For generations, the looms defined life on Gallifrey. Even in Vorlaxion, when the citadel first stirred to life, their hum was a comfort – a sound that meant continuity, control, and the certainty that existence itself could be maintained by design. Every child, every soul, was patterned and precise, the product of science and destiny entwined.
And then, one day, the looms fell silent.
It began quietly, as most miracles do. Lira, a historian of the early weave, had been cataloguing corrupted biodata when she began to feel unwell. The healers assumed exhaustion; the side effect of long hours spent amid the hum of the looms. But when they ran their scans, the results brought the citadel to a halt. There was no biodata sequence, no registered loom activation, and yet a flicker of energy pulsed deep within her body – steady, rhythmic, unmistakable. A heartbeat.
The discovery spread through Vorlaxion like fire through dry fields. Scholars argued in whispers. Technicians tore apart the looms in panic, searching for signs of malfunction. But no malfunction came – only silence. It was as if the machines themselves had stopped to listen.
Months passed, and the city watched. Lira grew, her condition visible proof of something long thought impossible. The looms did not weave her child, nor did they interfere. The energy beneath the citadel shifted, resonating not with machinery, but with life. And when the day came, and her son was born beneath the twin suns, every sensor in the city registered the same phenomenon – a surge of warmth, like a living pulse spreading through the foundations of Vorlaxion itself.
The people called it the turning.
No longer did new lives come from the looms. They came from the joining of two – from unity, emotion, and chance. From love. Men and women who once believed themselves bound to sterile creation began to feel the stirring of possibility within them. Life, once confined to laboratories, now began in whispers, in hands clasped together, in hope.
The first naturally born child grew strong and radiant, his laughter echoing through the Citadel’s corridors. Those who saw him said the city seemed to brighten in his presence – the marble shimmered, the air felt lighter, as though Vorlaxion itself recognized him as its own creation.
The looms are quiet now. Their spindles rest, their hum replaced by the sound of newborn cries and beating hearts. Some call it evolution, others heresy. But none can deny the truth: something ancient and forgotten has returned.
Vorlaxion no longer weaves its children – it bears them. And with each birth, the city remakes itself – not from code, nor pattern, but from something far more unpredictable, and far more alive.