The Loom and the Lock

The Loom and the Lock

Author: Word Jelly M

 

I. The Desert’s Teeth

By the time Kael reached the rim of the Sharadin Expanse, he’d already buried two of his friends and left the third behind in chains.

The wind carried the scent of iron and hot dust. Razor-backed dunes stretched out before him, shifting slightly—as if alive. In the old stories, this desert had a name. Now, the maps called it Sector B9, Hazard Class Orange. But Kael remembered what the monks of his orphan cloister whispered when they passed it on pilgrimage:

“Where the sky was stitched, and the earth unpicked.”

He adjusted the strap of his satchel and pressed a bloodied hand to the hilt of the Loomblade strapped across his back. He didn’t know if it would work out here. The magic in it—or science, depending on who you asked—had been fading with each mile.

But he wasn’t turning back.

Not with the Lockstone in his pocket. Not with the dead still whispering in his ears.

 

II. The Loomblade

The blade wasn’t forged. It was grown.

At least, that’s what the Archivists told him when he’d been chosen at age fifteen. They placed it in his hands like it was a violin—delicate, precise, and alive with quiet memory. “It responds to will,” they said. “To memory. To intention. Never to anger.”

Kael had ignored that last part.

Now, eleven years later, the blade was dull, etched with cracks that shimmered when the stars came out.

They said the Loomblades were relics from when humans could still walk between “threads”—portals stitched into space by ancient engineers or forgotten gods. But the threads had collapsed long ago. The last ones crumbled before Kael’s birth.

Except the Lockstone pulsed differently. And the woman in the prison—the one who called herself Seris of the Third Weave—had told him there was one thread left.

Hidden beyond the desert.

Guarded by the Hollow.

 

III. The Hollow

The Hollow wasn’t a creature. It was a condition.

Out here, where physics melted and memory echoed, some people changed. They lost shape. Lost names. Became echoes of want, feeding on travelers who carried too much hope.

Kael had seen one once. On a recovery mission beyond the Meridian Divide. A soldier in their own armor, face peeled like old bark, eyes like empty coin slots. Still smiling.

The monks said the Hollow were the price of curiosity.

But Kael had already paid more than that.

So when the sand began to rise around him—not blowing, but rising—he didn’t run.

He knelt. Blade drawn. And whispered the name he hadn’t spoken since his brother died in the Ash Citadel:

“Rowen.”

The sand stilled.

And in the silence, a voice echoed: “The Thread awaits.”

 

IV. The Door Beneath Glass

It took him two more days to reach the structure.

Not a temple. Not a ruin. Just a shard of dark glass taller than any building he’d ever seen, slanting into the earth like a buried sword. Smooth. Seamless. Humming faintly beneath his boots.

The Lockstone burned hot now. He held it out, expecting some burst of light, some final test.

Instead, the shard rippled.

And a seam opened in the glass, folding outward like petals made of ink.

Kael stepped inside.

What greeted him wasn’t darkness.

It was memory.

 

V. The Thread Room

The room wasn’t a room. It was a field—vast, twilight-colored, the air thick with the scent of copper and violets.

Suspended in the middle, like a sculpture of frozen smoke, hung the Thread: a twisting, pulsing line of light braided with shadow. Too solid to be a beam. Too alive to be machinery.

The Loomblade pulsed in sync. Kael felt his breath slow, his thoughts crack open.

This was it. The last gate. The fabled Weft.

He reached for the blade.

But a figure stepped between him and the Thread.

“You’re early,” she said.

Seris.

The prisoner. The Weaveborn.

Unchained. Unaged.

And smiling like the sun had returned.

 

VI. The Deal

“I told you it existed,” she said, walking in a slow circle around him. “And you brought the stone. You did well.”

Kael didn’t lower his blade. “What do you want with it?”

“What we all want. Access. Correction. Another chance.”

“The Weave is broken. It’s not ours to fix.”

“No,” she agreed. “But it was once. And you, Kael—child of the Loom, last of the Warded—you can reopen it.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m here to end it. Not start it again.”

She paused. Tilted her head. “Your brother would’ve disagreed.”

That hit harder than any blade.

“You weren’t there,” he said quietly. “You didn’t see what opening a thread does to a mind.”

“I’ve seen worse,” she replied.

She stepped back.

“If you won’t choose,” Seris whispered, “then the Thread will.”

 

VII. The Test

The room twisted.

Not visually—physically. Reality knotted around him. Gravity shifted like breath. The Thread flared, and Kael’s body fell apart and reformed across ten versions of himself.

He saw:

Himself as a child, reaching for the blade too early.

Himself as an old man, face lined with regret.

Himself as a Hollow, weeping blood into the sand.

Himself as a warlord, crowned in flame.

Himself dead beneath a collapsing sky.

And through them all, one constant: the blade. Always waiting. Always listening.

The Thread pulsed. The room screamed.

Kael staggered forward, locked eyes with Seris—who now had no eyes—and drove the blade into the Thread.

 

VIII. The Choice

Time stopped.

Then reversed.

But not everything.

Only paths. Regrets. Consequences.

Kael stood on a cliff, overlooking a city that had burned years ago—but now stood whole.

He stood in a garden, holding the hand of someone he thought he’d never see again.

He sat alone in a cloister, the Loomblade on his lap, untouched, unclaimed.

A voice spoke—not out loud. Not inside.

“Do you want to return?”

He thought of all the blood. All the choices. The broken timelines.

And he said, “No.”

 

IX. The New Weft

Kael awoke beneath stars.

Real stars. The ash was gone.

Beside him, the Loomblade had changed—thinner, brighter, no longer humming. Just alive.

He was back in the Expanse. But the dunes were green. The desert bloomed.

The Thread was gone.

But he wasn’t alone.

Children approached from the ridgeline. One held a lockstone. Another wore a blade of woven copper.

And all of them looked at him with the same word in their eyes:

“Teacher.”

 

X. Epilogue

He never told them what happened inside the shard.

He didn’t have to.

They already knew the old stories. But now, they had new ones.

Of a man who walked across the dying world with a blade of memory. Of a choice made not for power, but for healing.

And of a Thread not pulled—but rewoven.

END.

 

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The artworks are created specifically for this story. Intended to enhance the narrative and provide a glimpse into the universe of Word Jelly M.

 

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