Chapter 5: Ashes of the Loom

The wind had changed.

Jungkook felt it as he crossed the outer threshold of Lunadusk Tower—the way the trees bowed in his presence, the way the stars refused to look at him directly. Something in the world had sensed the crack within him, the great emptiness that had opened when he refused Taehyung and chose nothing.

It wasn’t peace he felt.

It was vacancy.

He walked alone now, through the silver-shadowed forests of Verithorn, the sky twisted by his passage. Plants wilted beneath his footsteps, birds flew in wrong directions, and the wind echoed in reverse.

He had become a gravity, a god-shaped wound the world didn’t know how to heal.

And yet, he felt hollow.

You didn’t destroy him.

The voice came not aloud, but from the core of the Nullweave inside him.

You walked away.

“I spared him,” Jungkook muttered to the wind, though no one listened.

You spared yourself, it whispered. From having to admit that what you feel for him is still louder than your wrath.

He clenched his fists.

He hated how true it was.

On the third night, the forest opened into a ravine where the stars bent wrong—spiraling inward like they were circling a drain in the sky. In the center of the ravine stood a single door.

No structure.

Just a black, freestanding door.

The moment Jungkook laid eyes on it, he knew.

This was before the Loom.

He approached slowly. His blood sang with warning. The thread in his veins recoiled, whispering in forgotten languages. But the Nullweave inside him pulsed eagerly—like a child returning to its mother.

“Where are you taking me?” Jungkook whispered.

The door opened before he touched it.

The realm beyond was lightless.

No stars. No time. No laws. Just shadow threaded with thought. Jungkook stepped in, and the ground rippled under his feet like oil remembering solidity.

Then came the voice.

Not a whisper. Not a roar.

A presence.

> “You’ve awakened… too early.”

Jungkook turned. Before him stood a being formed of silhouette and ember—neither man nor beast, but memory given shape. It had no eyes, no mouth, and yet it saw him.

> “We remember you, Jeon Jungkook.”

> “You wore many names before you bound yourself to fate.”

“What are you?” he asked, voice shaking.

The being rippled.

> “We are the Ashes of the First Pattern. What came before the threads. What was cut to make the Loom.”

Jungkook’s chest tightened.

The Nullweave in him bowed.

> “You are the first in ten thousand years to carry our mark,” the entity said.

> “You are not the Unmaker.”

> “You are the return.”

Jungkook fell to his knees.

Visions surged—worlds without order, before fate, where creation flowed wild and unchecked. He saw himself in those worlds, faceless but fierce, a being of love that never stayed still. And then he saw what came next.

The Threadweavers.

The Loom.

The Order.

He saw Taehyung… in every lifetime, always reaching for him. Always binding. Always turning love into a net.

And he saw himself always running.

“You’ve been fleeing longer than you’ve known how to love,” the being said.

“And now, fate has caught you again.”

Jungkook rose, trembling.

“No,” he said. “I broke it. I walked away.”

> “You delayed it,” the being corrected. “But you didn’t sever it. That Threadweaver still breathes. And so long as he does, your pattern isn’t broken. It’s waiting.”

Jungkook clenched his jaw.

“What do you want from me?”

> “To choose what no being has yet dared.”

> “To unmake love.”

He froze.

“If I do that…”

> “You will never need to fear him again. No bindings. No betrayals. No threads.”

> “No pain.”

Jungkook shut his eyes.

He remembered Taehyung’s hands—blood-slicked, gentle. His mouth, murmuring promises and curses in the same breath. The night of the binding, the scream caught between ecstasy and annihilation.

To unmake love was to erase all of it.

Every kiss.

Every scar.

And then the being asked, softly:

> “Isn’t that what you want?”

Jungkook said nothing.

He reached forward—one hand toward the ancient altar the being offered.

But before his fingers touched it—

Far away, Taehyung gasped awake.

He clutched his chest, thread-pulse searing with agony. The bond he thought quiet had flared again. Not in longing.

In loss.

He whispered Jungkook’s name once, then again, louder.