Lin

  The projections vanished like breath in the cold: present one moment, gone the next, leaving only the memory of their shape in the air.

  For a long time, Lin did not move.

  She stood where the story had left her, feet planted on the barren plain, the star-sky still crowded and impossible above. The constellations held their chalk lines in place, quiet now, as if they too were listening to what remained inside her.

  Lin’s hands hung at her sides. Her fingers trembled from a deep pain inside her, like the aftershock of a note that had rung too close to the center of her chest.

  Himinsjár.

  She had never known his name until moments ago, and yet it sat in her like an old bruise. The grief she had felt through him, through the endless catalog of things no one mourned, was not the kind of sadness that broke loudly. It was the kind that hollowed a person out in quiet increments, until even the act of remembering became too heavy to lift.

  Tears slipped down her cheeks before she realized she was crying.

  She didn’t wipe them away.

  She stared up at the sky, blinking slowly, and for a moment she could swear she saw it the way he must have once seen it: no beauty or romance, but crowded with fragile sparks that deserved a witness.

  Her throat tightened.

  The thought came with a small, terrified tenderness: He tried.

  And then, worse, another thought followed, inevitable as gravity: And the universe made him pay for it.

  Lin’s breath hitched. She pressed a hand against her mouth as if she could hold the feeling in, as if it might spill out and flood the plain.

  She wanted to speak.

  To ask something, to curse something, to beg the sky to explain why a god made for mercy had been turned into Oblivion.

  But her voice stayed trapped behind her ribs.

  So she stood there instead, tears falling soundlessly, and let the silence keep her company.

  But the silence did not remain empty.

  It shifted.

  A low pulse rolled through the plain beneath Lin’s feet, subtle enough she might have missed it if she hadn’t been listening with more than her ears. The stars above her answered in kind, their lines brightening a fraction, then dimming, like a breath taken and released.

  Understanding came with it.

  Not words. Never words. Instead, a gentle convergence of feeling and meaning that settled against her thoughts the way harmony settles against a melody.

  You needed to see him.

  Lin’s shoulders shook. She squeezed her eyes shut, another tear slipping free.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why did I need to feel all of that?”

  The pulse returned, deeper this time, the rhythm steady and inexorable. With it came the weight of knowing:

  Himinsjár was lost to grief ages ago. Not fallen. Not corrupted by choice. Lost.

  What remained inside Gloymr was no longer a soul to be reached or a will to be reasoned with. It was a fragment, no more than a splinter of purpose, kept alive only because Oblivion fed on it.

  Lin’s chest tightened painfully. “But… there was something there,” she said through a hitching breath. “I could feel it. Like… like something was still hurting. Like something was still remembering.”

  The harmonics shifted, rising slightly, firmer now. Not cruel. Certain.

  That perception was the danger.

  Lin understood all at once. If she had gone to face Gloymr believing there was something left to save, something that could be reached through compassion or memory, she would have hesitated. She would have tried to redeem what could no longer be redeemed.

  That hesitation would have ended everything.

  The pulse swelled, resonant and clear: Gloymr was beyond saving.

  Not because he was evil, but because grief without end had consumed every other shape he once held. What remained was sorrow sharpened into hunger. Hate with no object left but existence itself.

  Lin sagged slightly where she stood, the truth landing heavier than any blow she had taken in battle. She dragged a sleeve across her face, smearing tears without really noticing.

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  “So you made me feel it,” she said quietly. “So I wouldn’t make that mistake.”

  The stars brightened in affirmation, their lines ringing with a low, solemn accord.

  Yes.

  Lin bowed her head, breath shuddering as she let the understanding settle. It hurt. It hurt in a way she knew would not fade quickly, if ever.

  But beneath the pain was something steadier taking root.

  Clarity.

  It did not make the grief smaller.

  It gave it edges.

  Lin stood with her head bowed, breathing through the ache in her chest until it stopped feeling like it might split her open. When she lifted her face again, her eyes found the stars without effort, as if they had been waiting for her attention.

  Another question pressed at her and refused to be ignored.

  “What happens,” she asked quietly, “if he succeeds?”

  The words felt dangerous the moment they left her mouth. As if naming the possibility gave it weight.

  The Pattern answered with a change in the sky.

  The harmonics deepened, the bright, ringing tones folding downward into something slower and more solemn. The constellations dimmed a fraction, their lines still intact but subdued, like voices lowering themselves out of respect for what was about to be said.

  Meaning flowed through Lin in a single, undeniable surge.

  If Gloymr succeeded...

  If Ariel and Holly were lost...

  Then nothing would stand between Oblivion and completion.

  Lin’s breath caught hard in her chest. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.

  The Pattern pressed on, the resonance steady and grave.

  Gods were bound by fate in ways mortals were not. Their power was immense, but fixed, constrained by the roles they embodied. They could resist. They could delay.

  They could not end him.

  That was why mortals mattered.

  The harmonies shifted, a new rhythm threading through the solemn chords, fierce in its simplicity.

  Three mortals.

  Not chosen for strength. Not crowned by prophecy.

  Chosen because they would choose each other.

  Because they would lay down their lives without hesitation.

  Because love, when unrestrained by fate, could move where divine will could not.

  Lin felt the truth of it resonate deep in her chest, alongside the images she had already seen: Ariel standing against impossible odds, Holly anchoring memory with stubborn, aching care.

  “And if they stop him?” Lin asked, her voice barely more than breath.

  The Pattern answered with a gentle swell, the harmonics lifting just enough to suggest possibility.

  If Gloymr were stopped, everything he had touched could begin to mend.

  Threads.

  Memories.

  Timelines bent and broken by his interference.

  Lin’s head snapped up.

  Her mind raced back to the impossible visions she had seen while traveling the corrupted thread; Moments that should never have existed.

  Her heart began to pound.

  “Those memories,” she said, words tumbling over each other. “The ones I saw before. Auntie Ariel at my recital. My aunties… older. Together. Were those...”

  The question never finished forming.

  The sky answered.

  The Pattern pulsed brighter than it ever had before, a surge of resonance so intense it washed the plain in light. Lin shielded her eyes, heart hammering as the glow filled everything.

  And when the light finally receded, something stood where there had been nothing before.

  A door.

  Vast and intricate, its surface traced with interlocking patterns that echoed the weave of the threads themselves. It stood a few dozen feet away, already open, spilling a radiance that hummed with purpose.

  Lin stared, breathless, understanding flooding in even before the meaning fully settled.

  That future had been real.

  It had been stolen.

  And in the light that poured from the door in slow, steady waves, threads sang. Just beneath the threshold of hearing, layered and interwoven beyond counting.

  The Pattern pulsed again.

  This time, the resonance carried warning.

  Lin felt it settle into her bones as clearly as gravity: the way ahead was dangerous. What waited beyond the door was not a trial meant to teach her, nor a vision meant to comfort her. It was a confrontation she must not lose.

  The harmonics shifted, subtle but insistent, and Lin understood that once she crossed this threshold there would be no retreat, no pause to gather herself. She would need to listen to the music of the threads. To the changes in their cadence. Because they alone would guide her toward what needed to be done to end Gloymr.

  Her breath trembled as she took a single step forward.

  The light from the doorway brushed against her skin, and at once her form responded. Gold flared beneath her clothes, lines of radiance tracing the familiar shape of her body as her light manifested without effort or hesitation. It felt natural now, like standing up straight after years of slouching.

  She stopped at the threshold and peered inside.

  Dozens—no, hundreds—of interwoven threads flowed away from her into the distance, luminous strands weaving and diverging in complex patterns. They carried echoes of song, some bright and steady, others tense with strain.

  And far beyond them—

  A tower rose from a land locked in ice.

  Its silhouette cut sharply against the pale horizon, stark and immovable, as if it had grown there rather than been built. Cold radiated from it even at this distance, a silence that pressed against the living music of the threads.

  Lin swallowed and turned back toward the sky, toward the unseen presence she could feel but not look upon. Her eyes still burned with tears, but something unshakable had settled behind them.

  “Thank you,” she said, voice steady despite the ache in her chest. “For showing me. For trusting me.”

  She drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

  “I’m going to stop him,” Lin said. “And I’m going to get my family back.”

  The Pattern answered with a final, steady pulse—neither blessing nor farewell, but acknowledgement.

  Lin stepped forward.

  The light swallowed her whole.

  Behind her, the door swung shut without sound, its glow sealing itself away until there was nothing left but starlight and the quiet certainty of what had been set in motion.