The Phantom Limb didn't just exist; it hungered for a horizon. As Clevatess flexed his new, violet-sketched fingers, the very air in the Loom-Grave trench began to wrinkle like wet paper. The "Stain" on the floor—the rift left by the Queen's destroyed envoy—was no longer a threat. To the King's new arm, it was a handle.
"Alicia, the weight of the Citadel... I can feel it through the thread," Clevatess called out, his voice echoing with a spectral reverb. "The East is unravelling. We don't need to walk out. We can *pull* the destination to us."
"King, be careful!" the Architect cried, cowering behind a pillar of lint. "That limb is made of the 'Next Page.' If you pull too hard, you'll tear the story before we can live it!"
Clevatess ignored the warning. He plunged the Phantom Limb into the glowing rift. Instead of being erased, his hand gripped the raw fabric of the Void itself. With a violent, guttural roar, he didn't lift himself—he *yanked*.
The effect was a tectonic shift of reality. The Silk-Sea graveyard didn't just fade; it was folded away like a discarded cloth. The Citadel-Beast groaned, its obsidian legs skidding across a space that was momentarily neither here nor there.
Suddenly, the violet fog was replaced by a stinging, freezing gale. The scent of rotted jasmine was wiped away by the smell of iron and ancient snow.
They had reached the **Frayed Peak of the West**.
The Citadel slammed into a jagged mountainside of frozen metal. These weren't rocks; they were the rusted, titanic remains of a billion broken swords, piled high into the clouds. The "Sky-Fray" here was a churning vortex of silver sleet and lightning that tasted like copper.
"We're in the Forge-Lands," Nelluru shouted, her lime-green aura turning into a protective shield against the freezing wind. "But the forge is cold! The Queen didn't just stop the fires; she froze the iron in the middle of the strike!"
From the peaks above, a sound echoed that made the King's Phantom Limb throb with violet light. It wasn't a roar or a song. It was the rhythmic, deafening *clack-clack-clack* of a million mechanical shears.
"The Scissor-Guards," Alicia whispered, her hands gripping the Spire's edge until her knuckles turned white. "They aren't here to weave. They're here to cut the thread before it reaches the summit."