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“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.”

CHAPTER 19

LILY

The afternoon sun filtered through the canopy, casting shifting patches of light onto the forest floor as we moved through the trees. The woods smelled of damp earth and pine. The crisp autumn air cooled the sweat at the back of my neck.

I walked beside Lorien, still reeling from everything I had learned with the Weavers. My thoughts tangled like the threads they claimed were hidden inside me. I wasn’t ready to believe that I was meant for something bigger. And yet, I had agreed to return. Agreed to train, to learn how to use this power I barely understood. If they would help me find my way back home after.

Beside us, Syra walked in silence, her sharp eyes always scanning the woods ahead. She hadn’t said much since the threads had been revealed, but her presence had weight. Where Ysella offered warmth and patience, Syra offered clarity—and sometimes, the brutal kind.

Syra had pulled me aside earlier. “You need to tell them how you got here? What brought you back to us?”

I didn't know where to begin.

But I told them. About the necklace. About the pendant my gran had left me, the way it had shattered. About waking up in the forest, breathless and terrified, in a world I didn’t understand.

Syra had gone very still. “Describe it again. Every detail.”

So I did. The gold casing. The intricate engravings. The way the sand inside had seemed to glow from within.

“Elowen's pendant,” Ysella had breathed, and something like awe had crept into her voice. “The failsafe. We thought it was lost when she—” She'd stopped herself, exchanged a glance with her sister.

“But how did your grandmother get it?” Syra had demanded. “The pendant was meant to be passed down through the Weaver line—from one powerful Weaver to the next, always seeking the one with the strongest connection to the Weave. It disappeared the night Elowen vanished. We've been searching for it ever since.”

“I don't know,” I'd admitted. “Gran never told me about it. Would never even let me touch the box it was in.”

Syra had studied me with those sharp, assessing eyes. “You said there is no magic in your time. No Weavers. Somehow your bloodline locked away their magic. And yet the necklace still found you. You, my girl, are far more connected to this than you realize. The pendant chose you for a reason.”

The pieces clicked into place—not with the crushing weight of destiny, but with the sharp clarity of a researcher finally seeing the pattern she'd been tracing for years.