The blast of crystalline Silence had not destroyed the tunnel, but compressed the air violently, leaving behind an unnatural, paralyzing quiet. The slaves—two dozen gaunt, ash-dusted men and women—were frozen, staring at the pile of fine, white dust that was once Zek.
Zek's armor, his boots, the iron head of his hammer, and the fragments of his whip lay scattered. The man himself was simply gone, reduced by the imposition of the Law of Time.
Kael stood at the center of the devastation, his hand still faintly tingling where the Eclipsed Shard of Time had violently merged with his soul's fracture. He felt alien—lighter, yet heavier. He could sense the threads of reality around him with an unbearable clarity. He saw the microscopic vibrations of the dust settling; he perceived the rapid decay of the oxygen molecules in the air; he sensed the minute, frantic pulsing of the Aether Threads belonging to the terrified slaves.
It was too much information. It was the frantic, humming voice of existence, and it was screaming at him.
His gaze fell upon Roric, the old slave whose wound he had just unmade. Roric was clutching his back, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe, confirming the impossible.
"Witchcraft," whispered a woman named Lyra, clutching her pickaxe. Her voice was scratchy, unused, yet in the intense silence, it sounded like a shout. "He touched the Dark Sun's heart."
Kael's mind, sharp and tactical even in shock, instantly filtered the noise. Fear was a resource, but it was also a fuse. He needed to control the next ten seconds, or the other guards would swarm them.
They will kill us all to keep this secret buried.
The Shard, nestled deep within his core, was not helpful; it was demanding. It felt like an eternal, freezing lake inside him, vast and indifferent. Every moment Kael focused on the world, the Shard seemed to effortlessly process the age of everything he looked at—how long the wall had stood, how old Roric's heart was, the infinitesimal fraction of a second since Lyra spoke.
He had to move.
"Chains," Kael said, his voice husky, cracked from disuse, but carrying an iron resonance.
He pointed to Zek's boots. The slaver's key-ring, a heavy loop of iron, lay next to them.
No one moved. They were slaves of habit, slaves of fear.
Kael walked forward, his footsteps crunching on the dust of the dead guard. He ignored the stares, the fear, and the profound, cold dread rising in his own throat.
He knelt, picked up the iron ring, and looked at the chain binding his own ankle—a thick, blackened link of reinforced steel designed to resist all but the highest level of Aetheric force.
He was a Thread Initiate at best, his power only manifested as the destructive Echo. He couldn't shatter the steel with raw strength, and he couldn't spend the immense life-force cost to regress the chain to its raw ore state.
No. Not regression. Adaptation.
Kael saw the chain's Aether Thread. It was complex, densely woven by a Patternmaster somewhere in the Crimson Hand's deep forges. Its Law was Durability—the refusal to break.
He needed to learn how to break it.
He closed his eyes, forcing his mind to focus on the terrifying sensation of his inner Void-fracture. He reached into the memories of the mine, searching for every moment he had witnessed a deliberate act of destruction. He found an image of a Weaver guard who sometimes used a simple Aetheric Shear to cut stone—a power that imposed the Law of Separation.
The Echo of the Void responded instantly. The icy tendril stretched out, mirroring the Law of Separation, and instantly ripped a fragment of himself away. It felt like forgetting a cherished memory or losing the feeling in a fingertip—a minute, irreversible subtraction from Kael Draven's total existence.
The payment was made. The knowledge—the Thread-pattern for Separation—was now his.
Kael opened his eyes. He didn't have the skill to weave the complex pattern into an external shear. But he had the Eclipsed Shard of Time.
He placed the master key into the shackle lock. It was a complex mechanism that required turning in two directions simultaneously.
Kael focused on the internal components of the lock. He didn't try to unlock it.
He imposed the Shard's Law of Time, but subtly, targeting only the lock's internal Aether Thread of Function.
Regression.
He forced the small, localized pattern of Aether back by one second.
For one single, agonizing second of real-time, the complex tumbler sequence in the lock was returned to the state it was before it was locked, making it functionally an open mechanism.
Click.
The shackle fell open onto the dusty floor.
The other slaves gasped. They didn't see the precise manipulation of the Aether Thread. They saw a man touch a lock and the chain fall away.
Kael straightened up, the heavy steel chain sliding off his ankle. The freedom was a strange, disorienting lightness.
"The overseer barracks are two hundred strides east," Kael said, his voice gaining confidence, fueled by necessity. "There is water, food, and the surface elevator. They will send more guards soon. Zek has not reported back."
Lyra stepped forward, her eyes fixed on his unshackled ankle. "You… you want us to fight? We are Ashborn Slaves, Draven. We are only numbers and dust."
"We are free now," Kael countered, leveling his gaze. "If you stay here, they will shackle you, flog you, and work you to death for witnessing this heresy. If you come with me, you might die free. That is the choice."
He didn't wait for a response. He bent down and picked up Zek's crude, iron short-sword that had fallen from the guard's side—a simple, chipped blade, but a weapon nonetheless.
As Kael moved toward the tunnel entrance, four figures materialized in the dust-filled passage. They were Crimson Hand Enforcers—heavily armored men, their cloaks the color of dried blood, and their bodies radiating the low-level Aetheric heat of trained Weavers.
Their leader, a grizzled man with a scarred face, spotted the dust pile that was Zek and the unshackled Kael holding the weapon.
"Heresy!" the leader roared, his voice amplified by an Aetheric spell that twisted the sound into a percussive, painful wave. "The slaves revolt! Kill the leader, re-shackle the rest!"
The four Weavers immediately began to draw Aether Threads. Kael, with his horrifying new vision, saw the air fill with shimmering danger.
The leader drew a thick, reddish-black thread of Force, weaving it rapidly into his heavy iron club. The club instantly gained immense mass and momentum—a focused Law of Impact. The other three drew thinner, sharper threads of Pierce, aiming their spear tips at Kael.
Kael knew he had seconds. He had only a crude iron blade and a soul-shattering power he barely understood.
He could Echo the Law of Force, but the price would be crippling, and the resulting power would be too late.
He was a carrier of the Law of Time. He had to use what he had.
Kael charged forward, sprinting directly at the charging Weavers.
"Foolish beast!" the leader laughed, swinging the enhanced club in a whistling arc designed to pulverize.
Kael didn't dodge. He watched the massive club, focusing on its rapid trajectory and the tight, complex Aetheric weave of Force holding its structure together.
Just as the club was centimeters from his head, Kael imposed the Shard's Law.
He didn't regress the club's position. He regressed the Law of Force woven into the club's Aether Thread by a fraction of a millisecond.
The Law of Time clashed violently with the Law of Force. The club didn't vanish or break; it momentarily reverted to its previous state—a state of inert, low-mass iron.
The massive momentum vanished. The club, now just a heavy piece of metal, continued its arc under normal physics, but it was traveling at a drastically reduced speed, its weight unexpectedly normal to the enraged Weaver.
Kael, moving at full speed, ducked under the slowed arc, his movement appearing to the Weavers as a blinding flash.
He was inside the leader's guard. The short-sword, driven by Kael's raw, slave-hardened muscle, plunged into the unprotected throat beneath the helmet's rim.
The leader choked, his eyes wide. The Aether Thread of Force he had woven, suddenly destabilized by his death, snapped, lashing out violently.
FZZZZT!
The unleashed energy struck Kael on the shoulder, burning his skin and tearing his tunic. It was a chaotic, uncontrolled release, but it provided the necessary catalyst.
The Echo of the Void instantaneously activated. It greedily devoured the chaos of the snapping Thread, learning the pattern of sudden, uncontrolled Aetheric release. It paid the terrible price—a profound, deep exhaustion, as if he hadn't slept for a month—and absorbed the Law of Destabilization.
Kael ripped the sword free. Three Weavers remained.
The remaining Weavers, stunned by their leader's sudden, messy death, hesitated for a crucial beat.
"Kill him! He's using forbidden magic!" one screamed.
They thrust their spears, each tip humming with the Law of Pierce.
Kael staggered back, his vision flickering. The exhaustion from the second Echo was heavier. He felt the constant, demanding presence of the Eclipsed Shard, which was not only a tool but a persistent wound on his soul.
He cannot use the Shard again so quickly. The drain will render him unconscious.
He had the knowledge of the Law of Destabilization. It was chaotic, but simple: sever the enemy's woven thread.
He dropped the bloody short-sword. He raised his hands, focusing not on the spears, but on the three visible Aether Threads—thin, shimmering lines of energy—that led from the Weaver's palms to the spear tips.
He pulled the Law of Destabilization into his own Aether. Since he was not a true Weaver, he didn't pull the Aether from the environment. He pulled the residual, untamed energy released by the dead leader's snapping thread, channeled it through the Shard's stabilizing core, and forced it outwards.
It was crude. It was agonizing. But it was effective.
The chaotic energy struck the three woven Threads of Pierce like a sudden, violent, metaphysical storm.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
The threads snapped. The Law of Pierce vanished. The spears, now inert iron, continued forward, but they were no longer enhanced.
They struck Kael's chest and arms, drawing blood, but failing to penetrate his skin or kill him, as they would have done if the Law of Pierce had been active.
Kael hit the ground, panting, bleeding, but alive.
The three Weavers stared at their inert weapons, confusion freezing their attack. Their Aetheric flow, disrupted by the destabilization, sputtered. They had no idea how Kael had cut their power. They only knew their spells had failed.
This was Kael's opening.
He didn't need the Shard, or the Echo, or complex Threadweaving. He needed rage, and he had a millennium's worth of it.
He scrambled up, grabbed the discarded short-sword, and lunged forward, closing the distance while they fumbled for their secondary weapons. He was fast, desperate, and driven by the unyielding fury that was his core trait.
He was just a slave with a piece of iron, but he had removed their power, leaving them exposed and confused.
A clean slice across the first Weaver's leg. A desperate parry followed by a brutal headbutt against the second. He finished the third with a strike that bypassed the armor's weak point at the elbow.
Within ten breaths, the three remaining Weavers lay crumpled, bleeding profusely from deep, non-fatal wounds Kael had inflicted, careful to preserve his strength. They were merely incapacitated. He needed them alive.
Kael stood over the four fallen men, his body shaking, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. His shoulder throbbed where the snapped Thread had burned him, and his chest felt hollowed out from the soul-cost of the two Echoes.
He had killed one and disabled three. He had used the Law of Time, stolen the Law of Separation, and learned the Law of Destabilization. In five minutes, he had progressed further than most Weavers did in a decade.
But he was nearly spent.
He walked over to the incapacitated Weavers, took their bags of food and water, their small Aetheric lamp stones, and their extra keys.
He looked back at the terrified slaves, still huddled near the pile of Zek's dust.
"I have the keys. The surface is open," Kael rasped, his eyes fixed on the elevator shaft's mouth, visible a hundred paces away. "This path is death. Come with me, or remain in the dark."
Then, he turned and ran, not waiting for their choice. He was not a leader; he was a survivor.
As he ran, his focus turned inward, toward the cold, ancient presence nestled in his soul. He had accepted the Shard. Now, the Shard was beginning to accept him.
A terrifying truth echoed in his mind, clearer than any whisper:
The Eclipsed Shard of Time had not just chosen him. It had been waiting for the Void-fracture, the perfect host for a divine power whose very existence was an unmaking.
Kael Draven was out of the mine, but he was deeper in the Loom than ever before. He was a fugitive carrying the burden of creation's past.
Kael reached the elevator shaft. It was a crude, water-powered lift used to haul ore. He inserted the main key he'd taken from the Weavers, and the gears ground into motion.
As the lift began its slow, grinding ascent, Kael looked down. He saw movement. The slaves were emerging from the tunnel mouth. Roric, the old man, and Lyra, the hesitant woman, were leading them. They were following.
Good. Their presence would distract the surface guards, if only for a moment.
The climb took an agonizing five minutes. Kael used the time to bind his shoulder wound with a strip of tunic and study the captured supplies. He found dried meat, a waterskin, a small purse of coins (useless in the Wastes), and, most importantly, a leather-bound journal that belonged to the dead leader.
The journal was filled with the cryptic, dense notation of a higher-rank Weaver, detailing their daily use of Aether Threads and the patterns they wove.
Kael's Echo of the Void, even dormant, hummed in anticipation. This journal was a treasure trove of learnable patterns, a lexicon of powers he could steal at the cost of his own soul.
He who commands the Eclipsed Shards commands the Truth.
The elevator jolted to a stop.
The surface of the Obsidian Wastes was not freedom. It was a vast, desolate expanse under an eternal, grey sky, perpetually choked with ash. The air was dry, burning, and the dust tasted of iron and regret.
A lone guard stood watch, noticing the unusual, early arrival of the elevator.
Kael threw the journal and the food bag into the shadows and burst from the elevator, weapon drawn, powered by a raw surge of adrenaline.
He didn't rely on the Shard. He relied on the brutality that had defined his life. He was faster than a man expecting an ore cart.
The guard died before he could draw his weapon, a silent, desperate strike from the short-sword.
Kael snatched the guard's key-set, his eyes scanning the horizon.
In the distance, across the cracked, obsidian plain, Kael saw a massive, walled structure: the main Obsidian Fortress, stronghold of the Crimson Hand, rising like a jagged black tooth against the ash-choked sky.
He was less than a mile from the walls. He needed a vehicle, a horse, anything.
He heard the heavy grind of the next elevator car arriving below, carrying the escaping slaves. His distraction had arrived.
He glanced at the fortress. A plume of crimson smoke, an Aetheric distress signal, was already rising from the central tower.
The world knew he was free.
Kael Draven, the Ashborn Slave, clutched the divine Shard in his soul and the bloody iron sword in his hand, and ran into the endless, sunless landscape. His story had not just begun; it had ripped a hole in the fabric of the Loom.