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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.