~ "Even silence has a name. And I gave it mine." ~
Spidey stood at the center of the rotting Web.
The sky above was a gaping wound threads frayed and flailing, stars dimmed into aching bruises. The Great Loom trembled behind her, its spools cracked, its rhythm broken. Around her feet, memories drifted like ash, soft and glowing, too many to name.
And in the center of it all, curled in a nest of silence, was him.
The Weaver of Silence.
A god long forgotten. Not stone or shadow, not beast or man but something between.
He was vast. His limbs were twisted threads of unspoken grief, woven with teeth that never bit and eyes that had seen too much. His face was a tapestry of sorrow: shifting, stitched, unraveling.
He didn't move.
But the silence pulsed thick and heavy a silence that listened.
Nyxi landed beside Spidey, wings dimmed. "He's… remembering us."
> "Do gods remember?" Spidey asked quietly.
> "Only what hurts."
---
They stepped forward.
Each footfall across the broken web made no sound as if the ground itself feared being heard. Every thread they touched darkened, wilted, mourned.
> "You shouldn't be here," the Weaver said at last.
His voice wasn't words it was the echo of things unsaid. A lullaby never sung. A scream muffled beneath blankets. A secret never confessed.
Spidey shivered. "I've come to fix the Web."
> "It doesn't want fixing."
> "Then I'll fix it anyway."
The Weaver uncurled slowly, pieces of his form dripping away like ink. "You're brave, little spider. But brave things break the hardest."
Behind them, the sky began to shudder again a ripple of threads failing, stars winking out like dying candles. The Web couldn't hold much longer.
> "I don't have anything left," Spidey whispered.
> "You do," Nyxi said, stepping in front of her. "There's always something left."
Spidey sank to her knees. Her hands trembled as they touched the silk beneath her. She had given her first laughter. Her memories. Her Mother's Lullaby. Even her name part of it now woven into the bridge that led here.
What else could there be?
And then she knew.
It wasn't what she remembered.
It was how.
It was her voice.
The one thing the Web had never touched, never stolen, never bargained for.
Because her voice carried it all the grief, the joy, the fear, the love.
And now, it had to go.
---
Spidey looked up at the dying god.
> "You were never meant to be a monster, were you?" she said softly. "You were the first weaver. You tried to keep the threads safe… but they broke anyway. And so did you."
The Weaver didn't reply.
But the silence around him cracked.
A thin, almost imperceptible sound the sound of something listening… differently.
Spidey turned to Nyxi.
> "If I give it… my voice… will it be enough?"
Nyxi hesitated. "Only if it's a willing offering. The Web doesn't accept what's stolen. Only what's given in love."
> "Will I forget?" Spidey asked, voice already quivering.
> "Maybe," Nyxi said, eyes glossy. "But I won't."
Spidey reached out and touched the Web's core a knot of unraveling light, sparking like breath caught in winter. And then, with trembling lips, she leaned close.
And whispered.
One final word.
---
Her voice, soft and full of everything she was, curled around the threads.
The Web paused.
And then began to sing.
Not loudly. Not triumphantly.
But like a thread humming beneath fingertips.
The sky rippled.
One by one, stars flared back into being. The broken threads stitched themselves in bursts of gold and silver and crimson. The Great Loom creaked, then turned once more.
And the silence shattered like a dropped spool.
---
Spidey fell.
Not from pain.
Not from fear.
But from release.
Nyxi caught her gently, cradling her against her small form. "You did it," she whispered. "You gave the final thread."
Spidey opened her eyes.
But she couldn't speak.
She smiled instead a quiet curve of lips, knowing and full.
And in that smile lived every word she'd never say again.
---
The Weaver of Silence stood tall, his form now woven anew still strange, still old, but no longer twisted.
He bowed to her.
> "You reminded the Web what it means to feel," he said in a voice like a healed wound. "Thank you, little thread."
Then he vanished not with drama, but like the last breath of a story finishing itself.
---
Spidey rose slowly, the silence now warm around her.
Not empty.
Just… peaceful.
Nyxi landed beside her, brushing a small leg against her cheek.
> "Come on, Threadkeeper," she said. "The Web remembers your name now. And it sings it."
Spidey didn't answer.
She only nodded.
And together, they walked toward the new dawn, beneath a sky stitched whole again.
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
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