The silence in Aizkorri Cottage felt colder than the valley mist. Ibai’s hand still stung from the boiling dye, but the pain was a distant echo against the stark reality before him. Lide. A wisp of smoke, a shimmer of distortion, her form was now so thin he could almost see the rough-hewn stones of the cottage wall through her. Her eyes, wide and hollowed by terror, fixed on the loom, then on him, a silent plea of utter despair.
He had seen spirits fade before, the slow dissolution into the ether, an inevitable journey back to the vast, formless spiritual current. But Lide wasn't just fading; she was being erased, unwoven strand by strand. The golden knot at the center of the web, a stark, jagged gap, pulsed with a sickly light.
“No,” Ibai breathed, the word a harsh scrape in his throat. It wasn't a question, nor a plea. It was an absolute refusal, a defiance that tightened his chest. He took a step towards the loom, his eyes scanning the intricate, now broken, pattern. “No, Lide. I won’t let you.”
Lide flinched, her insubstantial hand drifting towards the tear in her work. A soft, mournful sound, like wind through dry reeds, escaped her. “Ibai…” Her voice was a whisper, so faint he had to strain to hear it over the frantic beat of his own pulse. “It’s… happening. I can feel it. Like losing a word… from a song.”
He saw the fear, but beneath it, a resignation that made his stomach churn. This was not the gentle, patient Lide he had come to know. This was a soul facing oblivion, and accepting it. His own stubborn principles, usually a quiet hum beneath his anxiety, now roared into an inferno. He had promised to help her find peace. He had not anticipated fighting for her very existence.
“No acceptance,” he stated, his voice gaining an unfamiliar edge of command. He moved closer, planting himself before the loom, shielding it, shielding *her*, with his body. “This isn’t peace, Lide. This is erasure. We found out what happened. We know Amaia bound you. We know why. That’s not the end of the story. It can’t be.”
Lide's transparent form flickered, a momentary strengthening of her outline as his words seemed to give her a fragile anchor. She looked at him, a spark of something almost like hope igniting in her spectral gaze. “You… you truly believe that?”
“I do,” Ibai affirmed, his own fear a cold knot in his gut, but overshadowed by a ferocious protectiveness. His gaze swept over the loom, over the delicate, vibrant dyes, the carefully selected yarns. This wasn’t just a spiritual anchor; it was her life’s work, her very essence. “The Lumin Cordis teaches that spirits fade when their purpose is fulfilled, or their energy wanes. But your purpose… it can’t simply be to power a ward. There has to be more. There has to be *you*.”
A small, almost imperceptible tremor ran through Lide’s spectral form. “My purpose…” She looked down at her hands, which were now so translucent he could see the warp and weft of the loom through them. “I thought… I thought I would be at peace if I knew. If I remembered.” A sigh, barely audible, escaped her. “But the knowing… it brought a new kind of pain.”
Ibai waited, his heart aching with an unfamiliar empathy. He, who had always preferred the silence of books to the messy complexities of human (and spectral) emotion, found himself utterly consumed by her anguish.
“It’s not my death that haunts me most, Ibai,” Lide finally confessed, her voice thick with sorrow. “Not even the way it happened. It’s… abandoning her. Deserting Amaia to face it all. The blight, the guilt, the desperation. She was always so sensitive, so quick to shoulder burdens. To think of her, believing she had to sacrifice her own sister to save our home… that she bore that burden… alone.” Her outline thinned further, edges smearing like smoke against raw granite.
“No!” Ibai cried, instinctively reaching out a hand, though it passed through her. The sheer desolation in her voice was a physical blow. “That’s it, Lide. That’s the key.”
He pulled back, his mind racing, sifting through the forbidden texts he had devoured in secret. The Lumin Cordis taught simple cleansing, a severing. But there were older, more nuanced philosophies, hidden away in dusty tomes he'd only dared to skim. Ideas considered heretical, dangerous.
If a spirit's lingering grief was the true anchor, more potent than any physical binding, then resolving that sorrow… it could potentially shift the spiritual tether. It wouldn't necessarily release the spirit, but it might change the nature of its connection, its *binding*. It was a faint, dangerous hope, one that went against every tenet of his order.
“Your grief isn’t about yourself,” Ibai said, his voice firm, steadying his breath. “It’s about Amaia. You grieve letting her shoulder the consequences alone. To absolve her. To show her it wasn’t her burden to bear.”
Lide stared at him, a fragile hope blossoming in her eyes, momentarily solidifying her form. “But how… how could I?” Her voice was barely a breath. “I am here. Bound. And she… she is out there.”
“Then we go to her,” Ibai declared, the words hanging heavy in the air. The thought of stepping beyond the garden gate, of facing the outside world, usually crippled him. But the image of Lide dissolving, of her final, silent scream, was a far greater terror.
He remembered Eneko’s ultimatum. Dawn. Eneko would return at dawn. The room boxed him in, hemmed on every side by the loom's demands and the ticking dark. Amaia was out there, in the village, perhaps still burdened by the guilt. And Lide was fading, faster than before. He had to find Amaia, and soon. But how could he leave? He glanced at the window, the first hints of grey barely softening the deep indigo of the pre-dawn sky. Time was running out, a different kind of unravelling.