The chamber beyond the door was impossibly vast.
Ahri blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dark—not an absence of light, but a living shadow that swallowed sound and shimmered at the edges like ripples in black silk. The air inside felt ancient, not with dust or decay, but with weight. As though time itself pooled here, congealed into something thick and knowing.
They stepped forward, their footsteps making no echo. Jin moved beside her, silver-blue threads spiraling softly from her hands like wisps of breath in winter. The Elder followed, staff in hand, every charm on it trembling in response to what lay ahead.
In the center of the chamber was a single altar.
It floated above the floor, suspended by threads of gold, red, and black—interwoven in a pattern too complex to name. Atop it rested a heart. Not made of flesh, but of crystal, cracked and glowing from within.
It pulsed.
Not like a beating heart, but like a knot—tightening and loosening, holding something in, or maybe holding something back.
Ahri's breath caught. "What… is it?"
The Elder answered without moving closer. "The Heart of Binding." A relic from the earliest Spirit Weavers. Before the Orders, before the temples. This is where stories were tethered before they became legend."
Jin's eyes didn't leave the heart. "Why is it cracked?"
"Because someone tried to unmake it," the Elder said quietly. "And failed."
Ahri stepped closer, her golden thread reacting immediately—writhing, stretching, pulled taut toward the heart like it was trying to return to something lost. Her fingers twitched. She could feel voices brushing the edge of her mind—threads not yet spoken, but waiting.
Then something shifted.
The golden thread around her wrist unraveled slightly—not fraying, but loosening, like an invitation.
And something moved behind the altar.
Ahri froze. Jin's threads bristled defensively. The Elder raised his staff.
A shape emerged, slow and deliberate. Pale, barefoot, draped in layers of black robes that bled smoke into the air. From her cracked fox mask, red threads spilled like veins across her arms.
Miran.
The Severed Woman.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, her voice soft and unhurried. "But then again, neither should I."
Ahri instinctively took a step back. Her mind reeled. How had Miran found them so quickly? Or had she always been here?
"You followed the pulse," Miran continued, circling the Heart like a predator walking a familiar grave. "But you don't know what it binds. You think this is a relic of your past, girl. But it is your future that's trapped inside it."
The Elder's eyes narrowed. "This place is sacred. You have no right—"
"No, right?" Miran tilted her head. "It was mine, once. We all served the threads. Until they lied. Until they chose who would be forgotten."
Her mask shifted as she turned toward Ahri. "Your mother tried to stop me. She failed. Just as you will."
Ahri clenched her fists. "What did you do to her?"
Miran raised a single hand. The threads around her flickered like candle candleflames caught in a storm.
"I severed her fate… but she didn't die. No, not truly. Her thread unraveled in a way that not even I understood. That's why you're still tied to this world, Threadseer. She's still out there. Trapped… or hiding."
The crystal heart behind her pulsed again—violently.
A fracture spread down its surface, glowing bright.
"You came to unlock the past," Miran said. "Let me show you what happens when you succeed."
She raised both hands—and the chamber erupted in light.
Threads burst from the altar in a cyclone of color—gold, crimson, violet, and black—all screaming with memory. Visions surged into Ahri's mind: a woman in a fox mask weeping beside a cradle, Jin as a child banishing a spirit by accident, and the Elder burying a charm beneath a blood-soaked moon. And beneath it all—the whisper of a forgotten fox spirit, laughing softly as the world unraveled.
Ahri screamed, but her body didn't move. She was suspended in the weave, caught between threads.
A voice—familiar and foreign—slipped into her thoughts:
You are not ready. But the thread remembers.
And just as suddenly—it stopped.
Ahri collapsed to her knees, gasping.
Miran was gone.
The heart no longer pulsed. It had shattered, its fragments scattered across the floor like broken promises.
Silence fell.
Jin rushed to Ahri's side. "Are you alright?"
Ahri nodded slowly, still trembling. "She's not trying to kill me. Not yet. She's trying to push me toward something. I don't know what, but… I think it's tied to my mother."
The Elder stared at the broken altar, his expression unreadable. "If the Heart is broken, then the bindings that held certain memories—certain spirits—may no longer apply."
Ahri stood, looking at the shards. Each one pulsed faintly with light.
"What now?" Jin asked.
Ahri looked toward the darkness, where Miran had vanished.
"We chase the echo," she said. "We find the next thread. And we uncover the truth. All of it."
From far above the chamber, a faint howling echoed—low, drawn-out, and hungry.
Not wind.
Not spirit.
Something is waking.