It was not a place.
It was not a palace, nor a city, nor a hall. It was an emptiness carved with purpose, a wound in reality dressed in majesty. And Cael had just stepped inside it.
The Threadgate closed behind him without a sound.No creak. No boom. Just silence.
The kind of silence that screams in every heartbeat.
Vyn stood beside him, one hand hovering over her satchel like she expected something—everything—to go wrong.
"It's cold," Cael whispered.
"No," Vyn said, her eyes unfocused. "It's dead."
They walked through a gallery of vanished gods.
Statues lined the walls—if they could even be called that. Each was a monument to something ancient, long forgotten. One had a face like a river. Another, wings made from folded centuries. All were bound in threads that bled light like veins of lightning across a corpse.
But none had eyes.
Eyes had been taken.
Or offered.
Vyn finally spoke. "The Hollow Court was where the old gods judged mortal fate. Then they tried to rule it. And then… they vanished."
Cael stopped walking. "And the Hollow Prince?"
"He's what remains when fate is abused long enough.A god unmade. A king without a throne."
At the end of the gallery, the world dropped away.
Literally.
Cael stepped forward and found himself standing on nothing. Beneath him was an abyss—not black, not void, but a sea of unfinished stories. Millions. Maybe billions. Threads unraveled mid-thought, half-written dreams, lives that never got to live.
And across that sea... stood the throne.
The Throne of Hollow Judgment.
It pulsed with the sound of breathing. Not mechanical, not human—but conceptual. The idea of breath.
The Hollow Prince waited there. Still faceless. Still holding that mirror that showed what you feared most about yourself.
"Welcome," he said. "To the final stitch."
Vyn held Cael back.
"You don't have to do this."
"Yes," Cael said, taking a step forward. "I do."
Because the thread in his pocket was screaming again. Because the thread wasn't just power anymore—it was memory, grief, identity.It was his mother's voice.His father's ghost.His choices.
"Sit," the Hollow Prince commanded.
Cael climbed the invisible steps toward the throne.
The sea of unfinished lives writhed below him, echoing names he almost recognized.(One sounded like his. Another sounded like Vyn.)
"You know why you're here?" the Prince asked.
"To be judged?"
"To be revealed."
A long pause.
Then, the Prince pointed to the mirror.
"Look."
Cael saw:
—Himself as a boy, trying to hold a broken sword.—His hand letting go of Vyn once in another life.—Him murdering someone with joy.—Him saving thousands by sacrificing a friend.—Him on a throne.—Him in a grave.
The mirror cracked.
"You are Threadborn," the Hollow Prince said. "Your fate was never written. You are the ink. The stain. The fire in the spool."
"Then why am I here?" Cael demanded.
The Prince stood. For the first time, the throne groaned.
"To choose."
Suddenly, from the abyss, three thrones rose.
One of Ash, for the Wanderer King—a ruler who burns everything behind him.
One of Glass, for the Silent Tyrant—a ruler who watches fate and never acts unless the world begs.
One of Thread, for the Dreamt Emperor—a ruler who writes fate anew, but risks madness with every stroke.
The Hollow Prince vanished.
Cael was alone.
Three thrones. One soul.
Choose.
Back in the gallery, Vyn wept.
Because she remembered this place now.Because she had been here before.Because the last person she watched enter never came back.
And Cael?
He sat.
Not on the Ash.
Not on the Glass.
But on the Thread.
And for the briefest moment, the sea of unfinished stories shivered.
Because someone just picked up the pen