The sky is not held by gravity.
It is stitched by the hands of those who remember the stars.
Location: The Void Expanse — Edge of the Broken Skies
The sky wept silence.
Not rain.
Not thunder.
Just silence—layered thick like frost on breath. The stars above no longer moved. Instead, they flickered in jagged patterns, as if written by a hand trembling in agony.
Vaelryn stepped from the mirror corridor into this voidscape, Kael close behind. The ground beneath them was brittle crystal—each step echoed like cracking glass. Above, black holes pulsed like wounds, each one stitched with glowing thread, barely holding reality together.
This was the Void Expanse—a rift between realms where the threads of reality frayed and tangled.
"We're not supposed to be here," Kael muttered.
"That's the point," Vaelryn answered. "Where the gods don't look, the truths hide."
A gust of air, cold and hollow, rushed past them, carrying whispers that didn't belong to this world:
"Stitch her eyes shut…"
"…drag the thread through her flame…"
"…burn the last needle…"
Kael gripped the hilt of his blade. "Something's watching us."
"They all are," Vaelryn replied. "We're in their loom now."
**_The Looming Path_**
Ahead stood a colossal arcway of stone, draped in star-thread banners, glowing faintly with constellations no living thing had ever named. Etched above the gate:
THREADWALKERS ONLY.
Vaelryn stepped forward. As her foot crossed the threshold, the world twisted—not forward, but sideways.
Suddenly, they stood not on the ground, but across webs strung through space. Each strand pulsed with starlight. Cities floated in the distance—built on starfish-shaped islands of time.
A voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere:
"Welcome to the Realm Between Threads."
A figure descended, suspended by threads from above.
She was cloaked in galaxies.
Her eyes glowed like nebulae.
Her hair trailed behind her like ribbons made of dusk.
"I am Nyrielle of the Threadwoken. Keeper of Broken Skies."
She landed before Vaelryn, not walking, but floating inches above the weave.
"I've come for a thread," Vaelryn said boldly.
"You've come for war," Nyrielle replied, her voice soft as starlight. "To mend, you must first unmake."
**_The Star-Weavers' Test_**
Nyrielle gestured. Threads coiled beneath their feet, forming a wide loom. From the edges, five other figures emerged—each one radiant with unique colors and energies:
Thorn of the Duskthread — who wove shadows into armor.
Calessa the Silver Knot — who tied songs into weather.
Garran the Blackspool — who unraveled history to see truths.
Vossin of the Warpblight — who stitched pain into prophecy.
Orielle Startear — who mended hearts with forgotten dreams.
"The Fifth Throne cannot be reached," Garran intoned. "Not without stitching your soul to the skies themselves."
"Then stitch me," Vaelryn said.
Orielle frowned. "If your thread snaps, all worlds unravel."
"Let them," Vaelryn whispered. "If they're bound by lies, they deserve to fall."
The Threadwoken whispered in unison. Then Nyrielle stepped forward with a glowing needle made of collapsed starlight.
"The Threadbinding begins."
**_The Threadbinding Ritual_**
Vaelryn knelt.
Kael stood behind her, hand on his blade.
Nyrielle pierced Vaelryn's chest—not in flesh, but in essence. A thread pulled from her flame, weaving outward like a river of violet.
The other Weavers gathered around.
They began chanting.
The thread connected to:
A memory of her sister's betrayal.
The burning of her village.
Her first vision of the Red Dragon.
The shattered Mirror Without Mercy.
The god Vael watching her with ash in his veins.
The thread trembled.
Threatened to break.
Kael stepped closer.
"She's breaking—stop it!"
Nyrielle held him back with a single look.
"She must choose: identity… or unity."
"What does that mean?!"
"To become Flame-Woven, she must either remain herself… or dissolve into every version of who she might become."
Inside the threadway, Vaelryn screamed.
She saw herself:
As a tyrant.
As a martyr.
As a mother.
As a dragon.
As a corpse beneath the Fifth Throne.
She reached for one… then stopped.
"I choose none.
I weave a new thread—of what has never existed."
A blast of light.
The thread restructured itself into a spiral, not a line.
Not past or future—but becoming.
The Weavers gasped.
Nyrielle's eyes widened.
"She has made her own weave…"
**_The Flame-Woven Ascension_**
Vaelryn rose.
Her body now pulsed with glowing, shifting lines of starlight embedded into her skin.
Not scars—coordinates.
"Where do they lead?" Kael asked.
Vaelryn smiled faintly.
"To where the Fifth Throne burns.
Where the gods fear to tread."
The Weavers bowed.
Nyrielle handed her a final gift:
A cloak made of unstitched night.
"It hides you from fate. Use it wisely."
Vaelryn turned.
Her new path unfurled beneath her feet—a silver road, spiraling upward beyond the stars.
Kael joined her.
"So… we head toward the place where flame was born?"
"No," she said. "We're going to the place where it died."
Meanwhile…
Far away, in a palace made of teeth and stolen sunlight, Vael-Sireborn stirred. He gazed at the sky.
His flame trembled.
"She's flame-woven now."
"She unmade the thread. That means…"
He clenched his fist.
"…the gods are no longer writing her path.
Which means she's ready… to choose her throne."
Behind him, Koryx laughed.
"So the end begins."
TO BE CONTINUED...
🔥 Chapter Hook — "Threads of Star and Shadow"
Flame meets fabric.
Truth threads a spiral.
And the Fifth Throne waits beneath a sky stitched in lies.
🪡 What is the true cost of weaving one's own fate?
🔥 Will Vaelryn's spiral become her salvation—or her unraveling?
🩸 And as the final throne nears… who else is claiming it?
📖 Next: Chapter 13 — "The Throne of Cinders and Choice"