Cael awoke with ashes in his mouth and a second heartbeat thundering in his chest.
It wasn't his.
He lay on cracked stone, at the heart of the Dreamtomb, staring up at the fractured dome. The corpse of the Whispering God had vanished, leaving only black feathers drifting down like snow.
But within him… something had anchored itself.
A second Thread.
This one wasn't fire—it was silver, and it moved like living memory. It whispered names he didn't know yet mourned. It murmured forgotten words, war cries, lullabies.
"Veyra," he croaked.
She was already kneeling beside him, wrapping his hands with cloth. His fingertips were bleeding sigils into the air.
"What… what did I take?" Cael asked, his voice ragged.
She didn't meet his eyes. "You didn't take it. It chose you. The Second Thread—Time's Thread."
"Time?"
Veyra nodded grimly. "You'll see it soon enough. Or rather—you'll see what's ahead, and what should never have been."
Cael sat up, and the second heartbeat inside him quickened.
Visions Unbidden
The world shimmered.
Suddenly, he was not in the tomb—but on a battlefield, a hundred years in the future.
Dead stars littered the sky. He saw himself—older, crowned, sword broken. Kneeling before a boy with his face but different eyes. Colder eyes. A reflection warped by time.
"You still think you can change this?" the boy asked.
Then the vision ended. He was back in the tomb.
"This is what the Thread shows?" Cael murmured.
"Not shows. Warns," Veyra said.
The Choice of Threads
Back outside, the Hollow Sea had changed.
The waters had turned red. Where once stars drowned peacefully, now storms brewed. And on the far horizon, something massive stirred—a leviathan made of chain and smoke, awakening from its eon-long slumber.
"We've stayed too long," Veyra whispered."The dream is waking."
They fled. Cael's body burned—two Threads now pulled at him. Two fates. Two truths.
And both demanded blood.
Above the Hollow Sea
As they escaped the shore, a figure watched them from the clouds.
A woman in crimson robes, her face hidden beneath a porcelain mask cracked down the center.
"He holds two now," she said to the wind. "Good."
Behind her, soldiers stood in armor carved with shifting glyphs—The Threadhunters.
"Prepare the Black Tear," she said. "We march for the Ashvault.The Threadwalker must not find the third.