Mace woke up choking on ash.
Not dust. Not smoke.
Ash.
It clung to his throat, scraped at his lungs, burned behind his eyelids. The sky above was red—not a warm sunset, but a blood-stained wound that refused to close.
He sat up and immediately ducked.
A blade screamed past his head, embedding itself into the dirt beside him.
He wasn't alone.
And this world?
Wasn't waiting for him to adjust.
The ground rumbled.
All around him, warriors in jagged armor clashed—some with weapons forged from bone, others with hands wrapped in glowing thread.
No banners.
No retreat.
No mercy.
Just eternal combat.
It wasn't chaos. It was routine.
This battlefield had been bleeding for centuries.
And hanging above it all, like a god with a grudge—
The Throne.
Not distant, not symbolic—a literal structure, hovering in the sky, tethered to the battlefield by infinite threads.
Its voice didn't speak.
It pulsed.
And every time it did, the soldiers below screamed—and kept fighting.
Mace stood slowly, the ash falling from his shoulders like snow.
His mark burned.
But not like before.
This time, it throbbed with something else:
Recognition.
He wandered through the carnage, dodging blades, ducking spells, sidestepping dying men whispering apologies to gods that no longer listened.
No one noticed him.
Not truly.
It was like this world saw him and immediately filed him under "another dead man walking."
Eventually, he found a soldier collapsed behind a broken pillar. His armor was scorched. His eyes wide.
Mace knelt beside him. "Where am I?"
The soldier coughed up blood, laughing weakly.
"You're late to the war, stranger."
"What war?"
The man grinned, teeth red.
"The only one left."
Mace pressed harder. "Who are you fighting?"
"Them."
The man nodded toward the horizon.
In the distance stood shimmering, faceless figures—draped in thread, floating inches above the ground. Their hands were needles, and their eyes were sewn shut.
"The Aligned."
"Agents of the Throne."
"Why don't you stop?" Mace asked.
The man looked at him like he was stupid.
"We can't."
"If we stop, we disappear."
Later, Mace stumbled into a rebel camp. Not rebels like him—no passion, no fire.
Just husks wearing desperation like armor.
They stared at him like he was a ghost.
One woman touched his arm. Her mark lit up faintly.
"You're from the Weave."
"You're real."
Mace frowned. "So are you."
She shook her head.
"No. We're fragments. Replays. We're stitched into this war because we made the mistake of resisting fate too well."
A boy no older than twelve approached, holding a rusted sword longer than his body.
"Tell me a story," he whispered.
"What?"
"About rebellion."
Mace stared at him, heart sinking.
"Don't they tell you those here?"
The boy blinked, confused.
"They say rebellion isn't real. Just a glitch in the pattern. A phase that resets."
Mace's throat closed up.
He walked back into the battlefield that night, the air thick with old prayers and fresh corpses.
He wasn't afraid.
He was angry.
"This isn't fate," he growled.
"This is a lie dressed in prophecy."
The Throne pulsed above.
One single wordless command.
And suddenly—
They all turned on him.
Rebels. Soldiers. Threads. The entire war turned inward.
Because Mace?
He didn't belong here.
He wasn't part of the cycle.
He was new.
And the system doesn't like new.
He ran. Fought. Bled.
He refused to kill.
But he refused to die even harder.
The mark on his arm flared once—then dimmed.
Not calling for help.
Not guiding.
Just... pulsing.
Watching.
At the edge of the battlefield, Mace found a massive thread, torn and fraying.
A whisper rose from it:
"This was yours."
He reached out.
And suddenly, for the briefest second—he saw a memory.
Not his.
But... maybe what this world had wanted him to be.
A war general. Covered in blood. Crowned in victory. Eyes empty.
He pulled back.
"No."
He turned his back to the throne.
"You don't get to write me."
Lightning cracked across the battlefield.
A storm of threads burst through the sky, lashing everything.
The throne screamed.
But Mace kept walking.
Every step he took, the war behind him trembled.
And the farther he got—
The more the world began to fray.
He wasn't part of the story.
He was unthreading it.