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“You call that dancing? I thought perhaps you were having a seizure.”

Nat snorted.

“Rude. I’ll have you know I’m a pretty good dancer. I can teach you sometime, Jon Jon.”

“Just Jon,” he said with a sigh.

“Just Jon,” I agreed as if Jon Jon was now Just Jon.

“You are,” he said slowly, “the most infuriating creature I have ever had the misfortune to mentor.”

“I get that a lot.”

“I am certain you do.” He uncrossed his arms, and for a moment, I thought he might actually smile. The library walls bled away, melting into the soft, sterile echo of a hospital hallway. And there, hovering near the door of a child’s room, was a tiny snag that wriggled and sparked with electricity. Whatever had been pulled appeared more like a jagged rip than something removed with surgical precision.

Maybe Angel had been in a hurry? But how was he able to change the weave at all?

A tiny pulse of a dark snippet squirmed as though trying to get away.

Zhenjun reached out, plucked the wriggling darkness between his fingers like it was nothing more than a shadow-maggot, and crushed it to nothing. But the snag remained. Threatening to tear.

“This is what happens,” Zhenjun said, his voice still tight but no longer cold, “when the Bastion acts without the Weaver to guide him. Your mate is powerful, but he is not you. He cannot see the threads. He cannot feel the weave and repair the tears.” He glanced at me. “Only you can.”

I stared at the snag. At the damage Angel had unknowingly caused. At the mess I was meant to clean up. It wasn’t a hole like the one outside Bowman’s apartment, or even one of the tiny rips I’d been practicing on. This was more like a thread pulled from the middle of a knitted project, leaving the rest loose and on the verge of fraying.

“Do not pull. Persuade. The weave knows how it wants to be. You need only remind it.” Zhenjun said, detached, like a surgeon observing a procedure. He stood at my shoulder, unhurried.

The longer I examined this wound, the better I understood what Angel had done. He’d taken something bigger than the little dark blob and yanked it out. Something that had been winding itself into the tapestry. My job wasn’t to patch or replace it, but to remind the rest of the strands where they belonged.

Reaching out with my senses, I let my consciousness overlay what the weave should look like. The work began. Time slipped away, painstakingly slow as I coaxed each strand back into place.

It hurt. Not me, the weave. The weave didn’t understand why the mess had been made. Didn’t care. Its purpose was to sustain, wind, and exist without snags or kinks. A million threads woven into one single moment, some brighter than others, some flowing strong and resilient, others thin and fading.

I gritted my teeth as the weight of the weave’s unrest pressed against me. Like trying to pet lightning. If this was what Zhenjun felt from every tear, no wonder he was perpetually pissed off.

It was fucking agony.

Slowly the stretched strands began to recoil, tightening themselves, dragging the snapped edges closer. One by one, the tiny broken strands latched onto their severed ends and reknit, as if never broken. With a careful dance of realignment, each connection clicked into place with a soothing resonant hum. Healing. Falling silent.

But with each mend, something in me faded.

A subtle drain at first, like watching color leach from a painting. The stable, ghostly form I’d maintained in the library began to blur at the edges. The details of the spectral hallway softened. I could feel my finite energy, siphoning away into the work.

I was weaving myself into the repair.

Fuck.

After what felt like a lifetime, the small snag vanished. The last lingering edges of darkness faded. The weave relaxed with a profound sigh of relief. The weave was whole again.

“Your resonance is depleting,” Zhenjun observed, though oddly sounded sad. His expression didn’t change. And I was too tired to press his buttons.

A deep, hollow cold had taken root in my center.

Zhenjun studied the mended spot, then me. “Adequate repair. Costly. But you are fading faster than projected. This accelerates your timeline. You need to retrieve your remains before there is nothing left to recover.”

The words should have terrified me. All I felt was a weary numbness. I wanted to close my eyes and sink to the floor, though I knew this exhaustion lay soul-deep.

The hospital vanished around us, returning to the library. My spiritual legs gave out. Nat caught me as I fell. I marveled that anyone could touch me when I felt like mist terrified of the next strong breeze.