They were in the absolute center of Theron City.
The Cathedral of the Shattered Sun was not the abandoned ruin its name suggested. It was a staggering, monumental piece of Gothic architecture that dominated the skyline, its massive glass spires visible from almost any street in the capital. The stonework was dark and imposing, yet there was an undeniable, heavy sacredness to the place. The sprawling plaza before it was alive with movement. Hundreds of people—shopkeepers, nobles, weary laborers—were filing through the massive archways. These were the devout, the everyday believers of the Faith of the Loom, coming to offer their prayers.
Solace stared at the crowds, then turned his gaze slowly to Nicole. The crushing weight of her earlier revelation about Layer 3 was still suffocating him, and now this jarring shift in setting was giving him whiplash.
"Isn't this... significantly more public than the Southern Gardens?" Solace asked, his voice tight. "You dragged me out of my neighborhood, put me in a car, and told me my potential was permanently capped, all under the guise of finding a 'private' place to talk."
Nicole didn't even look at him as she unclasped her hands. "Don't worry about that. The privacy was just an excuse to get you in the car."
Solace stared at her, entirely unamused. He let out a slow, deeply exhausted breath.
He followed her out of the car. The midday air was thick with the scent of burning incense and the low, rhythmic murmur of a thousand whispered prayers. They joined the flow of the crowd, passing beneath the towering stone archways.
The interior of the Cathedral was breathtakingly vast. The ceiling vaulted into absolute darkness, supported by pillars thick as ancient redwoods. At the very front of the sanctuary, dominating the altar, was a colossal mechanical Loom. It was in constant, mesmerizing motion, its massive wooden arms and shimmering, spectral threads spinning endlessly.
As they walked down the center aisle, the believers around them paused, raising their right hands to draw a slow, deliberate circle over their chests—the sacred symbol of the Loom. Without missing a beat, Nicole traced the circle over her charcoal coat. Solace mirrored the gesture, the motion feeling heavy and foreign as he did it.
They slipped into one of the long wooden pews near the middle of the nave, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the dim, stained-glass light. The rhythmic clack-whir of the giant Loom echoed through the cavernous space, a hypnotic, grounding sound.
Solace sat in silence for a long time, letting his racing heart settle to the rhythm of the machine. He looked up at the spinning threads, wondering what any of this had to do with his capped potential or the secrets of the Church.
"Do you know the myth of the creation of our world, Solace?"
Nicole's voice was barely a whisper, slipping beneath the ambient noise of the praying crowd. She didn't look at him, her silver eyes fixed dead ahead on the altar.
He nodded slowly, keeping his voice equally low. His mother, who was a devout believer, had told him numerous times.
"Yes," Solace answered, staring at the giant machine. "Our world was created by the destruction of the primeval Loom. The Loom was all-powerful; it was the literal embodiment and symbol of creation itself, weaving reality into existence. When it was destroyed, its parts shattered to become the world we live in. The concepts it held, which were long strings of thread within the Loom, became fragmented."
He paused, recalling the intricate magic system he had studied so intensely. "From those fragments, weavers were born. We were born from the broken essence, the sparks of the Loom, which is why our souls can connect to the concepts of the Threads to shape reality. Much smaller fragments became the Threaded beasts, and the smallest sparks became ordinary animals."
Nicole remained perfectly calm throughout his recitation. She didn't nod, didn't blink. She just watched the mechanical arms rise and fall.
"That's the textbook answer," Solace finished, turning his head slightly to look at her sharp profile. "What is this about, Principal?"
Nicole finally turned to him, leaning forward slightly, her posture intense. The haughty arrogance was completely gone, replaced by the grave solemnity of a historian unearthing a cursed tomb.
"Do you know that this myth originates entirely from the Sanguivar clan?" she asked. "The founding bloodline of the Church?"
"No," Solace admitted, his brow furrowing.
"The myth of creation is slightly wrong," Nicole continued, her voice dropping a fraction cooler. "It wasn't a Loom, Solace. It was a cosmic spider."
Solace felt a sudden chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the drafty cathedral.
"A spider," Nicole repeated softly. "A female entity. People in the oldest, forgotten texts used to call her the Mother Goddess of Creation. She wasn't called female because she physically created everything we see, but because she literally birthed the very concept of Creation itself into the void. Mysteriously, she died. And upon her death, her sons—the new gods—created our world from the wreckage."
She let the words hang in the air for a moment, allowing Solace to absorb the sheer, terrifying scale of the revision.
"It is not entirely clear when she birthed those gods," Nicole explained, her eyes drifting back to the altar. "But there are a total of four gods, each having absolute authority over a specific, fundamental domain. The rest of the myth you know is actually remarkably similar to the truth. We were indeed created from the broken fragments of the Mother Goddess's soul. Smaller parts created the beasts, and the smallest created the animals."
She turned her silver eyes back to him, the weight of the implication heavy in her gaze. "But do you understand what that means, Solace? If we are made from the fragments of their mother... it means the gods, the Threaded beasts, and humanity are related. We are, in a cosmic sense, siblings. The myth of the Loom you mentioned was likely a cultural fabrication, adopted by the Church to provide a much tamer, more palatable interpretation for the masses."
Solace leaned back against the hardwood of the pew, his mind reeling.
And then, a more pressing, terrifying thought surfaced. He thought of his own soul. He thought of the bizarre, overwhelming presence he kept sensing, the omniscient god that was mentioned a few times in murals. The presence of a being that was tied to the concept of fate.
"Principal Nicole," Solace started, his voice a tight, raspy whisper. "Is there any god... is there one that is omniscient? Or one that has absolute dominion over fate?"
Nicole pondered this for a long moment, a deeply curious look crossing her features. It was rare to see her genuinely uncertain.
"I don't know much about the gods," she admitted quietly. "Because, frankly, I don't even know whether they are dead or alive. But I can confirm two of them. Not exactly omniscient, but close." She leaned in slightly closer. "There are ancient, sealed murals deep below the Royal Palace of Hera. They point to one god having absolute authority over the domain of Existence."
Solace went entirely rigid. His breath hitched, locking in his throat.
Existence. The realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest. The Thread of Existence—the anomaly in his soul, the external power he had sensed but couldn't explain. It wasn't just a rare affinity. It belonged to this being. A god had somehow messed with his soul, or woven a piece of itself into his very foundation.
Nicole didn't seem to notice his internal crisis, continuing her quiet explanation. "And the other one depicted... is a godly snake. A serpent possessing the authority of Time."
Solace forced his lungs to work, pushing past the ringing in his ears. He had to keep pulling at this thread. "Where... where exactly did you learn this from? From my understanding, murals of that age are written in dead languages. Even if they are decipherable, how did you possibly gain access to the ruins beneath the Royal Palace of Hera? That's the most heavily guarded place in the kingdom."
Nicole offered a slow, grim nod. "You're right about the language. But the mural itself wasn't written text. It was a drawn mural. It depicted the four gods in vivid detail."
She swallowed hard, the memory clearly bringing a shadow of dread to her usually flawless composure. "As for the Snake of Time... I didn't just see a drawing of it, Solace. I actually saw it in the flesh. And then I died."
Solace stared at her, utterly horrified.
"Simply looking at the true form of a god is a horrifying, mind-shattering death," Nicole said, her voice dropping to a hollow monotone. "Even for someone at Layer 5. The human mind simply cannot process the scale of it. As for how I gained access to the Royal Palace to see all of this... let's just say the world was ending, and the guards were no longer an issue."
Solace felt his hands gripping the edge of the pew so tightly his fingers ached. "Can you... Can you please tell me what happened when you died?"
Nicole sighed, a long, weary exhalation that seemed to carry the weight of a ruined world. She stared at the spinning Loom at the front of the cathedral, though Solace knew she was seeing something else entirely.
"It was a world-ending event," she began, her tone detached, as if reciting a nightmare she had tried to numb herself to. "But it didn't feel like a natural apocalypse. It felt more like an apotheosis—the violent, agonizing birth of a new god. I was on the front lines, trying to fight off a massive horde of Threaded beasts. But they were wrong. They were heavily corrupted, leaking this thick, black, viscous liquid. And the terrifying part was... the black liquid seemed to be corrupting the humans, too. Turning them into things I don't want to describe."
She closed her eyes, the silver lashes resting against her pale skin.
"We were losing. And then, suddenly, the very atmosphere changed. The pressure was so immense I could barely stand. The sky above literally cracked open like a pane of glass. And from beneath the earth, erupting directly from the ruins of the Royal Palace of Hera..."
She opened her eyes, turning to look directly into Solace's soul.
"A giant, cosmic snake came out. It was impossibly huge, so massive its body blotted out the horizon. It was biting its own tail, forming a perfect Ouroboros in the fractured sky. It seemed to be coiling around the entire planet."
Nicole's voice dropped to a terrified, fragile whisper.
"But the strangest, most horrific thing about it, Solace... was that this snake, this god of Time that was crushing the world... was actually dead. It was a rotting corpse. And the moment my eyes tried to comprehend its humongous form, my mind shattered. I died."
She took a slow, grounding breath.
"And when I opened my eyes again, it was the year 4359. The month before the freshman semester even started."