The Last Light Weaver

The needle of your light-loom sang as you pulled the final thread through the warp, a filament of captured dawn you’d spent three nights coaxing from the city’s dying glow. Your workshop smelled of ozone and old dust, and the air hummed with the residual heat of your craft. Outside, the perpetual twilight pressed against the grimy windows, and somewhere below, a Pale One’s shriek echoed off the cobbles. You didn’t flinch. You’d learned to read the dark the way Mira read the loom’s vibrations—by feel, by instinct.

The door opened without a knock. Adrian Voss stood there, his silhouette rimmed in the cold blue light of his own towers, his expensive coat dusted with ash. He looked at the shroud taking shape on your loom, and for a moment, the hunger in his eyes was almost human.

“Is it true,” he said, his voice low and raw, “that you can weave light into a thing that can’t be extinguished?”

Your hand paused over the loom. The question hung between you like a blade.