Cassian Thorn stepped out of the vault.
He was no longer coinless.
He carried the loom's final thread.
And beside him walked the stitched child — fire in their veins, memory in their eyes.
The tower did not tremble.
It bowed.
The Descent Reversed
The spiral staircase of light folded behind them.
Not vanishing.
Resting.
The stitched ones followed in silence.
Cassian held the thread like a blade.
Not to cut.
To stitch.
The tower's walls shimmered with new glyphs — ones that had never existed.
Nova Quinn gasped. "You're rewriting the tower."
Cassian nodded. "No. It's rewriting me."
The Convergence
Lyra arrived first.
Her marked palm pulsed in rhythm with the thread.
Juno followed, eyes sharp, voice steady.
Nova's fractured glyph hovered beside her, rearranging itself with every breath.
Zephyr Vale stood at the edge, watching the stitched child.
"They're the fire," he whispered.
Cassian replied, "They're the memory."
The Thread Unfolds
Cassian raised the final thread.
It unraveled in the air, forming a spiral stitched with recursion and flame.
The stitched child touched it.
The thread pulsed.
The tower groaned.
And the sky above Evershade cracked.
Not physically.
Temporally.
The Reckoning
The stitched ones knelt.
The headmasters arrived — fractured, trembling, unstitched.
Lyra stepped forward. "You buried the truth."
Juno raised the tome. "We unearthed it."
Nova's glyph burned. "And now it writes us."
Cassian held the thread.
The stitched child whispered, "Unstitch."
The Choice
Cassian turned to the loom — now pulsing in the sky, visible to all.
He could stitch the thread into the tower.
Seal the loop.
Preserve the silence.
Or he could let it burn.
Let memory rise.
Let truth fracture.
He looked at the stitched child.
They nodded.
Cassian whispered, "No more forgetting."
The Stitch
He released the thread.
It did not fall.
It flew.
Into the tower.
Into the academy.
Into every stitched one.
Into every glyph.
Into every lie.
And the thread stitched one final word across the sky:
> "Remember."