She woke up wrong.
Not injured. Not bleeding. Not burned.
Just... wrong.
The silence was the first thing Rin noticed. Not the kind that comes after violence, but something far older. A silence that hummed underneath her skin like something waiting to be acknowledged.
Her eyes fluttered open to golden fields swaying under a sky that couldn't make up its mind—sunlight that wasn't quite warm, clouds that weren't quite moving. The horizon stretched too far. Like reality itself was tired of closing the distance.
No throne. No burning marks on her skin.
No Kael.
No Juno.
No Mace.
No Azerai.
Only her.
And something else.
She sat up slowly, hands sinking into soil that felt too soft, too alive, like breathing fabric. She inhaled sharply—
The air tasted… still.
Like nothing had ever died here.
Her first instinct was to check for her blade.
Gone.
Her second was to check for the mark on her body.
Gone.
But even in its absence, she could still feel it—a ghost of heat under her skin. That phantom burn of being chosen, cursed, tied to something larger.
The absence was almost more violent than its presence.
> Where am I?
The question echoed inside her mind but didn't dare reach her lips.
She stood, boots pressing into the golden grass as if it might swallow her whole. As she turned, she saw the world unfolding like a painting wrapped around her vision:
Trees that hung their roots in the sky.
Rivers curling through the air like glass serpents.
Mountains that floated on their sides, like indifferent gods watching from impossible angles.
This world wasn't broken.
It simply never obeyed.
It had never been built on threads.
It had never known the loom.
Hours passed. Or maybe it was days. Or maybe time had dissolved entirely.
The sky didn't darken the way it was supposed to. Instead, it shifted between hues of pale violet, bruised blue, and soft pink, like a wound that never scabbed. She couldn't tell if the stars above were stars at all or simply holes burned into the fabric of this reality.
And then she found them.
People.
A village sat nestled between twisted trees and floating lakes. Strange, yet painfully serene. The villagers looked almost normal—at a glance.
They wore simple clothing stitched with symbols that twisted when she tried to read them. Their eyes reflected no fear, no ambition, no regret. Only placid, glassy kindness. As though their souls had been carefully emptied and polished.
The moment they saw her, they smiled.
As though she had always belonged.
An elder approached, his movements fluid like smoke.
> "Welcome back, Rin."
Her blood ran cold.
They knew her name.
Her real name.
"I've never been here." Her voice cracked under the weight of her words.
The elder only smiled, his eyes glimmering with something… hollow.
> "Of course you have. You chose not to remember."
They offered her food.
Warm, fresh, perfect.
They offered her rest.
Soft bedding beneath arching roots.
They sang lullabies under skies that wept silver rain.
And Rin sat there.
Body fed.
Mind spinning.
Every part of her screamed that this was wrong.
This wasn't freedom.
This was sterilized existence.
Perfect. Controlled. Beautifully empty.
One child, no older than ten, sat beside her that evening, staring at her like a wide-eyed specter.
"You're lucky," the girl said.
Rin barely whispered:
> "Why?"
"You escaped before the threads could finish you."
> Escaped?
Rin felt her stomach twist.
The girl tilted her head, speaking in that sing-song tone children have when they don't understand the weight of their words.
> "You slipped out before they could bind you fully. Before the loom decided who you would be."
Her head spun.
The marks.
The rebellion.
Kael's voice.
Mace's shield.
Juno's tattoos.
Azerai's broken existence.
All of it was threads.
Threads she had been made to follow.
But here?
No throne ruled.
No marks burned.
Yet as she looked at these people—these smiling, placid ghosts—she saw it clearly:
No war.
No suffering.
No purpose.
Freedom without will.
Choice without consequence.
Life without meaning.
The elder approached again, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
> "You don't have to return, Rin.
There's nothing left for you beyond this.
The throne is gone. The loom has forgotten you.
Stay. Be at peace."
Peace.
It sounded like death dressed in softer clothes.
As she stared up into the colorless sky again, something rippled across it.
A blink.
An impossible eye, vast and ancient, watching from the layers of broken skies above.
The Watcher.
The same presence Kael had felt.
Older than the throne.
Older than the threads.
Not a god.
Not fate.
Just a gaze.
Observing.
Her chest tightened.
> This isn't freedom.
This is erasure with prettier walls.
A pulse ignited inside her chest—the faint echo of her mark.
It wasn't gone.
It was dormant. Waiting.
> We are not done.
She stood, breath steady, mind sharpened.
"I won't stay here," she said quietly.
Not for them.
Not for herself.
Not for the throne.
Not for the eye.
Rin turned her back on the smiling village, walking toward the unknown horizon.
Her mark pulsed once again—faint, but alive.
Freedom isn't the absence of chains.
It's the fight to break them.