Chapter 2: The Hound of the Loom
The Obsidian Wastes stretched out like the petrified hide of a forgotten titan, jagged and brittle under the constant fall of ash. The visibility was poor—the eternal twilight filtered through the dense grey sky making it impossible to see the horizon clearly. This was both a curse and a blessing; it cloaked Kael's immediate movements but left him vulnerable to unseen patrols.
Kael ran. He didn't run with the practiced, frantic panic of an escaped animal; he ran with the enduring, measured pace of a slave whose life depended on resource management. Every stride was calculated to conserve energy.
The blood on his tunic was drying. The small, ragged burns from the snapped Aether Thread on his shoulder were throbbing, a constant reminder of the payment required for the Echo of the Void. His chest felt like a deep, frozen hollow where the Eclipsed Shard of Time resided, pulsing with an ancient, terrifying rhythm that was not his own heart.
He felt the Shard's presence acutely now. It was a cold, demanding awareness of entropy—the relentless decay of all things. Every granule of sand was aging. Every inhale shortened his own future. The Law of Time was relentless, and Kael was now its unwilling conduit.
I have to get to the Canyonlands. Ten leagues east.
The Canyonlands were rumored to be a broken, impassable expanse created by the First Eclipse, far beyond the effective patrolling range of the Crimson Hand. Getting there required crossing an open plain that was the Hand's backyard.
He knew the chase was coming. The Crimson Hand didn't tolerate heresy or loss of property, especially one linked to Aetherium and an unnatural phenomenon. They would deploy their best tracker—a high-ranking Weaver or a low-level Spindle Adept.
He risked a glance back. The massive fortress was shrinking behind the curtain of ash, but another sign had replaced the smoke plume: a streak of incandescent, searing blue light climbing into the sky, then descending rapidly into the Wastes less than a mile behind him.
It was not a bird or a vessel. It was a directed Aetheric manifestation.
Someone was flying.
Kael's trained senses told him that the pursuer was using a complex Threadweaving technique: an imposed Law of Ascension to defy gravity, coupled with a secondary Law of Velocity to move rapidly. This was well beyond the power of the Weavers he had disabled in the mine.
Spindle Adept. They were faster, more powerful, and most importantly, they could trace his disrupted Aether wake through the dust.
Kael dove behind a massive, fractured slab of obsidian—the wreckage of an ancient tower, perhaps—just as the blue light arced overhead and descended rapidly toward the elevator shaft. The pursuer was closing the gap quickly.
Kael snatched the leather journal of the dead Weaver from the supply bag and tore it open. He flipped through the pages, ignoring the simple maintenance notes, searching for a pattern that could offer concealment.
The journal was too low-level. It contained patterns for strengthening or attacking, not for the subtleties of evasion.
He needed a Law of Concealment or Misdirection.
He was hit by a thought that chilled him to the bone: He has the Law of Time. Why not use it on the terrain itself?
Kael rose from cover, risking a desperate gamble. The blue light was landing near the elevator, undoubtedly finding the trail of the slaves and the bodies of the guards.
He looked at the open, obsidian-littered ground between himself and the canyon ridge far ahead. The rock was smooth and hard. He needed cover, now.
Kael closed his eyes and forced his mind deep into the chilling well of the Eclipsed Shard. He felt the Law of Time surge, immense and demanding.
He focused on the patch of ground directly ahead, a circle about ten feet wide. He did not seek to regress the rock to its former state. He sought to accelerate its age.
Weaving Pattern (Law of Time): Temporal Erosion
Target: Inert matter (Obsidian Rock).
Goal: Accelerate molecular decay to create concealment.
Cost: Immense drain on Kael's personal Aether/Life Force.
Kael gasped, his body screaming under the strain. He felt a wave of nausea, the physical sensation of his personal thread being devoured by the Shard for fuel. A piece of his stamina—a measurable portion of his remaining life—was offered up to the divine engine.
The ground shuddered.
The obsidian rock where Kael focused did not explode, but visibly, rapidly deteriorated. In a terrifying flash of accelerated time, the hard, crystalline structure dissolved into loose, grey dust, like thousands of years of erosion had been compressed into a second.
A small dust hollow appeared in the hard ground. It was enough.
Kael dove into the shallow concealment just as a figure launched into the air behind him, the blue Aetheric glow marking his location.
The figure landed twenty feet from Kael's hiding spot with a percussive shockwave of forced air. He was a tall, lean man in pristine red and black robes—a true field officer, not a mining guard.
This was Jareth, the Hound of the Loom, known for his terrifying ability to track and bind the Aether Threads of his targets.
Jareth spoke, his voice cool, precise, and amplified to carry across the desolate Wastes.
"I know you're there, slave. The disruption of the Law of Time is immense. You stink of the Shard. I tracked the anomaly like a fresh scent."
Jareth did not charge. He was a Weaver; he didn't need to. He raised his hands, his fingers moving with impossible speed, and Kael saw the air around Jareth filling with dozens of shimmering, hair-thin Aether Threads.
He is weaving a net.
This was not a simple, single spell. This was a complex, continuous Pattern. Jareth was a true Spindle Adept, capable of maintaining multiple, intricate threads simultaneously.
The threads Jareth wove were not attacking Kael directly; they were weaving a Law of Binding around Kael's current location, aiming to fuse Kael's own Aether Thread to the ground, immobilizing him.
"The Crimson Hand is benevolent, boy," Jareth continued, strolling slowly toward the dust hollow. "We will take the Shard back from you, and then we will restore your soul to its proper, un-fractured state—which is to say, we will kill you quickly."
Kael knew he had seconds before the Binding Pattern closed. He couldn't outrun the Law of Binding, nor could he disrupt Jareth's complex weave with the crude Destabilization Law he'd Echoed earlier.
He needed Jareth's own pattern.
Kael's eyes narrowed, focusing on the nearest binding thread—a specific, tight knot woven to prevent physical movement.
I need the Law of Unraveling.
The Echo of the Void surged with agonizing intensity. This was a high-level pattern—complex, delicate, and requiring enormous soul-cost to steal.
Kael had to witness the pattern's construction and then instantly replicate the inverse, all while under attack.
Kael pushed his mind against the Shard's coldness, forcing it to focus the raw, divine energy. The Shard accepted the task, but demanded a terrifying price. Kael felt his legs tremble violently. It wasn't muscle strain. It was the Shard consuming the Aether Thread linked to the Law of Coordination in his own body. He momentarily lost control of his own motor functions.
The payment was paid.
He stole the inverse of the Binding Law: the Law of Instantaneous Unraveling.
The moment the final strand of Jareth's Aetheric net closed, Kael applied his stolen Law.
Jareth smiled, confident in his capture. "You're mine, Shard-bearer."
But the net vanished. Not severed, but unwoven with impossible speed. The complex pattern that took Jareth ten seconds to weave was dissolved in a flash.
Jareth's smile evaporated, replaced by genuine shock. A Spindle Adept rarely had their primary weaving pattern undone so completely.
"Impossible," Jareth breathed. "That is the technique of a Patternmaster."
Kael seized the initiative. His body was still staggering from the Echo's payment, but he had bought time and stunned his opponent.
He threw the short-sword—a distraction—and simultaneously applied the Law of Temporal Erosion again, this time targeting the rough, uneven ground around Jareth's feet.
The ground beneath Jareth became instant, deep sand.
Jareth didn't panic. He was an Adept. He immediately wove a simple Law of Buoyancy beneath his feet, keeping him afloat above the rapidly deepening dust, but the motion was disrupted.
Kael, despite his wobbly legs, darted toward the floating Jareth. He had no chance of killing the Adept in a direct fight. He only needed a moment of contact.
Jareth saw the desperation in Kael's grey eyes and prepared for a close-quarters struggle, weaving two thin, sharp Razor Threads to protect his body.
Kael didn't fight. He just placed his hand squarely on Jareth's pristine red cloak.
He didn't use the Shard to attack. He used it to displace.
Kael had witnessed Jareth's incredible Law of Velocity when he landed. It was a secondary pattern woven into Jareth's body to increase his speed in flight.
Kael, using the Echo's memory of the Law of Velocity and the raw power of the Eclipsed Shard, performed a dangerous, desperate act of chaotic Threadweaving:
He temporarily diverted the immense energy of the Shard into the stolen Law of Velocity, using Jareth's own body as the target.
He forced Jareth to accelerate, not in a direction of Jareth's choosing, but directly Up.
The effect was devastating.
Jareth's Law of Buoyancy was instantly overcome by the incredible, forced Law of Velocity. The Adept shot into the ash-filled sky like a rocket, a streak of frantic blue light against the grey canvas.
Jareth had no control. His own protective Razor Threads were torn away by the sheer G-force of the imposed, chaotic acceleration. He screamed, a thin, high sound lost in the atmosphere, as he was hurled out of the localized Aetheric field.
Kael watched, hunched over, his hands gripping his thighs for support. He had not killed the Adept; he had merely displaced him miles away, buying perhaps thirty minutes before Jareth could regain control and return.
The cost was staggering. The Shard had consumed not just a part of Kael's stamina, but a chunk of his ability to feel cold. His body was shivering violently, but he no longer registered the chill of the Wastes. The Shard had muted the Thread responsible for the Law of Sensation.
He was a functional engine running on the remnants of his life-force, shedding parts of his humanity with every successful weave.
He retrieved his short-sword, its edge dulled. He looked back towards the elevator shaft. The escaped slaves had scattered, running in different directions—a smart move, making their trail harder to follow.
Kael looked East, toward the distant, shattered spires of the Canyonlands.
He was bleeding, exhausted, and fundamentally altered. He had faced a trained Weaver and won only by sacrificing pieces of his own mind and body to fuel a divine weapon.
He had learned four Laws in under an hour: Temporal Erosion, Unraveling, Destabilization, and Chaotic Velocity. Every lesson was earned with a piece of his soul.
He was Kael Draven, Mistborn. A being whose existence was now defined by the fragments he devoured and the terrible coldness of the Shard.
He started running again, his pace slightly uneven due to the loss of coordination, but his purpose clearer than the sun that hadn't risen in a millennium.
He had escaped the mine, but the true race—the race against the Loom itself—had just begun.