Nora blinked—or tried to. Her eyes felt heavy, sanded shut, every movement an effort. The world around her was too bright, too sterile, too sharp. She was lying down—no, strapped in. Tubes snaked into her arms; monitors beeped a slow, irregular pulse.
She tried to speak, but her mouth barely obeyed. Her head throbbed with memories that didn’t fit together: the battlefield, the Unmakers, the cosmic threads… all of it pulsing in her skull.
A nurse leaned close. “She’s coming to. Steady now…”
Nora turned her head and looked down at her body. It was smaller, weaker than she remembered. Bandages, bruises, IVs. She realized with a shock that the war, the threads, the sword, even Solas—had all been in her mind.
Fever. Trauma. Coma.
Her heart raced. Was she imagining herself here, in this sterile hospital room, or had that world been the dream?
She struggled to sit up, eyes flitting around the room, and then froze.
Her gaze landed on the life support machine humming quietly beside her bed. The brand name glimmered under the hospital light:
Solace
Something inside her stirred—a pull, a tug she could not resist.
Her vision blurred. The sterile white walls melted away. The monitors, the tubes, the weak beeping—they twisted and snapped into threads of light, spiraling around her. The pulse of the machine became the pulse of the Weave.
And just like that, she was falling again—not into sleep, but back into the threads, back into the cosmic loom where war, the Unmakers, and Solas awaited.
Her breath hitched. She realized, as the world twisted around her, that she was no longer sure where the dream ended and reality began.
But the threads called her name.
“Nora…”
And she obeyed.