Chapter 18 #2
But the magic had found its anchor. It surged toward Elias like lightning seeking ground—a massive bolt of corrupted power that illuminated the entire room in sickly green light. No time to run. No time to even process what was happening.
It struck him in the chest.
His back arched. Shoulders jerked backward. A sound escaped him—half gasp, half scream—as something dark and hungry poured into him. Through him. Rewriting him at some fundamental level, filling spaces that should be empty, corrupting everything it touched.
Even through the vision, the wrongness bled through—something that shouldn’t exist, breaking every natural law. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Elias dropped to his knees, hands splayed against the floorboards, head bowed. For a moment he was still, a statue carved from shadow and regret.
Then his shadow moved.
Not with him. Not in response to the firelight or any natural source of illumination.
It spread across the floor independently, lengthening, darkening, becoming something more solid than any shadow should be.
It flowed like liquid darkness, pooling beneath him before stretching toward the scattered threads still glowing faintly on the carpet.
Where the shadow touched them, they withered. Turned to ash. Simply ceased to exist.
“No!” Elowen scrambled toward him, her dress tangling around her legs. “No, no, no—Elias, please—”
He lifted his head slowly, as if the movement cost him everything. When his eyes met hers, my stomach dropped.
They had changed.
“What—” His voice came out layered, as if multiple voices spoke in unison. His own familiar tone underlaid with something colder, older, wrong. “What have you done to me?”
The question hung in the air like a curse.
Elowen's face crumpled. “I was trying to save them. The Weavers. They're going to hunt us, I saw it in the threads, and I thought—I thought if I could anchor us to memory itself, make it impossible for us to be completely erased—”
“You should have left it alone,” he said.
The vision fractured—
Reality splintered into a thousand glittering shards, each one reflecting a different moment, a different possibility, a different version of how this could have ended. The sound distorted, Elowen's sobs becoming wind chimes, breaking glass becoming silence.
I was falling—
Spinning—
The underground chamber slammed back into focus with enough force to drive me to my knees.
I gasped, my lungs burning as if I'd been there, actually breathed that copper-sharp air. Tears streamed down my face—not mine, hers. Elowen's grief, her desperation, her horror at what she'd accidentally created.
“That. . . what was that? What happened to him?”
The chamber was silent. Every Weaver watched me with varying expressions—pity, understanding, grim acceptance. They'd all seen this vision before. They all knew how the story ended.
Ysella knelt beside me, her ancient face gentle.
“That was Elowen. One of the most powerful Weavers.” Her voice was soft but carried clearly in the hushed space.
“She saw our future in the Weave. Attempted a forbidden temporal anchor that would bind all Weavers to memory itself, ensuring we could never be completely erased from history.”
“But the Weave backfired,” Syra continued, jaw set. “The power she'd channeled needed a living vessel to ground itself. A sacrifice to contain the magic and prevent it from destroying everything. Elowen thought she could control it. She was wrong.”
“And when her husband walked in—” I couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't voice what I'd witnessed.
“The magic took him instead,” Lorien said quietly from behind me. “The magic corrupted him. Then it took Elowen. Unraveling her from the Weave. The grief of losing his wife paired with the magic inside of him. . . he became the very thing his wife tried to stop. A weapon designed to erase Weavers.”
My stomach dropped. “The Unraveler.”
“Yes,” Ysella confirmed. “The man who started the hunts. Who began the systematic erasure of every Weaver in England.”
I pressed my palms against the cold stone floor, needing something solid to anchor me because my mind was reeling. “She tried to save you. And instead she created—”
“The very thing that would destroy us,” Syra finished. “That's the cruel irony of it. Elowen loved her people. She was willing to risk everything to protect them.” Her expression hardened. “And that love created our greatest enemy.”
I swallowed hard. “And no one stopped it?”
Ysella’s mouth tightened. “We tried. But Elowen had been our strongest. Without her we didn’t know how to fight what was coming. The unraveling spread like a plague, picking us off one by one. And then. . .”
She hesitated.
I leaned forward. “Then what?”
“Here you are.”
A chill ran through me. The weight of her words pressed down like an unseen force, curling around my ribs.
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve never—”
“You don’t just see the threads,” Ysella interrupted, stepping closer. “You can restore them.”
My skin prickled.
“I mend,” said Lorien, the young Weaver who had been so patient with me.
“I stitch back what is frayed. Bonders connect what is separate, build barriers between worlds. Seers glimpse what may come.” She paused, exchanging a look with the others.
“But you. . .” She trailed off, hesitating before she reached out, her fingers hovering over my wrist. “You can do more. You can weave together what was lost—severed.”
A murmur passed through the gathered Weavers—low, nervous. Some exchanged glances. One stepped back as if afraid to be too close.
“No one should be able to restore a severed thread,” someone whispered. “Not even Elowen could do it without cost.”
I exhaled sharply, stepping back. “No. That’s impossible.”
“You alone hold the power to bring back what was lost,” Ysella murmured. “Not just to mend—but to reconnect. To pull the unraveled back into the weave itself.”
The room swayed, and I braced myself against the stone ground. My throat clenched tight.
“But. . .” I swallowed. “At what cost?”
Silence.
Then, Ysella spoke. “We don’t know. But all power comes with a price.”
The words settled over me like a shroud.
The price. The cost.
I forced down the lump in my throat and lifted my chin. “Then teach me,” I said. “Help me understand what I am.”
Ysella and Syra exchanged a look.
Then they nodded.
“Then we begin.”