The noise of war dissolved, as if muffled behind an ocean of glass. Nora’s knees buckled, but she did not fall; some unseen current carried her upward, away, until the battlefield dwindled to a speck beneath her.
The sky tore itself open. Not with fire, nor storm, but with silence vast enough to swallow thought. She drifted into it, suspended in a darkness so immense it shimmered like velvet threaded with unseen stars.
And then—she saw.
Not with her eyes, but with something deeper.
The world below was not alone. Countless others orbited around it like lanterns drifting in an infinite sea, each world bound by lines of light too complex to follow, as though an invisible hand had stitched them into a tapestry beyond comprehension. Some glowed brilliantly. Others flickered weakly, on the verge of extinction.
Beyond them, larger still, she glimpsed vast forms moving. Shapes that bent the fabric of space, their outlines shifting too quickly for her mind to hold. They were not men, not machines, not anything she had language for. Yet they were aware. Watching. Waiting.
One shape paused. Its attention turned.
Nora felt it—like the press of an ocean on a single grain of sand. Its gaze pierced her utterly, stripping away body, thought, and will until she was bare and raw, her essence vibrating on the edge of dissolution. She wanted to scream but no sound came.
Then, a whisper threaded through the void, vast yet intimate, as though spoken directly inside her bones:
“You are the fracture-point. Through you, the weave will hold… or unravel.”
Her vision shifted again. She saw threads—millions of them—stretching from her body into the dark. Some threads gleamed with light. Others pulsed black with rot. Each tugged at her, pulling in opposite directions, demanding she choose. But which?
The immensity shuddered, a ripple running through the tapestry, and the vast beings turned away—as though something greater still had drawn their attention elsewhere. The vision collapsed like ash in the wind.
Nora gasped awake on the battlefield once more, sweat cold on her skin. The clash of blades returned, though faint, distant, meaningless compared to the immensity she had touched.
Her sword felt heavier now. Not with steel, but with destiny.