The battlefield was still.
Ren's breath came slow and steady, his ribs aching with every inhale. But the pain was distant now—a shadow against the clarity of what he had become.
The Loom stretched around him, vast, endless. Before, he had only disrupted it, tearing at its edges, making chaos from order.
Now, he could see more.
He wasn't beyond fate. If a Magus Lord or a Voidwalker stood before him, he knew he'd still be outmatched. But he wasn't just trapped inside the weave anymore, either.
He could stitch fate together. Cut where he chose.
And for the first time, he felt in control.
The first opponent lunged.
Ren saw everything—not just the attack, but the weave of magic guiding it, the future it was meant to shape.
A spear of golden light, woven from compressed fate, arcing toward his ribs. A tracking spell.
Ren didn't dodge.
His fingers flicked through the air, tracing Threadbind, a basic Weaving technique—but done with perfect control.
Golden strands spiraled from his fingertips, twisting midair, intercepting the incoming spear.
The attack bent.
Not broken. Not erased. Redirected.
It snapped around the caster's wrist, the fate-bound construct twisting back onto its own wielder.
The student gasped—his own attack pulling him forward, sending him crashing into the ground, pinned beneath his own Weaving.
One down.
The second came from behind. Fast. Precise.
Ren turned, already moving.
The student was mid-motion, hand outstretched, pulling fate itself into his strike—a reinforced impact spell, meant to shatter defenses, to end fights in a single hit.
Ren stepped inside his guard.
Golden threads swirled around his own hands, forming Spellwoven Gauntlets—but not instinctively, not hastily.
Controlled. Measured.
His fist met the attacker's chest—
And the moment of impact was set in stone.
Not with brute force. Not with overwhelming power.
With certainty.
The threads around the student's body twisted, pulling him off balance. His momentum failed. His fate folded in on itself.
He collapsed.
Two down.
Ren exhaled slowly. This was different.
Before, his Weaving had been hesitant. Messy. A means to an end.
Now?
It was an art.
Only one remained.
The leader of Varian's faction—the one who had been directing them from the beginning. He hadn't moved since the battle started, but now, his gaze locked onto Ren, unreadable.
"You…" His voice was careful. "You aren't just breaking spells anymore."
Ren said nothing.
The leader exhaled, golden Weaving threading around his arms. A containment spell.
Designed not just to bind, but to correct.
To force Ren back into the weave of fate.
Ren sighed.
How foolish.
The bindings never reached him.
They unwove the moment they entered his space.
Not shattered.
Not absorbed.
Swallowed.
For the first time, Ren saw it clearly—how different this power had become.
The golden Weaving that sought to bind him didn't just dissipate.
It was being devoured.
Threads of shadow coiled around his arm, black and empty, shifting like liquid smoke.
The leader hesitated.
"You think you're beyond fate," he said, voice tight. "But you aren't. No one is."
Ren met his gaze, calm. "Then prove it."
The leader lunged.
Ren let him.
Golden threads flared, warping into a woven blade of raw fate—a weapon made of absolute certainty.
Ren reached out.
Not with Weaving.
Not with force.
With Unweaving.
The moment his fingers brushed the golden strands, the magic withered.
Not torn apart violently.
Not disrupted chaotically.
Eaten.
The golden threads collapsed inward—as if something had reached out from within Ren and consumed them whole.
And then, the darkness moved.
Black threads spread outward from his palm, slithering through the air like living shadows.
They reached for the leader.
He staggered back. "Wait—"
Ren lowered his hand.
The black threads lunged.
They coiled around the leader's limbs, wrapping tight, seeping into his body, into his very existence.
And then, they pulled.
The Loom shuddered.
The golden threads binding the leader to fate snapped, one by one.
His form flickered.
His presence wavered.
The air around him seemed to fold in, as if the world itself was forgetting he had ever existed.
"No—NO! WAIT—"
The last thread unraveled.
And the leader ceased to be.
Not broken.
Not destroyed.
Unwoven.
His fate had been removed.
And the Loom never rewove what had been cut.
Silence.
Ren exhaled slowly, flexing his fingers. He could still feel it—the threads pulsing through him, the vast emptiness of the Loom where his enemy had once been.
That was new.
Before, when he unmade something, it was gone.
Now, he could feel what was left behind.
Kara stepped forward.
She didn't speak right away.
She just looked at the empty space where the leader had once stood.
Her fingers clenched.
Then, finally, she said, "That… wasn't normal."
Ren didn't answer.
She turned to him. "Tell me that wasn't what I think it was."
Ren met her gaze. "What do you think it was?"
She studied him carefully. "You didn't just erase him."
Her voice was quieter now.
"You took him out of the Loom entirely."
Ren remained silent.
Because she was right.
And for the first time since he had gained this power—he wasn't sure if that was a good thing.
The battle was over.
Ren stood at the center of the ruins, the weight of his power settling over him.
Before, he had always been separate from fate. A flaw in the Loom.
Now?
Now, he was something else.
Not bound by the weave.
Not rewriting it completely.
But outside of it.
If fate no longer controlled him—
Then what did?
Kara exhaled and crouched beside the fallen students, glancing at their loom-marked tokens.
She picked them up and tossed them into Ren's hand.
"This should be enough," she muttered.
Ren caught them without looking.
The Academy had called this the Trial of Survival.
But everyone knew the truth.
The easiest way to win wasn't to find an artifact.
It was to take one from someone else.
And Ren had taken everything.