"What was that?" Mirelle's voice was barely audible.
"I don't know." Roen cradled his arm, tears streaming down his face. "But I don't think we
want to meet it."
He grabbed the sphere with his good hand, shoved it into his pack, and started climbing.
Every movement was agony. Every breath a battle. But behind them, that roaring was
getting closer, and the lights were parting—making way for something else.
Something big.
They hauled themselves out of the pit and ran. Or limped, in Roen's case. The landscape
had changed again—the gray giving way to something darker, the ruins more recent, more
recognizable. A village had been here once. A battle had ended it.
Behind them, something massive pulled itself out of the pit. Roen didn't look back. He didn't
want to see what had been sleeping in the Severed Lands, waiting for someone stupid
enough to wake it.
They ran until they couldn't run anymore. Until the roaring faded into the distance. Until they
collapsed against a half-collapsed wall, gasping for breath.
"What... what was that?" Mirelle's face was white.
"I don't know." Roen clutched his injured arm. "A remnant. From the Thread-Wars.
Something that got left behind."
"And it woke up because of us."
"Because of the sphere." He looked at his pack. The glow had faded, but he could still feel
it—warm against his back. "Verant was right. We shouldn't have come this way."
"We didn't have a choice."
"There's always a choice." Roen laughed, then immediately regretted it. "We just keep
making bad ones."
Mirelle was quiet for a moment. Then: "The woman in your dream. She said you have
threads."
"I heard."
"Gray threads. Like Sable's."
"I heard." Roen looked at his hands. They looked the same as always. Calloused. Scarred.
Ordinary. But inside, something had shifted. The dream had felt too real, too intentional. And
the way the sphere had glowed...
"It means," he said slowly, "that nothing about my life has been an accident. Sable didn't pick
me randomly. This wasn't luck."
"You think she planned this?"
"I think she's a Fate-Weaver. Planning is what they do." He pushed himself upright, ignoring
the screaming protests from his body. "We need to keep moving. Get to the monastery. Get
answers."
"You're hurt. Badly."
"I know." He started walking. "But staying here is worse."
Mirelle followed. She didn't argue. They'd been together long enough that she knew when
talking was pointless.
They walked for hours. The landscape changed around them, slowly shifting from the
devastation of the deep Severed Lands to something almost habitable. The cracks in the
ground grew smaller. The ruins became older, more weathered. And eventually, impossibly,
they saw it.
Green.
A patch of grass, pushing through the cracked earth. Then a bush. Then a tree—gnarled and
ancient but alive. The Severed Lands were ending.
"We made it." Mirelle's voice was thick with disbelief. "We actually made it."
Roen didn't have the energy to respond. He kept walking, putting one foot in front of the
other, until the gray gave way to brown and the brown gave way to green and the silence
was broken by the sound of birds.
Then he collapsed.