The Wraith lunged.
A scream tore through the chamber as the Weave flared violently, sigils erupting in a burst of silver flame. The First Thread shimmered—then fractured like glass struck by thunder.
Lyraen reached for it.
Ezran raised his blade.
And then—
Darkness.
The world convulsed.
The silence after battle was never truly silent.
It was a ringing stillness, a void filling the ears with the absence of screams, of clash, of breath. Lyraen stood amid it, the smoldering remains of the Wraith scattered like ash and shadow at her feet. Around her, the sigils pulsed with a dim afterglow, the air heavy with burnt metal and blood.
Ezran knelt nearby, blade resting against his shoulder, face unreadable. The Custodes Noctis gathered in tense silence, their formation broken, their faith frayed.
But Lyraen bore the deeper wound.
The Custodes were shaken. Alaric tended the wounded while casting furtive glances at Lyraen, who knelt before the altar, hands trembling from what she had touched. Her wings—tattered silver shadows—had folded back into her body, leaving only pain in their absence.
She didn't look up when Ezran approached.
"You touched it," he said.
"I had to."
He stared at the basin of dried blood beneath the First Thread. The glow had dimmed, but its pulse lingered, like a second heartbeat in the chamber. "And what did it show you?"
"Truth," she whispered. "And the lie we've all lived."
The First Thread pulsed weakly in her palm, no longer glowing with divine purpose but flickering—dying. Or perhaps resisting.
It has seen too much, she thought. Or not enough.
Her wings, fragile webs of silver and shadow, had vanished—retreated into her body like a memory too painful to hold. Yet the ache remained. Not just physical, but spiritual. Something cracked open inside her when she touched the thread. Something had seen through her.
"They'll come for you now," Ezran said, voice low. "The Custodes. Maybe worse."
"I know."
He looked up. "Then why did you do it?"
"Because I was made to. Or because I wasn't." She glanced down at the sigil faintly burning on her wrist. "The Weave is not what they think. It's not order. Not control. It's choice."
Ezran didn't respond. Behind them, Alaric muttered orders. He didn't look at Lyraen. He didn't need to. The lines were drawn.
Yet Ezran hadn't stepped aside. Hadn't let her fall.
Not yet.
The journey back to the surface was tense and wordless. The Custodes kept their distance but hands stayed near weapons. The oppressive quiet of the undercity was replaced by a deeper dread—as if the darkness they'd faced was only the prologue to something worse.
Lyraen's mind reeled with images from the First Thread. The Boneweaver's faceless form. Wings torn from angels. A voice speaking in riddles older than time.
Through her, the wound shall bleed anew.
But what was the wound? What had been severed long ago?
They emerged through a different mausoleum, far from Saint Audric's cathedral—beneath a forgotten chapel strangled by ivy and ruin. The sky was twilight-streaked, bruised with color. Time had slipped.
A raven sat on the cracked stone cross, staring.
Watching.
At the Sanctum Stirpis, the Custodes dispersed with cold precision. Ezran remained by Lyraen's side, but even he kept distance—not out of fear, but uncertainty.
They had crossed a threshold.
"You'll be summoned," he said, once inside the upper library. "The Tribunal won't let this pass."
Lyraen wandered past shelves of forbidden texts. She felt them watching—books that should never have remembered her name, but somehow did.
"Let them summon me," she said. "Maybe it's time they remembered what they buried."
Ezran hesitated. "You sound like her."
"Who?"
He didn't answer.
That night, the dreams returned.
Not hers—but someone else's.
She stood in a field of silver thread, each strand a life, a choice, a pain. The Boneweaver sat at the center, weaving with hands that bled shadow.
You touched the First Thread, it whispered. Now you are part of the loom.
Lyraen reached out. "What am I becoming?"
The Boneweaver looked up—faceless, ageless.
What you always were.
She woke screaming.
The Tribunal convened at dawn.
The hall of judgment was a cold cathedral beneath the Custodes' halls. Statues of founders lined the walls—warriors, seers, one angel with broken wings carved in stone.
Three elders presided, faces hidden behind silver masks, voices hollow.
"Lyraen, fallen of the first flame, you stand accused of consorting with the Weaver's forbidden will, awakening a relic meant to remain lost, and endangering the balance. Do you deny it?"
"I did what you feared to do," she said. "I sought truth."
"Truth is not license."
"No," she agreed. "It's power."
The central elder leaned forward. "What truth did the thread give you?"
Lyraen didn't blink. "That the balance is broken. That it always was."
The chamber gasped—quiet but rippling.
"You would condemn our purpose for what? A vision?"
"No. For the lies you've told. For the lives you've taken in ignorance."
Ezran stepped forward before she could speak. "Enough," he said. "She did what we asked—found what we feared. She didn't run."
"Would you defend the damned, Commander?"
Ezran's gaze didn't flinch. "I'd rather defend the damned than serve blind."
After the Tribunal, Lyraen wasn't imprisoned—but neither was she free. She remained within the Sanctum, watched at all times. The sigil on her wrist was mirrored by one etched at her door—a ward, or a threat.
Ezran didn't visit.
But someone else did.
She was small, cloaked, a girl no older than thirteen. Her eyes were stitched shut—not with thread, but by glowing sigils across her pale skin.
"You saw the First Thread," the girl whispered.
Lyraen turned slowly. "And you are?"
"A Seer. Of the Silken Choir."
"I thought the Choir was extinct."
"They are." The girl smiled. "But I am not."
Lyraen approached carefully. "What do you want?"
"To show you what comes next."
The child raised her hand, and the walls of the Sanctum peeled away—not physically, but mentally. Lyraen was yanked into a vision, her body rooted in place.
She stood atop a ruined cathedral. The sky bled fire. Nytheralis burned.
Beneath her, the streets ran with silver thread turned black, choked by rot.
Above, something vast and terrible uncoiled—not the Boneweaver, but born from what had been unraveled.
It saw her.
And it smiled.
She jerked back, breath ragged.
"What was that?"
The girl was already fading.
"The Second Thread," she said. "It has begun to awaken."
Elsewhere, far from the city, in a chamber deeper than memory, a figure stirred.
It wore no face, but its hands were flame and bone.
It turned toward a tattered altar, and candles lit themselves with blue fire.
Its voice was wind and ruin.
"She remembers," it said.
Then it began to unmake its chains.