A new blue text message bloomed in the air, vast and unavoidable.
[CRITICAL THREAD: THE LOOM OF AFFLICTION. AWAKENING COMMENCE. ALL SURVIVORS. SEEK SHELTER. DOOMSDAY PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
The words hung, glinting with purple haze, then shattered into iridescent powder. The spool throbbed, rattling Levan's rib cage like an iron bell, yet Anais’s faint guidance cut through the roar.
[ANAIS’S PERCEPTION: TARGET CENTRAL CONFLUENCE.]
He focused. The luminous points, the bright knot above Anais’s head, anchored him. With a grunt, Levan lunged, his crimson blade a blur. He didn’t cut; he meticulously picked. Each silver strand that tethered Anais, each one humming with stolen vitality, was identified by Anais’s ethereal vision and then precisely severed by Levan’s tool. It was a race against the accelerating pulse of the Loom below.
One, two, three. The cords snapped with sharp, almost musical twangs. Anais’s body, wracked with agony moments before, began to relax. Color, faint but noticeable, returned to her pallid face. The purple radiance flared, turning the stone walls glossy as wet tallow.
With a final snip, Levan sliced the primary thread. The cage of silver filaments dissolved into fine ash, and Anais, dropped from midair, pitched toward the tiles. He caught her, his arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her close. Her skin was cold, her breath shallow, but she was alive.
“Levan,” she whispered, her voice a raspy sigh against his ear. “You came.”
Before he could answer, a figure stepped from the glare, robes shredded, mouth set in an upturned smirk. The hooded zealot held an ornate prism, lit from within by an oily purple fire.
“A touching reunion,” the man said, flat and quiet beneath the thunder. “Yet useless. This vault is merely an antenna. A relay.”
Levan tightened his grip on Anais, his eyes narrowed. “An antenna for what?”
“For the Grand Weaving,” he answered, hoisting the prism. “The rite concludes miles below. The spool stirs unchecked. The Silver Shears have won.”
[CRITICAL QUEST FAILED: PREVENT LOOM’S AWAKENING. RETRIBUTION: MARKED ‘FRAYED’.]
Levan ignored the stark blue text cutting across his sight. “What have you done?”
“Delivered humanity,” the zealot cried, lifting the prism toward the stone overhead. “This hall served its purpose. Its stones are forfeit.”
The glass flashed. Hairline fractures darted across the granite vault above. Grit showered down, followed by split cobbles and grinding limestone. The robed cultist looked back with a placid grin.
“The Weaver marked your rogue thread, Stitcher. Yet sacrifices balance every stitch.” His eyelids drooped in quiet rapture. “For the Loom.”
He flung the crystal into a widening split overhead. The moment it cracked, shockwaves rippled through the floor slabs. The zealot threw his arms wide as boulders plummeted toward his brow.
“Move!” Levan dragged Anais sideways, dodging shards of shale. Beso cowered behind a cracked colonnade, waving his thick arms in panic. Rock blocked the entryway, sealing them inside.
As the overhead bedrock fractured into chalky smoke, Levan remembered the workshop: the hide vestments, the parchment drafts for an inverted engine.
He surveyed the rattling room—the massive core, copper conduits, tiered catwalks. This wasn't merely a tomb. His prior self had planned this exact rig not to seed blights, but to strip them.
“Anais,” Levan wheezed, ducking as a slab struck feet away. “The diagrams! This entire apparatus… it pulls the currents apart!”
Anais nodded, coughing grit into her sleeve. “Yes. But the circuit lacks a fulcrum. The engine down below wants to harden the blights into flesh. We must pull them back. Reverse the draw.” She glanced at the red implement in his grip.
Levan checked his needle. It vibrated violently against his knuckles, greedily drinking the airborne static. Not just an implement—a bypass pin. The final linkage.
The masonry screeched as supports buckled. The massive rotor, which had pumped raw corruption into Anais, now spun out of balance, spitting foul static as the depths rumbled. Anais pointed toward the quartz node embedded in its hub.
“There,” she rasped over the roar. “Drive it into the hub.”
He understood. The engine sought to stitch rot across the realm. He had to drag that tide back into the spindle, routing it straight through his flesh.
But it was the only way. He had to become the solution. The ultimate sponge. The final filter.
Bearing Anais's weight, Levan scrambled through the rain of gravel toward the rotor. He raised the red steel and jammed the tapered tip straight into the quartz node. The world screamed.
[ACTIVATION: UNRAVELING PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
A stark white glare sucked inward toward the hub. The purple murk vanished under the flash. Black venom surged backward through the steel shank, searing the tendons of Levan's forearm and driving into his marrow. His teeth ground together as muscles locked in spasm.
[WARNING: CRITICAL OVERLOAD IMMINENT. SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.]
Rubble suspended midair as the updraft inverted, pressure dragging stone back toward the core. Levan stood rigid, a grounded lightning rod swallowing the continent's foul discharge.
Beneath the splintering stone, a subterranean bellow tore upward from the crevasse. Far below, the primeval monstrosity recoiled as its design snapped like rotten thread.
Levan's vision blackened at the edges, his ribs trembling under the strain.
“Hold on, Levan,” Anais breathed, clasping his burning wrist. “Hold fast.”
The influx showed no bottom, blistering through his skin. From the pit beneath the broken floor, a vast, hostile mind locked onto his thread, dragging him downward into the dark.