"When everything else fades,
what remains is the thread that never let go."
The city's skyline bled twilight—neither day nor night—caught in the limbo between endings and beginnings. The Loom crackled with unstable resonance in the distance, its golden threads unraveling like the seams of the world were giving up.
And standing at its center—was Elira.
No longer afraid.
No longer fractured.
She had chosen her truth.
Kael walked beside her, eyes steady, the fused anchor-shard pulsing in his hand like a living ember.
"I still don't know if this will work," he admitted.
Elira smiled faintly. "We've made it this far. That's got to mean something."
Then, the Loom spoke.
Not in words, but in echoes. Memories twisted into voices—every past version of Elira trying to reach her at once.
"Don't trust her."
"You let Kael in, and it ended us."
"This life doesn't belong to you."
The whispers clawed at her mind like shadows fighting for dominion.
But she stood still.
"I am all of them. And none of them. I choose me now."
The Loom shrieked.
Reality began to collapse.
Elsewhere...
Jane sprinted through a collapsing corridor of fractured time, holding a relic Kael had left behind—a mirrored compass that didn't point north, but pointed to Elira's core.
Christine was close behind her, blood on her hands, the truth etched into her face.
"You don't understand," Christine shouted. "If she unlocks the final thread—we all disappear."
Jane didn't look back. "Maybe we're supposed to."
Back at the Loom, Kael raised the anchor-shard.
"Elira. Now."
She reached out.
Her hand hovered just above the golden thread at the Loom's core.
Her thread.
The original.
The one that never broke.
Images poured into her mind:
Kael hiding her memories, loop after loop.
Christine deleting fragments.
Jane resisting, grounding her to each reality.
The reset wasn't random—it was designed.
To contain a memory too powerful.
The truth:
Elira was the key.
Not a victim.
Not a glitch.
But the original source of the looping curse.
She had done it.
To protect something.
Or someone.
Then she remembered.
The real reason she reset every seven days.
The real enemy.
It wasn't the Loom.
It wasn't Kael.
It wasn't Christine.
It was her.
A version of Elira so powerful, she had fractured time to imprison herself.
Her voice came from within the Loom.
"I didn't want to be this. I locked myself away because I became the threat."
Kael whispered, "You can end it now."
"No," Elira said.
"I can become it again. But this time, on my terms."
She grabbed the final thread.
The Loom exploded in light.
And when the dust cleared…
Elira stood at the center of a new reality.
Whole. Unbroken. Remembered.
Kael at her side.
Jane watching from a rooftop, breathless.
Christine nowhere to be seen.
The war was over.
But something was still echoing beneath it all…