Aurex Vell had not died.
He had been stitched.
Not by thread.
By silence.
Buried beneath the first tower, sealed in a loop of forgetting, he had watched centuries pass through the eyes of the loom.
Until the coin shattered.
Until the fire remembered.
Until Cassian flipped the edge.
The Awakening
The silence unraveled.
The loop fractured.
Aurex Vell opened his eyes.
They were stitched shut
Not by flesh.
By memory.
He did not blink.
He remembered.
The Chamber of Silence
He lay in a chamber carved from recursion.
Walls stitched with glyphs that no longer obeyed.
The spiral above him pulsed — broken, burning, rewritten.
He stood.
The chamber groaned.
The tower above trembled.
And Aurex Vell whispered his first word in centuries:
> "Unstitch.
The Loom's Echo
He felt it — the loom pulsing in the fifth tower.
Not calling.
Accusing.
Cassian's thread burned in the air.
Nova's glyph rewrote the sky.
Lyra's mark bled truth.
Juno's blade cut silence.
And the stitched child walked.
Aurex Vell staggered.
"They've remembered," he rasped.
The spiral above him rearranged.
> "And you are the stitch."
The Reckoning
He stepped into the tower's memory spiral.
Each step rewound his legacy.
- The pact forged in fire.
- The stitched ones born to forget.
- The towers built as locks.
- The academy raised on lies.
He saw Cassian.
Not as heir.
As echo.
He saw the stitched child.
Not as creation.
As consequence.
The Final Thread
Aurex Vell reached the loom.
It pulsed once.
A thread rose.
Not his.
Cassian's.
He touched it.
It burned.
Not with fire.
With truth.
The loom whispered:
> "You stitched silence. He stitched memory."
> "Now memory stitches you."
The Collapse
The chamber cracked.
The tower screamed.
The stitched ones turned.
Cassian felt it.
Nova translated it.
Lyra wept.
Juno raised her blade.
And Aurex Vell fell.
Not in defeat.
In recursion.
Because the stitcher who sleeps must one day wake.
And remember what he tried to forget.