Chapter 97 – Arishma, the Weave Unraveled
The white of Eternal Light dissolved into rippling chromatic hues—colors shifting with thought, bending with memory, impossible to grasp with mere sight. Jean stood now at the edge of sanity, in a domain where truth and dream merged, where magic was not a tool, but a language, a living thing, a sea without end.
Here was Arishma, Pillar of Magic. The second born of the Seven.
> "Welcome, Wordbearer," came a voice like singing glass and shattering stars. "I am the Everwoven. I am Arishma."
Jean steadied herself. She had battled dragons. Faced the end of the world. Spoken with gods. But this place—it did not follow rule or form. It shifted with intention.
And Arishma… was intention.
The Pillar appeared as a fluid, ever-changing figure—human and inhuman, flickering between forms. One moment a child of dreams, the next a hooded sage older than time, then a dragon coiled in runes.
> "What is magic to you?" it asked.
Jean remembered the spellfire of the Magistery. The sacred rites of the Emissaries. The Word of Unmaking that once sang through her soul and silenced a flame-bound horror.
> "Magic," she said, "is the freedom to break what binds. The permission to believe the impossible."
> "Then what is truth?" Arishma whispered.
Jean hesitated. The Codex shimmered behind her, echoing with all truths and none.
> "Truth," she said, "is what remains after all illusion fades. And magic… is the will to test it."
A long ripple moved through the Weave.
> "Many seek magic to control. You seek it to change. That is dangerous, Jean Luther."
She didn't flinch. "Then test me."
Arishma's world collapsed—turning inside out. Illusions shattered and reformed. Jean's memories played against her—her failures, her weaknesses, the face of those she couldn't save.
But she endured.
She remembered that even gods fear change.
She was change.
When the storm passed, she stood unbroken.
> "You are not just a wielder of power," Arishma said. "You are its evolution."
A cascade of glyphs burst from its form—inscribing themselves around her aura, etching new understanding into her soul.
The Codex shone bright.
> "Seven."
Jean fell to her knees. Her breathing slowed. The Weave had bent—but not broken her.
The world of magic dissolved—
—and she stood once more before Aza Roth.
The dreamer in ink. The one who watched from beyond time.
He looked at her without eyes, his presence pressing against the Codex embedded within her soul.
> "You bear the final Word," he said. "You have walked through six Pillars."
> "Now," Aza Roth whispered, his voice vast and quiet, "face the Outcast. Face me."
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