The stitched child walked the spiral.
Not toward Aurex Vell.
Toward the stitch.
The place where silence had been woven into time.
Aurex waited.
Not in defiance.
In dread.
The Meeting
They did not speak.
They pulsed.
The stitched child radiated fire.
Aurex radiated regret.
The spiral shimmered between them — stitched with recursion, prophecy, and pain.
Cassian watched from the edge.
Nova translated the silence.
Lyra held the thread.
Juno gripped her blade.
The Accusation
The stitched child raised their hand.
Aurex flinched.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
"You stitched me," the child whispered.
Aurex nodded. "To protect the world."
The child's eyes burned. "You buried it."
Aurex's voice cracked. "I buried myself."
The Spiral Responds
The spiral pulsed.
Symbols rearranged.
Aurex's name fractured.
The stitched child's thread glowed.
Cassian stepped forward. "You sealed memory."
Aurex turned. "And you unsealed it."
Nova's glyph hovered. "The towers were locks."
Lyra's mark bled. "And we are the keys."
The Loom's Judgment
The loom appeared above them — vast, burning, alive.
It spun a new thread.
Not for Aurex.
For the stitched child.
They caught it.
It pulsed with every forgotten truth.
Aurex fell to his knees.
"I thought forgetting was mercy."
The stitched child whispered, "It was silence."
The Unstitching
The spiral began to unravel.
Not destructively.
Redemptively.
Each symbol became a memory.
Each memory, a flame.
The stitched child raised the thread.
Aurex closed his eyes.
Cassian held the coin.
Nova translated the glyph.
Lyra whispered the truth.
Juno stepped back.
And the stitched child stitched one final word into the spiral:
> "Begin."