The Gate didn't open.
It breathed.
Woven from paradox and starlight, it pulsed as if alive, each strand a locked memory from the beginning of time. Before Nova could take another step, the threads unraveled—not to let them through, but to test them again.
"It's reacting to us," Ada whispered.
Veylin nodded grimly. "Or it's reacting to him," he said, glancing at Nova.
"Because I broke the Oath?"
"No," Veylin said. "Because you carry something older."
Nova stepped forward. The Gate shimmered, then whispered his name—not aloud, but deep in the marrow of his thoughts.
Nova.
Not his title.
Not his power.
Just his name.
He paused. "Do we go in?"
The sky above flickered.
The Herald's voice echoed from behind them, disembodied now: "You do not enter the Gate. You are unraveled into it."
And before anyone could answer, the world around them vanished.
*--------------*
Time did not pass inside the Gate.
It spiraled.
The three found themselves separated.
Nova stood on a shifting platform of light surrounded by echoes—glimpses of a future he had never lived. He saw the Loom rebuilt. He saw cities floating in the sky. He saw a council of shadows seated around a fire that would never die.
Then he saw himself—aged, quiet, with eyes that held galaxies of sorrow.
"Are you him?" Nova asked.
The elder Nova turned slowly. "I am what you might become… if you keep walking this path."
"And if I stop?"
"You'll become him instead."
From behind the shifting light came another figure—Mark Patro.
Not the tyrant.
Not the Chairman.
A broken man in blood-stained robes, holding something that shimmered like a dying sun.
"I tried to warn them," Mark whispered. "But they called it treason."
Nova stepped back. "What is that?"
Mark looked down at the flickering sphere. "The Core Memory. The first truth. The first lie. The first fracture."
Nova blinked.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer standing.
He was falling.
*--------------*
Ada stood in a forest made of thought.
Trees whispered in equations. Leaves rustled in forgotten languages. She walked a path that rebuilt itself with every step.
In the distance, she saw someone waiting.
A child.
Herself.
The younger Ada looked up, smiling. "You always knew how to find the truth."
Ada knelt, swallowing a tight knot in her throat. "No. I only knew how to chase it."
The child held out a flower—woven of wind and memory. "Then chase this."
She did.
And the forest changed.
Stone ruins emerged beneath the roots. Symbols etched into the walls called to her, symbols matching the sigil on Nova's neck.
The same mark used by the Ancient Ones.
But older.
Older than history.
*--------------*
Veylin faced a city with no gravity.
Floating libraries, inverted towers, and silent drones drifted above a bottomless void. He recognized it instantly.
"The First Axis," he muttered.
The lost center of time. Destroyed during the Thread Collapse.
And yet here it was—alive.
He drifted toward the largest tower, where a throne hovered upside down, unoccupied. At its base were three bodies, all wearing the same armor he once wore.
Technoseers.
One of them was him.
Veylin gritted his teeth. "So this is what they erased."
He heard a voice behind him. Not cruel. Not angry.
Just… curious.
"You were never erased. Only forgotten."
He turned and saw a machine. Or a man. Or both. Its body hummed with memory and regret.
"Who are you?" Veylin asked.
"I am what your kind feared becoming. The memory that didn't fade."
*-------------*
Nova landed hard—back in the Gate's center, alone.
The spiral collapsed behind him.
Then Ada appeared, dazed but unharmed. Veylin followed, silent and pale. The threads wove them back together, forming a bridge toward a final platform.
At the center of that platform stood a monument.
Black stone.
No symbols.
Just a single name etched in light:
"The First Breaker."
Below the name, a phrase glowed:
"The one who struck the Loom, not to destroy it, but to awaken what it kept asleep."
Nova reached out, his fingers brushing the name.
Instantly, memories not his own flooded into him.
Battles fought before time.
Ancient Ones arguing in silent light.
A voice—familiar but vast—whispered, "I was the beginning. I will be the end. You are neither."
*--------------*
They woke.
Not in the Gate.
But beyond it.
A world of darkness and color. Of skies that bled stories and oceans that rippled with thought.
"This place…" Ada whispered. "Is this the First World?"
"No," Veylin said. "It's before the First World."
They stood on a cliff overlooking a city that defied reality. Towers floated. Streets curved like spirals. At the center was a temple—glowing with the exact sigil that had burned itself into Nova's skin.
And at the highest point of the temple stood a figure.
Wrapped in light.
Waiting.
Nova stepped forward.
He didn't need to ask who it was.
He already knew.
The First Breaker had returned.
And he had been waiting for Nova.
*--------------*