market square and up the narrow path toward the ancient school of sigils.
Or what remained of it.
The Cradle's arched doorway had collapsed inward. Its sigil walls, once vibrant with protective enchantments, were covered in ink-black tendrils—threads not woven but *bled*.
Elara's stomach turned.
"They're unraveling the glyphs," Lysandra said, horror in her voice. "Undoing them from the inside."
A shriek pierced the air.
They ran.
***
Inside, the Cradle was unrecognizable.
Desks and shelves lay in shattered heaps. The central glyph chamber—where students once studied flame and focus—was filled with smoke and crawling shadows.
In the center of the room stood a figure.
She wore a tattered cloak. Her hair fell in thin silver strands. Her skin shimmered faintly with the hue of oil on water.
She held a child.
And she was singing.
"Threads of night, threads of sleep,
Weave no fire, sow no grief…"
Elara stepped forward. "Let the child go."
The woman turned, revealing hollow eyes threaded with black veins. Her smile was wide, too wide.
"You are not the Weaver," she said. "You are but the Spark."
Kael moved to flank her, but shadows surged forward—alive, snarling, tearing at the air with whispering mouths.
Maeron raised his hammer. "Shadows or not, they *break* the same."
He charged.
The room erupted into chaos.
***
Elara lunged for the woman, sigils spinning to life in her palm. The mark on her skin—the Thread of Meaning—glowed pale blue, lighting a path through the darkness.
The woman hissed, releasing the child. The boy scrambled backward, crying.
Lysandra caught him, wrapping him in a cloak and pulling him to safety.
Kael danced through the shadow-things, blades flickering. Aelis spoke words in the old tongue, calling wind and silence into her hands.
Elara reached the woman and struck her with the flat of her palm.
A *thread* snapped.
The woman screamed—and then unraveled.
Not in flesh.
In *form*.
She dissolved into strands of ink, which floated upward like soot and vanished.
The shadows vanished with her.
Silence fell.
***
They regrouped in the courtyard. The boy, no older than eight, clung to Lysandra. His name was Bren.
"They came from the north," he whispered. "She called them Threadless. Said they'd make a new pattern. Said the world was too loud, too messy."
Aelis frowned. "The Threadless…"
"That's what Fyrasha warned us about," Elara murmured. "The ones who unweave."
"Agents of the Unmaker," Ryssa said. "They don't just destroy—they *remove*."
Maeron looked out toward the hills. "And if they were here, others will follow."
Kael sheathed his blade. "Then we fight."
Elara nodded. "But not without preparing."
***
For the next two days, Emberlin's survivors trickled out of hiding—dozens of frightened townsfolk, students, apprentices. Many bore faint wounds. Some, marks that shimmered faintly black in the right light.
Lysandra and Aelis worked together to cleanse the sigils. Maeron reinforced the gates. Ryssa drilled the townsfolk in basic sword forms.
Elara wandered the Cradle, tracing the damaged glyphs, lighting new flame-lines where the Threadless had scraped them clean.
The Flame of Memory guided her.
So did the Thread of Meaning.
And something else.
Something stirring.
She stood before the great central loom—the original, left untouched in the Cradle's sanctum.
It had never worked.
Not in generations.
But now…
It thrummed beneath her fingers.
She touched it.
And it awakened.
***
A swirl of color rose from the threads.
Images. Memories. Not hers.
A man with bright eyes, weaving lightning into cloth.
A child laughing as she turned tears into light.
A woman standing on the edge of the world, weaving silence into stars.
And then—a final image.
A map.
Not drawn in ink.
Woven in threads of flame and frost.
It led east.
Beyond the Frostmarch.
Beyond the Loom's Edge.
To the *Convergence*.
Elara gasped.
That was where the Unmaker would strike next.
Not with armies.
But with *removal*.
Wiping threads from the tapestry.
Erasing stories before they could begin.
***
She called the others that night.
By the fire, as Emberlin slept, she showed them the map.
"It's not a place we know," Lysandra said. "But it's not imaginary either."
"It's *central*," Aelis whispered. "Where all threads tangle."
"A battlefield?" Maeron asked.
"No," Elara said. "A choice."
They were quiet.
Then Kael looked up.
"Then we have to reach it first."
Ryssa nodded. "Before they do."
Aelis touched the edge of the map. "And before more stories are lost."
Elara looked at each of them.
Her family.
Her weave.
"We leave at dawn."
***
That night, Elara couldn't sleep.
She wandered the Cradle alone, stopping in the main hall where new apprentices once made their oaths.
A mirror still stood at the center.
She looked into it.
And saw not herself—but every version of her still unwoven.
Hero.
Villain.
Martyr.
Monster.
But all of them bore the same flame.
She touched the mirror and whispered, "Not fate."
The reflection nodded.
*Choice.*