The sky over the Woven Expanse shimmered like cracked glass.
Five cloaked figures moved silently across the brittle salt plain. Their boots left no prints. Their blades—silver-threaded and humming with glyphs—were drawn, ready.
"Confirm the target," one said.
Another pulled a sphere from her belt — obsidian and laced with blood.
It pulsed once, then burst into flame.
"Threadless confirmed. The Vowbreaker is near."
Kale watched them from atop a ruined obelisk.
He didn't breathe. Didn't need to. His new form didn't rely on such fragile rhythms.
His body was a lattice of shadow and soulsteel. His skin bore no wounds. In his palms, he held not weapons—but threads. Plucked directly from the Loom. Twisting, waiting.
Azrael murmured like a hymn:
"These are Fatebinders. Assassins of the Loom-Faith. Each has cut down Unbound before. But none have faced you."
The first hunter moved with brutal speed, flickering from sight, reappearing with her blade angled for Kale's neck.
He caught it—not with his hand, but with a thread.
Snap.
She froze mid-strike. Her arm convulsed. Kale had severed a reaction thread—a connection between intention and motion.
The woman collapsed, spasming, unable to move.
"What the hell is he?!"
The others attacked at once. Glyphs flared. One hurled a relic that screamed with anti-fate — a chain that sought to bind Kale's soul.
He stepped into a thread and vanished.
He reappeared behind them—between their thoughts.
His eyes glowed like dying stars.
"You came to kill me," Kale said, voice hollow. "But I don't belong to fate anymore."
One hunter turned to run.
Kale reached into the Loom and rewrote.
Her future thread curled back on itself. Her escape path became a noose.
She choked. Fell. Dead before she hit the ground.
Only two remained.
The commander—tall, scarred, wrapped in silken armor—and a mute sorcerer whose threads were tied in complex knots.
The sorcerer screamed silently, raising a staff. Time bent. Threads began to loop, forming a Cage of Certainty—a ritual that locked potential futures in place, forcing a single outcome: Kale's death.
"Your thread ends here," the commander said. "By decree of the Grand Loom."
Kale tilted his head.
"Then let's cut the decree."
He stepped forward—and reality fractured.
Fateshatter surged. Threads around him tore free like dead roots.
He reached into the ritual and shoved a contradiction into the center.
The cage shattered.
The sorcerer screamed, bleeding light. His fate reversed — he aged a thousand years in a second and crumbled to dust.
The commander leapt in rage, blade glowing with the Name of Binding — the one relic that could anchor an Unbound.
She drove it into Kale's chest.
It sank in.
And stopped.
Kale smiled.
"That name you're using? It belonged to me. I just didn't remember it... until now."
The blade melted. Her fate snapped.
When it was over, Kale stood alone again.
The wind picked up. Threads drifted around him like falling ash.
His voice—his real voice—came quietly:
"They were strong. But I didn't feel a thing."
Azrael was silent for once.
Kale turned away from the corpses.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, the Loom would feel this break — and send worse.
He didn't care.
Because now, he wasn't hiding anymore.
He was becoming what they feared.
And maybe, just maybe...
He liked it.
End of Chapter 6