The decision wasn't easy.
Torian tried to stop him. Lyra pleaded. Even the Vale's elders warned him that the path led through cursed lands, forgotten by time.
But Aiden had made up his mind.
> "I can't just wait to be hunted or guided.
I have to understand what I am — from those who broke the loom first."
Only one place held that answer:
The Temple of the Threadless.
---
✦ Into the Grey Barrens
The Grey Barrens were wastelands beyond the eastern cliffs — once lush, now dust and glass, turned dead by a forgotten war of Seers and those who refused the Loom.
As Aiden crossed its edge, the wind carried whispers that weren't wind at all.
Voices.
> "Aiden…"
"Rewoven…"
"Return what was stolen..."
His dagger vibrated. The black thread inside his core curled tightly — alert, uneasy.
Then he saw it in the distance.
A temple carved into the bones of a fallen titan, half-buried in sand. Its towers twisted like thread spools. Its gates were sealed in runes no one had spoken in centuries.
But the moment Aiden stepped near…
> The runes unlocked on their own.
---
✦ Inside the Forbidden Walls
The temple was filled with echoes — not sounds, but impressions.
Thread carvings on the wall showed strange stories:
A group of masked figures cutting the threads of fate.
A blade made of nothing, able to sever time.
A child wrapped in stars, holding both light and void in balance.
In the temple's heart, Aiden found a throne made of dead threads.
And behind it — an empty loom, frozen mid-spin.
No threads moved. No fate was woven.
It was… waiting.
---
✦ The Voice Beneath the Temple
Just as Aiden stepped forward, the ground rumbled.
From beneath the temple, a voice spoke — low and ancient.
> "The Loom broke long before you, Starborn.
But you… you are its wound made flesh."
A figure rose from the cracked floor — not a wraith, but something older.
Its body was made of burned thread-ash, its eyes glowing faint blue.
"I am called Meyric, the last of the Threadless.
And you… are what we feared would one day return."
Aiden clenched his fists. "Feared? Why?"
Meyric stepped closer.
> "Because you are the second coming.
And the first… nearly ended the world."
---