The sky roared. The earth cracked. The distant seas boiled, though no fire burned.The creature that stepped out of the Third Gate was not merely a guardian of dimensions—it was an ancient entity, unnamed in any legend, because all who knew of it had long since perished.Its height reached the clouds. Its body was a fusion of mist and bone, its wings featherless chains dripping black blood. Horns cleaved the air, and its three faces—human, beast, and skull—shifted in and out with every word that fell from its mouths.“I am the Beginning. I am the Return. I am the Shadow of the First Light.”Darren gripped his sword, though his hand trembled. “What is that…?”Kaera looked at him with grim eyes. “That’s no mere creature. That is Zarvul’thar. The Gatekeeper. The one who created the guardians... and now comes to claim reality itself.”Seraphina, still cradling the not-yet-fully-recovered Kael, frowned. “You knew this would happen?”Kaera nodded slowly. “But I never knew... that he would c

The sky no longer looked like the sky—it had become a gray sheet, stretched and torn like forced fabric. The Nameless Tower was now fully revealed, looming tall in obsidian tones that seemed to reject all light. Doors on each of its sides slowly opened, and from within emerged ancient symbols, gleaming like dying stars.Amid the crumbling defenses, Lyra sat cross-legged. The Thread of Reality had formed a vortex of energy around her, wrapping her body like a cocoon of light. But within her mind, another world was forming—a place where time stood still, sound was silence, and a lone figure waited.A woman draped in a robe woven from light and shadow. Her eyes were silver. Her hair flowed like a stream of stars."Welcome to the Hollow Stitch," she said. Her voice was soft, yet every word echoed into the depth of Lyra’s soul."Who are you?" Lyra asked, though part of her already knew."I am the beginning of the Thread. I am the First Weaver. My name has been forgotten by history—but not

Everything moved in reverse—air, time, sound. The explosion from the lower levels of the tower hadn’t fully settled, but Lyra stood still in the eye of the storm. Her breath was heavy. In both her hands, two fates were held tight.Darren, Maeve, and Seraphina coughed from behind the rubble surrounding the spiral staircase. Their faces froze in shock as they saw the man—his face eerily similar to Lyra’s—standing beside a translucent being from the Gate.“Your father…?” Darren whispered, barely believing his own eyes.But Lyra only stared at the two figures. The torn cloak on her father’s shoulder revealed a gaping wound scorched by light—burned from prolonged exposure to the Gate’s energy. Yet despite his weakened form, his eyes burned with unextinguished strength.“Lyra…” her father’s voice was hoarse, “don’t trust the promises of illusion. The Forgotten don’t wish to build—they wish to erase. Yes, this world is full of scars… but scars are proof that we lived.”The being from the Gat

Lyra’s scream echoed through the ruins of the Nameless Tower. The deep crimson thread piercing her chest spread rapidly, coiling around her like ravenous roots trying to steal her soul from within. The First Stitching Knot blazed—too brightly—and began to crack along its edges, releasing sparks like miniature lightning bolts into the air.Darren collapsed, blood running down his temple. He tried to stand, but his legs trembled. “LYRA!” he shouted hoarsely, but his path was blocked by walls of thread growing like living flesh around Lyra.Maeve leapt again, her sword ablaze with dimension-slicing magic—SLAAK!—but the threads wouldn’t cut. Instead, her sword was knocked from her hands, and the threads struck back, slicing a deep wound into her shoulder.Seraphina unleashed a forbidden spell—The Soul-Siphoning Circle—a glowing ring blasted toward Zion’s threads: DUARRR!!A cloud of magic erupted in all directions.But as the dust settled, Zion still stood. His cloak billowed, and now a s

The sky, just barely recovered from the storm of threads and shadows, began to shift in hue. From blue to violet, then to blood-red. Not the red of a sunset—but the red of an open wound, like the flesh of reality torn wide open.Lyra looked up.“Something is ripping through the Seams of Reality… from the outside,” she murmured, barely believing her own words.Darren stood beside her, breath still ragged from the last battle. “I thought… we rewove the world. What else could get through?”Seraphina replied, her voice trembling, “Anything coming from beyond this Second Realm… means it’s from a place even the Unweavers can’t touch.”“The Third Realm,” Maeve whispered. “The realm before all threads. Before time. A possibility… that was never written.”CRAAAKKKKK!Dark crimson light—no, not real light, but a kind of fracture—cracked down from the sky to the earth. And from it, a rift slowly opened. Not a portal. Not a doorway.But… an eye.A massive, unblinking eye with no pupil opened in t