Dawn's pale gold light seeped through the pavilion's paper windows, gilding the edges of the real journal spread open on Lin Wan's worktable. Its pages were brittle with age, but the ink—her mother's slanted, looping script—still glowed faintly when touched by the silver needle. Buried between entries about memory repairs and counter-patterns was a folded letter, its seal cracked: addressed to "Eira," signed with a lotus embroidered in moonlight silk.
"Eira," Shen Yan said, tracing the name with a finger. "That's the Thorn Weavers' leader. Your mother's partner."
The letter's words were sharp, frayed with frustration: "You want to control memories, not mend them. The thread-eater isn't a tool—it's a curse. If you won't stop, I'll hide the patterns. We were supposed to protect people, Eira. Not rule them."
A knock at the door made them look up. It was an old woman, her hands crisscrossed with thin, silvery scars (the marks of a weaver who'd pricked herself a thousand times), her apron stitched with a faded moon-and-loom pattern. She carried a wooden box, its lid carved with the same moon symbol.
"I'm Maeve," she said, her voice rough as worn silk. "Your mother knew me. She left this for you—if Eira ever came back."
The box held a rusted metal part: a gear, its edges etched with tiny lotus symbols, and a scrap of embroidery: the moon-and-loom pattern, woven with both moonlight silk and frost threads. Lin Wan's silver needle trembled— the gear hummed with the same energy as the screen.
"This is from the Moonlit Loom," she said. The loom was a legend among weavers: a tool that could weave memories into thread, built by her mother and Eira years ago.
Maeve nodded. "Eira wants it back. She says meet her at the loom's old workshop—tonight, at midnight. Bring the screen. She'll tell you why your mother left."
Shen Yan's hand tightened around his dagger. "It's a trap."
"Maybe," Maeve said, her eyes softening. "But Eira's not just angry. She's grieving. Your mother was her only friend." She left the box and slipped out, the door clicking shut behind her.
Lin Wan traced the loom gear's lotus etchings. "We have to go. Not for Eira—for the truth."
By midnight, the Moonlit Loom's workshop loomed at the edge of the city, its walls overgrown with ivy, its roof half-collapsed. The loom itself stood in the center: a massive, wooden frame, its threads rotted, but its metal gears (matching Maeve's part) still glinting in the moonlight. Eira was waiting beside it—tall, her hair streaked with silver, her coat stitched with a lotus and frost thread (the same as the scrap from Mr. Hale's coat). Her eyes, like her handwriting, were sharp, but there was a weariness in them that mirrored Lin Wan's.
"You have the screen," Eira said, nodding at the cloth-wrapped bundle in Lin Wan's arms.
"You have the truth," Lin Wan said. "Why did you split with my mother?"
Eira's laugh was bitter. "She thought memory was a gift to mend. I thought it was a weapon to protect. When the Thorn Weavers first formed, we wanted to stop people from hurting each other—erase the memories that made them cruel. But your mother said we had no right to steal choice. She hid the loom's key parts… and the screen."
Shen Yan stepped forward. "You created the thread-eater to enforce that."
Eira flinched. "It was supposed to be a guard—only target those who hurt others. But it got hungry. It started devouring any memory it could find. Your grandmother tried to stop it… and it killed her."
Lin Wan's breath caught. The journal had never mentioned that.
"I didn't mean to," Eira said, her voice breaking. "I just wanted to fix things. Your mother wouldn't help—she said I'd gone too far. So I took the thread-eater, and the Thorn Weavers, and I tried to finish what we started."
A rustle in the ivy made them freeze. Mr. Hale stepped out, flanked by three men, their black threads coiled in their hands. "Enough talking," he said. "Take the screen."
Eira's eyes widened. "I said no violence—"
"Your softness is why we're losing," Mr. Hale snarled. He lunged for the screen, but Lin Wan activated it: the lotus pattern blazed, projecting her mother's voice from the letter: "Eira—if you're listening, the loom isn't a weapon. It's a bridge. Mend, don't control."
Eira froze. She grabbed a nearby loom thread—woven with moonlight silk—and drove it through Mr. Hale's black thread bundle. The threads exploded, and the men stumbled back.
"Go," she said to Lin Wan, her voice tight. "I'll hold them off. The loom's key— it's in your mother's old needle case. Use it to fix the thread-eater. Not control it."
Shen Yan grabbed Lin Wan's arm. "We have to go."
As they fled, Lin Wan looked back—Eira was fighting Mr. Hale, her loom thread wrapping around his black threads, the moonlit workshop glowing with their clashing magic.
Back at the pavilion, Lin Wan pried open her mother's old needle case. Tucked between silver needles was a tiny gear, etched with a moon: the loom's final key. She fitted it to Maeve's part, and the gear hummed—matching the screen's energy.
The truth was messier than she'd thought: Eira wasn't just a villain. She was a woman who'd lost her way, grieving the friend she'd pushed away, the grandmother she'd accidentally killed.
Shen Yan set a hand on her shoulder. "We can fix this. Together."
Lin Wan smiled, holding the loom gear in her palm. The thread-eater, the loom, the Thorn Weavers—they were all pieces of a broken promise. But with the screen, the journal, and Eira's fragile truce, she could mend it. Not with control, but with choice.
As the first light of dawn touched the gear, Lin Wan picked up her silver needle. The next stitch would be the start of something new: not a legacy of conflict, but one of mending.