The city of Orren did not greet them with wind or whispers.
It breathed.
A deep, aching exhale of centuries-long sorrow echoed through its hollow corridors and broken archways. Each stone seemed to hum with regret. The streets weren't abandoned—they were remembering.
Kael stepped forward, his boots touching pavement that shimmered faintly. "This place is alive," he murmured.
Lira nodded. "It always was. But now... it's awake."
Ashara unsheathed her sword. "Remind me why we're walking into a city that's remembering the end of the world?"
Veyna unfolded a runeslate, its glyphs flickering erratically. "Because whatever sealed the Fourth Shape left its scars here. And we need to find them before someone else does."
They moved cautiously through the skeletal remains of Orren's once-great citadel. Towering statues stared down with broken eyes. Mosaics along the walls pulsed in time with Kael's heartbeat—scenes that shifted when unobserved, transforming from triumph into tragedy.
Every few steps, Kael saw flickers: a child running, a woman screaming, soldiers laughing. None of them were real. Or perhaps, too real.
"Memory manifestations," Veyna whispered. "The Sorrow Weave is leaking."
Ashara narrowed her eyes. "It's not just leaking. It's bleeding."
They reached the base of the impossible spire by nightfall.
From afar, it had appeared elegant, luminous. But up close, it was grotesque—woven from strands of light and emotion, cracked and fraying. It wept, slow tears of liquid silver that dissolved anything they touched.
Kael approached the base and placed his palm on its surface. The thread inside his chest flared.
Suddenly, he was no longer in Orren.
He stood in a garden of light, watching two figures weave strands of memory into shape—one man, one woman, both ageless. Their hands moved with perfect symmetry, creating a world between them.
Then a third figure stepped in: cloaked in grief, faceless.
With a single touch, the weave shattered.
The two weavers screamed in agony as the Fourth Shape buckled, and the world folded in on itself.
Kael collapsed backward into reality, gasping.
Veyna caught him. "What did you see?"
He shook his head. "Not a what. Who."
Inside the spire, the air was thick and heavy. Light pooled on the floor like water. The walls shifted constantly, as if remembering different versions of themselves.
They moved in silence until they reached the heart.
It was a chamber unlike any Kael had ever seen.
Floating in the center was a tear in space—black, infinite, rimmed with threads of memory. It pulsed slowly, like a dying heart.
Around it hovered fragments—echoes of people. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. All caught mid-sentence, mid-step, mid-sob. Frozen in time.
Lira stepped forward, eyes wide. "These are the Empaths."
"The ones who lived in the Fourth Shape?" Ashara asked.
Lira nodded. "They couldn't bear the weight of universal empathy. So they folded themselves into the Sorrow Weave. This... is their tomb."
Kael stared at the tear. "Or their prison."
A sudden shift in the air.
The fragments stirred.
One of them—a woman with burning eyes and a voice like shattered glass—turned to Kael.
"You carry the thread. You carry the choice."
Kael swallowed. "Choice to do what?"
"To open. Or to forget."
Ashara raised her sword. "You'll have to be a little more specific."
The woman stepped closer. Her body didn't move—it simply blurred forward.
"Empathy is not peace. It is truth. And truth, once known, cannot be unlived."
Kael felt the pull of the thread inside his chest.
The others couldn't hear it, but he did. A quiet voice, like his own but older.
We closed the Shape to spare ourselves. But we cannot build a better Pattern atop a wound we refuse to feel.
He turned to his companions.
"We need to open it."
Ashara stared at him. "Even if it breaks us?"
"Especially if it does."
Veyna was silent for a moment, then handed him a glyph. "This will disrupt the containment seal. But once it's down, we have no control. No protection."
Kael nodded. "Then stand back."
He placed the glyph in the center of the chamber. It sparked to life, unraveling light into fractal symbols that spun faster and faster. The tear in space began to widen.
Screams echoed—not of pain, but of awakening.
Kael braced himself.
The thread inside him snapped.
And the world shattered.
He stood in a void.
No sky. No floor.
Only emotion.
It wrapped around him like fire and ice. He felt every sorrow, every joy, every loss, every hope of every soul ever touched by the Pattern. He wept without knowing why. Laughed at memories that weren't his. Loved strangers with the depth of lifetimes.
And then—he saw her.
The woman from the dream. The silver-cloaked figure.
She spoke one word.
"Welcome."
Kael opened his mouth, but no sound came.
"You've felt the Sorrow. Now feel the Shape."
And suddenly, the void bloomed with possibility.
Not just one world. Many.
Worlds where the Fourth Shape never closed.
Worlds where people endured the pain of empathy and built something more.
And in that moment, Kael understood.
When he returned to his body, the chamber had changed.
The tear was gone.
The Empaths were gone.
And in their place stood a single new thread—vibrant, golden, humming with harmony.
Kael picked it up. It didn't burn. It sang.
Ashara stepped forward. "What now?"
Kael smiled faintly.
"Now... we weave again. But this time, together."