Location: Dathomir - Weavewood
"How do you know what that means?"
Her smile faded slightly. "You carry the stench of Vethrisa."
Ace's expression flattened. The witch turned without another word and disappeared between the trees. Ace remained where he was for several seconds, watching the place she'd been standing. Tic chirped.
"Right."
Another whistle followed. Ace sighed and went after her. She hadn't gone far, just beyond the clearing sat a collection of shelters built beneath the enormous roots of an ancient tree. Firelight flickered between them, illuminating charms, bones and bundles of dried plants hanging from branches overhead.
There were others here. Ace counted four women before he stopped trying. Some watched him openly while others continued grinding herbs or tending fires as though the one-armed stranger wandering into their home wasn't worth interrupting dinner over. None wore the Vethrisa markings he remembered. That helped.
The woman settled beside a fire and gestured toward the ground opposite her. Ace remained standing instead.
"You called me Final Weave."
"I did."
"Why?"
"Because that is what Vethrisa called you."
Ace waited, but nothing else came.
"That's it?"
"What answer were you hoping for?"
"I don't know." Ace finally sat. "That's why I'm here."
For the first time, her amusement disappeared. Ace rested his arm across his raised knee and watched the flames.
"Something happened the last time I was here."
"The Mother."
His eyes lifted.
"You know about her?"
"Everyone who listens to this world knows when something like that wakes."
That was fair. Ace considered where to begin.
"When we fought her, I reached into the Force." He frowned. "Except it wasn't like normal. Usually I just... feel things. This time I saw them."
"Saw what?"
"Threads." Her attention narrowed and Ace noticed the change immediately. "Thousands of them. Everywhere. Through the trees, underground, through her. Through me. I couldn't tell where most of them started or ended."
The fire cracked between them.
"And then?"
"I grabbed them."
Several of the witches nearby stopped what they were doing. Ace glanced toward them before looking back at the woman.
"What happened?"
"I wanted her to stop moving."
"And she obeyed?"
"She didn't have a choice." The witch studied him across the fire, and Ace shifted slightly beneath her stare. "I've moved people before. Thrown them. Held them in place. This wasn't that."
"What was it?"
Ace looked into the flames again, remembering the Mother rising from the pit. Her body had been constantly changing, shadow and ichor pulling apart only to knit themselves together again.
"Like she was already caught." The words sounded strange even to him. "I didn't grab her. I grabbed whatever everything else was connected to and..." He flexed his fingers slowly, searching for something better. "Pulled."
Silence settled around the fire. Then the witch leaned forward.
"You still think of, what you call "the Force", as something you reach for."
Ace frowned.
"Isn't it?"
"No." She reached toward the fire and lifted a burning twig. "You reached for nothing that night. You simply noticed what was already around you." The ember traced a glowing line through the darkness as she moved it. "The tree does not end at its bark. The beast does not end at its flesh. Nor do you end at your skin. Everything leaves itself upon something else. Life upon life. Memory upon place. Choice upon consequence." She lowered the twig. "Some call those connections by different names. Here, we understand them as part of the Weave."
Ace's eyes remained on the glowing trail fading through the air.
"Threads."
"If that is how you saw them."
He looked at her.
"Vethrisa knew this?"
"They obsessed over it." Her expression hardened slightly. "They spent generations reaching deeper into the Weave. Learning its patterns. Binding what they could. Then they decided understanding was no longer enough."
Ace already knew where this was going.
"They wanted someone who could do more. Someone who could reach where they could not."
"So they engineered me."
The witch regarded him quietly.
"They believed they did."
The distinction stood out. Ace studied her face, but she offered nothing further.
"Then what happened with the Mother?"
"You told me."
"I told you what I saw."
"And what you saw was the Weave."
Ace shook his head. "That doesn't explain how I held her."
"No." The witch's mouth curved faintly. "But you are asking me how to reach somewhere you have already been."
"I don't know how I got there."
"You stumbled through the door."
She rose and stepped around the fire. Ace followed her with his eyes.
"But now, you know there is a door." She disappeared into the darkness beyond the firelight. "Rest. Tomorrow, we find out whether you can open it."
