The forest was too quiet.
Even with the echoes of war crashing across the distant field, here, beneath the boughs warped by Loomlight, silence ruled.
Davin stared down at the flickering figure before him—a version of himself, younger by a few years, darker by a lifetime.
This Davin bled shadow from his eyes. His hands were stained with the ashes of a village no one spoke of. The one he had left to burn.
"I told you," the shade hissed, "don't remember me."
But Davin didn't step back.
"I didn't forget you," he said. "I buried you."
The shade rose to its feet. It smiled, all broken teeth and cruel memory.
"You buried me, but you used me too."
Images surged up from the ground, like ripples in cloth—Lira in chains, Ashrel bleeding out, Kaelen screaming through smoke.
And Davin walking away.
"You ran when it mattered," the shade growled.
"I was afraid," Davin snapped. "I was young."
"You were selfish." The shade stepped closer. "And you still are."
Davin raised his blade.
"So what do I do, then? Destroy you?"
The shade tilted its head.
"You could. And lose me forever. No more guilt. No more hesitation."
"Or?"
"Let me in. And carry what you did."
The Loom pulsed behind him.
A silver thread hovered near his heart. If he reached for it—if he remembered fully—he could reclaim it.
But it would change him.
The others would see him not as the brave scout, the quiet wit.
They would see the boy who watched a village die to save himself.
"You don't deserve them," the shade said.
"No," Davin whispered. "But they deserve the truth."
He opened his arms.
"Come on, then. Let's remember."
The shade screamed as it merged into him.
Pain unlike anything he'd felt. A roaring fire in his soul, a collapse and rebirth of every choice he'd made.
When he opened his eyes again, the forest was gone.
He was standing on the battlefield.
Lira turned to him, stunned.
His hair had streaked with ash-gray.
His eyes—no longer just green—held a flicker of burning red.
Ashrel's grip on his blade tightened. "What… happened?"
Davin met their gaze, steady.
"I remembered the worst of me. And I'm still standing."
Above them, the Severers staggered.
Not physically—spiritually.
Something had shifted.
For the first time since their arrival, they hesitated.
Kaelen noticed. "They're breaking rhythm…"
"Because Davin just proved something," Lira murmured.
"Memory doesn't just trap us. It frees us."
Myelren raised its obsidian hand.
Lightning crackled between its fingers—words unspoken and names undone.
"You challenge the Unmakers with guilt and grief?" it said.
"You fight a war of remembrance? You will burn in it."
But even it sounded unsure now.
Because something else was rising—beneath the battlefield, inside the Loom itself.
Something old.
Something that had waited too long.
Eren paused atop the final rise before the Threadlands.
His blade pulsed with warmth.
He whispered:
"They've stirred the deep. She'll wake soon."
He stepped into the light.
"And when she does, even the Severers will kneel."