Korvane struck again on day thirty-seven.
Not with soldiers. Not with Article 14. With something worse.
He spoke to the press.
A live broadcast from the RDC's public affairs office. Pillar Korvane, in full dress uniform, the Wind Sovereign's bearing sharp and martial, delivering what he called "a public safety briefing regarding the Weaver Accord."
Voss watched it from the Dragon Bone Island field office, standing beside Mira's workstation, the broadcast playing on the primary screen while Mira's secondary screens showed the real-time thread-density data from the network's expanding coverage.
Korvane was good. Better than good — he was surgical. He didn't attack the Accord directly. He didn't call the Weavers hostile. He presented facts. Selective facts. The kind of facts that, assembled in the right order, told a story very different from the one Voss had presented to the Council.
"The Threadless creatures have killed seventeen soldiers and one civilian since their emergence," Korvane said. "The 'safety adjustment' covers approximately eight percent of active Threadless workers. Ninety-two percent remain lethal on contact."
True. Accurate. Devastating without context.
"The communication with the Loom is conducted through a single individual — Director Dren — whose neural pathways have been damaged by the communication process. Director Dren was hospitalized for forty-eight hours following a communication session in which the Loom's consciousness overwhelmed his mind."
True. Accurate. A career-ending detail presented as a safety concern.
"The Weaver Accord grants an alien intelligence permanent access to human soil based on three months of contact, thirty days of data, and the testimony of a Director who has acknowledged that his primary cognitive tool is being compromised by the process of using it."
The broadcast reached twelve million people in the metropolitan area. Within hours, it reached eight billion worldwide.
The reaction was immediate.
Public opinion, which had been cautiously supportive of the Accord after the Council vote, shifted. Not unanimously — but enough. The fear that Korvane had seeded with his careful, factual, technically-accurate presentation took root in the spaces between data points. The spaces where people filled in the blanks with their own anxieties.
Alien presence on human soil. A compromised Director. Lethal creatures walking through uncontrolled doorways.
The narrative was set. The damage was done.
---
And then the Weavers responded.
Not to Korvane. Not to the politics. To the attack on the doorway.
The connection between the Loom and Voss's Thread Sight operated on a level below conscious communication. The channel was always open — low bandwidth, background hum, the constant whisper of the source dimension pressing against the membrane. Voss had learned to filter it. To keep the channel managed.
But the Weavers had been watching. Through the doorway. Through the network's active nodes. Through the thread-tethers that connected every Threadless worker to the Loom. They had been monitoring human dimensional activity with the same quiet attention that they applied to fabric maintenance.
And they had seen Farrow's forces approach the doorway. They had registered the military signatures. They had perceived the intent.
The response was not violent. The Weavers didn't do violence.
It was structural.
At 3:14 PM — six hours after Korvane's broadcast — every Rift within five hundred miles of Dragon Bone Island closed simultaneously.
Not the Threadless Rifts. ALL Rifts. Abyssal and Loom alike. The barrier domes collapsed. The dimensional tears sealed. The Rift points vanished — not gradually, not through the normal process of mana depletion, but instantly. One moment, the barriers were there. The next, they were gone.
And with them, the ambient mana.
The Rift system was not just a source of monsters. It was a source of dimensional energy. Mana. The force that powered every Attuned ability, every barrier technology, every military system that humanity had built over eight centuries. The mana flowed through the Rifts from the connected dimensions — the Abyssal Plane and, now, the Loom. Without the Rifts, the ambient mana level began to drop.
The effect was not immediate. Mana dissipated slowly — the existing supply in the environment would sustain Attuned abilities for days, maybe weeks. But the supply was not being replenished. The tap had been turned off.
Yara called Voss. "My flames are at eighty-seven percent and dropping."
"It's the Weavers. They've closed the Rifts."
"All of them?"
"All of them. The doorway network's nodes are inactive. The Abyssal connections are sealed. The dimensional membrane in a five-hundred-mile radius has been reinforced to the point of impermeability."
"They can DO that?"
"They built the network. They control the connections. They can open them and they can close them."
"This is retaliation for Farrow's attack."
"It's not retaliation. It's a demonstration. The Weavers are showing us what happens when the Rift system shuts down. Not as a threat — as data. They're giving Korvane the evidence he asked for, just not the evidence he wanted."
The demonstration was devastating.
Within twenty-four hours, the ambient mana in the dead zone had dropped to seventy percent of baseline. Attuned abilities weakened. The military's mana-powered systems — communication relays, barrier monitoring equipment, transport vehicles — began to experience power fluctuations.
Within forty-eight hours, sixty percent. Yara's Solar Judgment was offline — the technique required ambient mana levels above seventy-five percent to initiate. Dex couldn't enter Rage State — the berserker ability drew on environmental mana to amplify the user's physical stats, and the environmental supply was insufficient.
Within seventy-two hours, forty-five percent. Half the Attuned in the dead zone reported significant ability degradation. Combat effectiveness across the RDC's regional forces dropped by an estimated thirty percent.
Only Voss was unaffected.
Thread Sight still worked. Living Thread Sight still functioned. The push, the void frequency, the communication channel — all operational. Because Thread Sight didn't draw on ambient mana. It drew on the Loom.
His power had always been different. The Loom's own tool, expressed through a human body. Connected to the source dimension directly, bypassing the Rift system entirely. The Weavers had closed the Rifts but they hadn't closed the Loom's fundamental connection to Thread Sight. They couldn't — or wouldn't.
"The Weavers want me to communicate," Voss told Yara. "They closed the Rifts to force the conversation."
"Or to demonstrate leverage."
"Both. They're showing that the Rift system — which everyone takes for granted — is dependent on dimensional connections that they control. Close the connections, lose the mana. Lose the mana, lose the abilities. Lose the abilities, lose the defense."
"That's not cooperation. That's coercion."
"It's negotiation. Hard negotiation. They tried soft — the communication, the Accord, the safety adjustment. Korvane responded with military force. Now they're responding with the one tool they have: the infrastructure."
Yara was silent. The silence of a SSS-rank Fire Sovereign whose flames were dimming and who understood, for the first time, that the power she'd taken for granted was not inherent — it was supplied.
"How do we get them to reopen?"
"I talk to them. Through the doorway. I explain that Korvane's attack was unauthorized. That the Accord still stands. That humanity is divided but the majority supports cooperation."
"And if they don't accept that?"
"Then the dead zone becomes permanent. And in a few weeks, every Attuned in a five-hundred-mile radius becomes a civilian."
The weight of that sentence filled the line. Every Attuned. Every soldier. Every Pillar. Powerless. Not through violence. Through the simple act of turning off a supply that everyone had assumed was as permanent as sunlight.
"Go," Yara said. "Talk to them. Fix this."
---
Voss entered the barrier. The Builder was unchanged. The doorway arch stood complete, the Rift point framed and humming. The sentinels guarded their positions.
He activated Living Thread Sight. Loaded Mira's framework.
The Builder's pattern was different. Not the slow, patient, CONCERN-tagged configuration of previous sessions. This was sharper. Structured. The communication equivalent of a formal statement.
*We did not close the connections in anger. We closed them in response to the approach of hostile forces toward the doorway. The doorway is the network hub. If it is destroyed, the network fails. We protected it by removing the resource that makes your hostile forces capable of threatening it.*
Voss arranged his pattern. UNDERSTANDING. AGREEMENT that the protection was rational. But also CONCERN. DAMAGE. The closure was hurting people who hadn't threatened the doorway.
*We understand. The closure affects all of your kind, not just the hostile ones. We did not intend collective punishment. We intended demonstration. The connections are your species' dependency. You depend on the thread-supply that flows through our network. Without it, your enhanced individuals lose their enhancements. Your military loses its capability. Your entire defense infrastructure, built over eight centuries, becomes inoperable.*
*This is the reality that some of your leaders refuse to acknowledge. The connections are not a luxury. They are the foundation. We built the foundation. We maintain the foundation. Destroying our doorway is not a military operation. It is structural suicide.*
The message was clear. The demonstration was not a weapon — it was an argument. The most powerful argument the Weavers had.
*Will you reopen the connections?* Voss patterned.
*When we are assured that the doorway will not be attacked. When the hostile forces are withdrawn. When the agreement is honored.*
*The agreement IS honored. The attack was unauthorized. The forces have been withdrawn. The Pillar who ordered the attack has been overruled by the Council.*
*The Pillar who ordered the attack remains in a position of authority. He retains military forces. He retains the capability to strike again.*
*We cannot remove him without legal process. Our governance does not work that way.*
The Builder paused. The lattice spun slowly. Processing. The Loom's consciousness working through its extension, evaluating the structural implications of human governance.
*We will reopen the connections in your zone. Conditionally. The doorway must be protected. Not by our sentinels — by yours. Your species must demonstrate that it can protect the network from its own hostile elements. If the doorway is threatened again, the connections close again. Permanently.*
The terms were hard. Harder than the Accord. But they were survivable.
*Agreed,* Voss patterned.
The Builder's lattice shifted. The dark threads flowed outward through the doorway, through the network's tethers, through the dimensional infrastructure that connected the Loom to the physical world.
At 7:23 PM, the Rifts reopened.
One by one. Node by node. The barriers reformed. The mana flowed. The ambient energy levels began to climb.
By midnight, the dead zone was eighty percent restored. By morning, full capacity.
Yara's flames burned bright. Dex could enter Rage State. The military's systems came back online.
But the lesson was learned. By everyone. Even Korvane.
The Weavers controlled the infrastructure. The mana, the Rifts, the barriers, the abilities — all of it flowed through a system the Weavers had built. Humanity had been using it for eight centuries without understanding what sustained it.
Now they understood.
And understanding, Voss knew, was the first thread in the fabric of every lasting peace.
