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The moment Ysella vanished, the Weave screamed. Not aloud—not in the air—but inside me, in that place where magic lived. Like every thread in my chest snapped at once, like the power that had always whispered just beneath my skin was suddenly yanked tight in grief. One heartbeat, she was there—bloodied, breathing, fighting—and the next, she was gone.

Unraveled.

The darkness of Elias’s magic still burned behind my eyes, scorching a shape into memory I’d never be able to unsee.

August knelt beside me in the space where she had stood, his hands pressed flat against the sandy ground. Blood streaked his knuckles. His jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. And his shoulders—those steady shoulders that had carried more than anyone ever should—were trembling.

“She’s gone,” I whispered.

His breath left him in a shuddering exhale, but he didn’t answer.

She had turned at the last moment. Stepped between Elias and us like she had always known it would end this way. Her final act wasn't fear. It was love.

And her last words—meant for him, not for me—rang louder than any battlefield scream.

Don’t forget who your mother was. Who you truly are.

I didn’t know what it meant. Not fully. But August did. I saw it in the way he paled, the way his breath caught like she’d struck him.

Around us, the courtyard erupted into chaos. The remaining Weavers surged toward the tunnel entrance. Mira shouted commands from the mouth of the passage. Abigail's barrier flickered gold at the edges, already showing strain. Garrick was shepherding the rescued prisoners down into the darkness.

But I couldn’t move.

Not yet.

Because somewhere deep inside me, that strange power—the one that made me different from other Weavers, the one I barely understood—was stirring. Perhaps it came from Elowen’s pendant, or it was something else entirely.

But I could feel it now, crackling like static beneath my skin. The ability to reach into the void where Unraveling left nothing and pull back what had been lost. To reverse what others believed was irreversible.

But I had never tried it. Never dared.

Until now.

My hands pressed flat to the sandy ground where Ysella had stood, heat blazing through my palms as magic surged beneath my skin. I closed my eyes and pushed everything else out—August's ragged breathing, the shouting, the crash of magic echoing off stone walls.

I went to the place beyond the Weave.

To the darkness where the Unraveled went.

It was cold there. Silent. Empty in a way that made my soul ache. The void pressed against me like a living thing, hungry and vast, eager to add my essence to its collection of the unmade. But I pushed deeper, following the fading echo of what Ysella had been, the ghost-trail of her severed threads.

There.

A flicker. So faint I almost missed it.

Her essence, scattered like stardust across the void, already dissolving into nothingness. But still there. Still real.

Still savable.

I reached for her with everything I had, pouring my power into the darkness, trying to gather her threads and weave them back together.

The magic fought me. This wasn't natural, wasn't meant to be done. The void resisted, repelling my touch like opposing magnets. Every instinct screamed at me to pull back, to save myself before the darkness claimed me too.

But I pushed deeper anyway.

Sweat broke out along my brow, my jaw clenched so tight it hurt. My whole body trembled with the effort of holding myself together.

I could feel her there, just beyond my grasp. Could almost touch the warmth of her soul, the fierce love that had driven her to sacrifice herself for us.