Chapter 71: Ashes in Loom, III
The world cracked inward.
Helene's form flickered—once, twice—as if reality itself struggled to hold her shape.
Her hand still clutched her chest where Konrad's bullet had struck, violet threadlight leaking between her fingers like a star about to collapse. Her breathing grew heavier, shoulders trembling under a weight the eye couldn't see.
Then she straightened.
Not gracefully.
Not triumphantly.
But with finality.
The threads around her shuddered, unraveling and reweaving all at once. The air folded back in layers, ripples tearing through the sky above, distorting the fractured clouds into spirals of deep violet and bruised silver.
Helene's violet glow deepened—darkened—until it wasn't just color anymore. It was presence.
The shape of her body blurred. Her hair lifted in unseen currents, strands glowing with threads of violet and black that moved against the direction of the wind. Her coat, torn and scorched, reformed not into fabric, but into something woven from living time itself—an ephemeral cloak that shimmered between existence and memory.
Beneath it, glimpses of armor—fractured, like shattered porcelain—hugged her form, laced with threadlight veins that pulsed with a rhythm not of this world. Segments of her body seemed to slip between moments—her feet never fully touching the ground, her hands existing half a breath ahead of where they should have been.