Cursed Causality

The wasteland had a new name: *The Scab*.

Ash storms raged across the horizon, their gray tendrils clawing at the sky like skeletal hands. The ground beneath Kael's boots was brittle, fracturing into geometric patterns that pulsed faintly gold—the First Spire's dying breath. Lysandra walked beside him now, not behind. Her healed scar itched, a phantom ache that sharpened with every unstable rift they passed:

A lake of liquid mercury, its surface reflecting wars that hadn't happened yet.

A forest of petrified soldiers, their faces locked in silent screams.

A village suspended upside down, smoke rising *downward* from its chimneys.

"It's worse here," she said, her voice stripped of its earlier defiance.

Kael grunted. The silver streaking his sigils had spread, cold where the demon's fire once burned. "You're just noticing?"

She didn't rise to the bait. The fight at the Spire had hollowed her, leaving behind something brittle and sharp.

---

They found the first marker at midday—a spire of blackened bone jutting from the ash. Symbols were carved into its surface, fresh and glistening:

A serpent swallowing its tail.

A loom strung with human hair.

A raven in flight, one wing dipped in gold.

Lysandra traced the raven. "It's a warning."

"It's a threat," Kael corrected, kicking the spire. It toppled, shattering into shards that wailed like dying children.

The sound summoned the hunters.

They emerged from the ash storm on silent feet, their bodies wrapped in tattered gray gauze, faces hidden behind masks of fused clockwork. The leader carried a weapon unlike anything Kael had seen—a blade forged from solidified time, its edge glitching between razor-sharp and blurred.

"Kael Vritra," the leader intoned, voice distorted by the mask. "The Tapestry demands balance. You owe a debt."

Kael drew his dagger. "Take it from me."

---

The fight was short, brutal, and wrong.

Kael's first strike passed through the leader's chest as if he were smoke. Lysandra's threads lashed out, but the gauze-clad hunters *absorbed* them, their forms swelling with stolen light:

The leader's blade fractured time, leaving afterimages that cut.

A hunter dissolved into ash, reforming inside Kael's guard to rake his ribs with clockwork claws.

Another siphoned Lysandra's power, her silver threads dimming to gray.

"Stop!" Lysandra screamed, clutching her scar. "You're killing us!"

The leader tilted its head. "No. We're *collecting*."

Kael's dagger found purchase at last, carving through gauze and flesh. The hunter collapsed, its mask cracking to reveal a face neither human nor demon—a hollow void where features should be, filled with swirling sand.

"What the hells are you?" Kael demanded.

The hunter's final breath was a rasping laugh. "The Tapestry's janitors."

---

The raven arrived as the last hunter fell.

It perched on the broken spire, its feathers now fully gold, eyes twin pools of liquid night. A scroll hung from its talons, sealed with wax the color of dried blood. Lysandra approached, her thread humming in recognition.

"Don't," Kael warned.

She ignored him, breaking the seal. The scroll disintegrated, its message flooding her mind:

*The Tapestry is alive. It hunts. It hungers. It remembers.*

*The Shattered Spire was a leash. You broke it.*

*Now the teeth come.*

"Kael—"

He snatched the remnants of the scroll, but the words were gone. "What did it say?"

She met his gaze, her voice hollow. "We didn't win. We just pissed it off."

---

Nightfall brought them to the edge of a crater.

At its center stood a structure that defied reason—a cathedral built from the wreckage of a thousand timelines:

Spires of rusted tank hulls.

Stained-glass windows depicting plagues that erased civilizations.

A bell tower housing a pulsating rift, its tolls echoing backward through time.

Lysandra's scar burned. "We shouldn't be here."

Kael strode forward. "We're exactly where we need to be."

Inside, the air tasted of copper and regret. The walls were lined with cages, each holding a sobbing, half-formed creature—weavers twisted by the Tapestry's hunger. At the altar, a figure knelt, its back to them.

"You shouldn't have come," the figure said, rising.

Lysandra's breath caught. The figure had her face.

But older. Colder. Eyes pure silver, threads of gold and black swirling around her like a crown.

---

The older Lysandra smiled, and the cathedral *breathed*. Cages rattled as their twisted occupants wailed, threads of gold and black lashing the air like serpents. Kael stepped forward, dagger raised, but his silver-streaked sigils flickered—a warning.

"Touch her," the doppelgänger said, "and I'll unspool you to your first scream."

Lysandra gripped her scar, the phantom ache sharpening. "What are you?"

"What you'll become." The figure gestured, and the cathedral's walls melted into visions of a future Lysandra dared not face:

A wasteland stripped of timelines, every thread consumed by the Tapestry.

Kael's corpse strung from a spire of bone, sigils picked clean by golden-eyed ravens.

Herself, enthroned in the First Spire's ruins, weaving order from the Tapestry's hunger.

"Lies," Kael snarled, but his voice lacked conviction. The silver in his sigils pulsed, cold and alien.

The doppelgänger laughed. "You sold your sister to a demon and called it survival. You don't get to name *lies*."

---

The attack came from all sides.

Twisted weavers burst from their cages, limbs contorted into blade-like appendages. Lysandra's threads lashed out on instinct, but the doppelgänger *redirected* them:

A silver filament meant to decapitate a weaver instead severed Kael's belt, nearly dropping his dagger.

Another thread ensnared her own ankle, yanking her off-balance.

The doppelgänger advanced, her crown of threads weaving a shield of humming darkness.

"Fight me," she purred, "and you fight yourself."

Kael intercepted, his dagger clashing with her shadow-blade. The impact sent cracks racing up the cathedral's walls:

Stained-glass plagues burst free, locusts of molten glass swarming.

The bell tower's rift pulsed, tolling in reverse—each chime erasing seconds from their lives.

The floor liquefied, timelines bubbling to the surface like tar.

Lysandra scrambled back, her threads tangling. "Kael—!"

"*Figure it out!*" he roared, grappling with the doppelgänger. His sigils flared silver, freezing her shadow-blade mid-strike.

---

The raven descended through the crumbling ceiling, its golden feathers shedding light that scorched the twisted weavers. It landed on Lysandra's shoulder, talons drawing blood.

*"Sacrifice him,"* it whispered with Elyra's voice. *"The Tapestry demands balance."*

She swatted at it. "Get *off*!"

The raven dissolved into smoke, reforming atop the altar. *"Stubborn child. You'll learn."*

The doppelgänger disengaged from Kael, her smile widening. "You see? Even your guide serves the weave. There's no escape."

Lysandra's scar blazed. "Then I'll burn it all."

She *pulled*.

Not from the Tapestry—from *Kael*.

---

His scream was raw, human. The silver in his sigils tore free, tendrils of light merging with her threads. The doppelgänger recoiled as the combined power struck:

Her shadow-blade shattered.

Her crown of threads unraveled.

Her form flickered, aging and regressing in rapid cycles.

"*Stop!*" she shrieked, voice fracturing. "You'll kill us both!"

Kael collapsed, his sigils now dull gray, demonic fire extinguished. Lysandra stood over him, threads of silver and black coiling around her like a storm.

"I'm not you," she said. "I'll never be you."

The doppelgänger lunged, but Lysandra's threads pierced her chest. The future-self dissolved, her final breath a whisper: *"You already are."*

---

The cathedral collapsed.

Lysandra dragged Kael into the wasteland as the structure imploded, timelines snapping like cut strings:

A spire of tank hulls melted into slag.

The bell tower's rift inverted, sucking the remaining weavers into oblivion.

The raven circled overhead, its golden feathers now edged in void-black.

Kael stirred, his eyes fogged. "Why…?"

She dropped him, her scar throbbing with stolen power. "You owed me."

He laughed weakly. "Fair."

---

The Tapestry's retaliation was swift.

The ground split, vomiting forth creatures of glitching light and fractured time—the Tapestry's true "teeth":

A serpent with a hundred human mouths, each chanting dates of erased histories.

A knight in armor fused from broken clocks, blades ticking toward detonation.

A child-shaped void, its touch aging flesh to dust.

Lysandra's threads moved with grim precision:

She severed the serpent's heads, each mouth silenced mid-scream.

She unraveled the knight's armor, reducing it to gears and rust.

She avoided the void-child, but Kael wasn't fast enough.

It grazed his arm, the flesh withering to bone. He didn't scream—a small mercy.

"Go," he growled, clutching the stump. "I'll slow them."

She stared at him. "You'd die for me?"

"I'd die *period*. Now *go*."

---

The raven intervened.

It dive-bombed the void-child, talons shredding its form. With a shriek, it scattered the remaining teeth, buying seconds. Lysandra hauled Kael upright, his weight staggering.

"Why help us?" she demanded.

The raven's voice echoed with hollow triumph. *"The Tapestry must feed. You'll make a fine meal."*

It vanished, leaving them at the edge of a yawning rift. Beyond it, a city flickered—a refuge or a trap, indistinguishable.

Kael sagged against her. "Well? Choose."

She stepped into the rift.

---

The city was a relic of a dead timeline, preserved in a bubble of stagnant time:

Cobblestone streets frozen mid-quake.

Citizens petrified in poses of flight or prayer.

A tavern sign creaking silently, its letters blurred beyond reading.

Lysandra lowered Kael onto a collapsed cart. "You're dying."

He grinned, pallid and feverish. "Takes more than a void brat to kill me."

She tore a strip from her coat, binding his withered arm. The flesh was cold, the silver in his sigils inert. "What happens now?"

He met her gaze. "Same as always. We survive. We lie. We burn."

She sat beside him, the weight of the Tapestry's gaze heavy on her back. "I'm not becoming her."

He closed his eyes. "Sure you're not."

---

The raven found them at dawn, its message etched into the tavern's wall:

*The Tapestry remembers. The Tapestry adapts. The Tapestry comes.*

Lysandra traced the words, her scar cold. Kael slept fitfully, his breath shallow.

In the distance, the horizon rippled—a wave of glitching light, erasing everything in its path.

She woke him with a kick. "Time to go."

He rose, wincing. "Where?"

She nodded to the oncoming wave. "Away."

They fled, two shadows against the dying light.

Behind them, the city dissolved, the Tapestry's teeth closing on empty air.