The threads quivered, snapping like brittle glass as the darkness pressed closer. At first, it was only a tide—black oil bleeding through light. Then, from that tide, shapes emerged.
They were not consistent. Each blink reshaped them: a maw of teeth, a shroud of wings, a storm of knives, a hollow shell. Yet beneath every form, Nora sensed the same truth: hunger without end.
The Unmakers.
The faceless being faltered, its galaxy-flesh dimming under their approach. “You were not meant to face them here.”
But the Unmakers had already noticed her. A dozen shifting heads snapped in unison, eyeless gazes locking onto her light. The sword blazed brighter, betraying her presence.
They moved not by walking or flying, but by consuming space itself. Wherever they passed, threads withered and stars blinked out, leaving silence in their wake.
The whispers of the stars turned to cries. Nora… hold fast…
One Unmaker lunged. Its form splintered into tendrils of shadow, each a serrated edge of nothingness. Nora met them instinctively with her sword, and the blade sang—not with sound, but with a vibration that rattled her bones. Threads reknit themselves around her in response.
Another surged from the left, a storm of faceless masks, each screaming in a language that bit at her teeth. She swung the sword, arcs of light slicing through the darkness. The screams faltered, torn apart mid-echo.
Still, the tide pressed closer. Ten, twenty, a hundred shapes converged. She could not hold them all. Not alone.
The faceless being extended its hand toward her, voice strained: “You must decide—will you wield the current to bind, or to sever? To weave, or to cut away?”
The sword pulsed violently, threads flowing toward it like rivers drawn to the sea. The choice throbbed inside her chest: impossible, inescapable, infinite.
The Unmakers shrieked in unison, advancing. The sea of stars dimmed. The loom itself trembled. Nora stood at the center, one heartbeat from annihilation, one breath from rewriting all that she had seen, all that she could be.