Beneath the surface of the Sea of Glass, where drowned cities slumber and sunlight filters like fractured memory, lies the Sanctuary of the Fractured Choir.
It is not a place of beauty.
It is a place of distortion—where stone spirals bleed into the air, staircases lead nowhere, and the architecture itself seems to hum with forgotten songs. Those who enter rarely leave the same. Some don't leave at all.
There, the prophets sing not to be heard, but to be understood by the Loom itself.
Today, they did not sing.
They screamed.
At the center of the Sanctuary stood Mother Anex.
Her robes were stitched from the skin of things that never were. Her eyes wept black ichor not from pain, but from clarity. She saw not with sight—but with threads. Her voice was a melody of broken instruments.
The other prophets had collapsed, clutching their Sigils, blood leaking from their ears, their glyphs burning with unnatural resonance.
Anex stood calmly in the chaos.
"He passed the Crucible," she whispered. "The Threadwalker has become the Threadbound."
A younger Seer approached, trembling, his voice barely more than a breath.
"Is it truly him? The one from the Dream of the Ninth Echo?"
Mother Anex turned her gaze to him—and for a moment, he glimpsed a spiral of stars in her eyes.
"Yes. Kael has awakened. And with him, the Patternless Thread."
Within the Choir's Mirror Wells, visions twisted—future, past, possible, and false all overlapping. In one pool, Kael stood as a savior draped in silver fire. In another, he scorched the Loom to ash. And in another… he sat on a throne of silence, staring blankly as the world collapsed.
Anex placed a single hand on the glass.
"We must reach him first."
Behind her, a host of dream-echoed prophets whispered and twitched. Some chanted his name. Others clawed at their own skin, carving spirals into their flesh, hoping the blood would carry their vision to him.
Anex closed her eyes.
She began to sing.
Her voice—clear and mournful—rippled across the Sanctuary. The glass shimmered. Sigils flared. Across the continent, those attuned to the deeper frequencies of the Loom shuddered.
And far away—wherever Kael had landed—a single verse reached his mind:
"We sang before the stars.
We will sing after the end.
Come, O unbound flame,
And rewrite the song of the world."