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Elowen.

The name resonated through me like a tuning fork struck against bone. I didn't know how I knew it—the vision itself seemed to whisper it directly into my consciousness—but I did. And she was attempting something forbidden.

I could feel it in the way reality bent around her. In the way the fire flickered in response to magic it shouldn't sense. In the way shadows gathered in the corners of the room, watching, waiting. She was weaving something that made the universe itself recoil. And she knew it.

I could see the knowledge in the tight line of her jaw, the desperate set of her shoulders, the way her eyes never left the threads even as tears gathered at the corners. This wasn't ignorantly dabbling. This was someone who understood exactly what she was attempting—and was doing it anyway.

“Just one stitch,” she whispered. “Just one change to save them all.”

The threads pulled tighter. Forming a knot so intricate, so perfect, that for one crystalline moment it seemed to hold all of creation in balance. The room went still. Even the fire froze mid-flicker.

Elowen's breath caught. Hope blazed across her features—raw, desperate hope that made my chest ache.

“Please,” she breathed. “Please work.”

For one heartbeat, it held.

Then everything shattered.

The weave collapsed with a sound that shouldn't exist—like reality itself tearing at its seams, the laws of physics screaming in protest. An earsplitting snap echoed through the room, as if the universe itself shuddered apart. Candles flared into blinding brilliance before snuffing out. A gas lamp shattered, spilling whale oil across the rug.

The air turned solid. Crushing. Impossible to breathe through, even though I didn't need to breathe in this vision. The pressure built anyway, crushing my chest, pounding in my ears, trying to erase me altogether.

And the magic⁠—

God, the magic turned feral.

It thrashed through the room like a wounded animal, no longer constrained by Elowen's will or the pattern she'd tried to impose on it. I could feel its hunger, its desperation, its terrible, mindless need to anchor itself to something real, something living, something that could ground the massive power she'd unleashed.

“No—” Elowen's voice was barely audible over the chaos. “No, no, no⁠—”

She tried to grab the threads, to pull them back under control, but they slipped through her fingers like water. Worse than water—like something alive that refused to be contained.

The door burst open. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway, his dark coat gaping open, his hair windswept as if he'd been running. For a moment he was frozen, taking in the scene—the shattered lamp, the wild magic tearing through the room, what I could only assume was his wife kneeling in the center of devastation.

“Elowen!” The name tore from his throat, rough with horror and confusion. “What have you done?”

“Elias—” She reached toward him, one hand stretching across the space between them. Her fingers were still glowing faintly with residual magic, threads of gold clinging to her skin like cobwebs. “I can fix it, I can⁠—”

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.