The sky over the mortal realm cracked like glass.
Stars dimmed, and threads of golden light unraveled in the heavens, falling like dying fireflies toward the earth. Mingyao stood atop the remnants of the Cloudwatcher Spire, the black pendant around his neck pulsing like a frightened heartbeat.
"The Loom is failing," whispered Liuxian. Her eyes glowed faintly as she traced the falling threads with her gaze. "Someone is tampering with it... or worse—trying to sever it entirely."
Below them, chaos reigned. Trees aged and withered in seconds. Mountains shifted and screamed, their roots torn from ancient laws. Time skipped like a shattered reel, and entire villages blinked out of existence.
"If it unravels completely," said Tianzuo, arriving behind them with a limp and fresh wounds across his side, "then nothing remains. Not even memory."
Mingyao clenched his fists. He had spent his whole life resisting destiny—now he might not even have a world to resist in.
At the Heart of the Realms—where Heaven, Earth, and the Nether converged—stood the Loom of Fate, a celestial mechanism crafted by the spirits who forged creation. It hovered inside a starless void, suspended by threads of possibility and guarded by ancient beings.
Or at least, it was.
When Mingyao and his allies arrived, they found the loom weeping light.
Two of the Weavers lay dead.
The third, an old spirit named Wuyan, was barely breathing, his hands burned and broken.
"Who did this?" Mingyao demanded, kneeling beside him.
Wuyan struggled to speak, blood trailing from his lips. "She... she said she would make the world pure again... that fate must be clean."
"Who?"
A familiar voice echoed from the shadows.
"Yuexian."
Yanshi stepped forward, eyes wide. "The goddess of Silence? I thought she vanished before the first war."
Liuxian looked grim. "She didn't vanish. She's been waiting. And now she's cut the thread that binds the Loom to the throne."
A low tremor shook the realm. The Loom began to spin wildly, golden threads snapping and twisting. Spectral echoes of people and places spilled into the void, screaming as they vanished.
"We have to repair it," Mingyao said. "Or at least slow the damage."
Wuyan shook his head. "Only one born of all realms can hold the Loom steady now. Only one who bears the mark of storm, shadow, and fire."
Everyone turned to Mingyao.
The task was impossible.
He stepped onto the loom's platform, the black pendant glowing hot. Threads whipped around him like blades. His skin tore, his mind buckled—but he held.
For every thread he touched, a memory surfaced: Tianzi's laughter, his mother Lianhua's final whisper, the look in his father's eyes when he first called him son.
He weaved those memories back into the threads. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But enough to hold them together.
Liuxian and Yanshi fought back the twisted shades of time that tried to stop them—echoes of Yuexian's wrath.
But then came the betrayal.
Tianzuo stumbled, clutching his chest. A dagger gleamed, soaked in blood.
Behind him stood Tanyu—once ally, now corrupted by fate's promise of a reborn paradise.
"He would've undone everything," Tanyu snarled. "The heavens need a firm hand, not a broken child."
Mingyao screamed, pushing his power through the loom. A great burst of light surged outward, forcing the shades back.
Yanshi caught Tianzuo as he fell.
"You'll live," she whispered.
But they both knew it was a lie.
At the final hour, the last weave held—barely. The Loom spun slow and steady, though many of its threads were burnt and knotted.
Mingyao collapsed beside it, exhausted, bloodied.
Liuxian knelt beside him. "You held the world together."
He laughed bitterly. "For now."
The sky outside began to brighten.
But in the shadows beyond creation, Yuexian watched. And smiled.
"Let them weave," she whispered. "For I will unmake."