We tracked the northern wind until the grass shifted.
It wasn't dust under our feet anymore—it was memory.
I could sense it under my feet. Gentle, too perfect, like treading woven silk. Each step made my skin tingle. The smell of smoke, long gone. Whispers I couldn't quite hear. It wasn't a location.
It was a record.
And static rode the air. As if the sky had been sewn shut with thread that vibrated with energy.
Luro didn't comment. His face clenched each time we passed over another destroyed shrine, each time we walked past a stone statue whose face had been worn away.
Symbols marked the trees now—spirals, torn circles, shattered knots. None of them were carved by human hands.
We'd entered the Threadlands.
And we weren't alone.
---
The first one came at twilight.
We didn't see it. We sensed it.
The trees standing guard about us all contorted simultaneously, tilting away from the west. Birds shrieked and took flight—then froze in place, quivering before crashing to the earth.
Something was approaching.
I raised my sword.
Hiran winced, moving back into me. "What is that?"
A shape glided through the fog. Tall. Thin. Skin like leathers sewn over glass. Its face was hidden under a shroud of threads. It didn't speak.
It just pointed at me.
And then the threads behind its disguise snapped open—and I had no idea where I was.
---
I came to during the strike, blood on my arm.
Hiran was yelling.
Luro had his arm around my chest, hauling me back through the trees.
"What—what happened?!"
"You touched it," Luro spat. "You stared too long. It began to claim you."
"Claim me?"
"Your history. Your mind. That wasn't a beast. That was a Threadborn."
The term struck me like lightning.
I had heard it once, during the Sixth Loop. A scholar in the Cradle of Ash had spoken of living echoes crafted from lost memory. Beings born when too much forgotten sorrow accumulates in the world.
And now one was here. Hunting me.
---
We hid until dark under the roots of an upturned tree—yes, upturned. Grown upside down, with branches buried in the earth and roots knotted in the air. Everything here was wrong.
"I remember that thing," I breathed. "Not from this life. From a place with metal rain. It killed a dozen people with no weapons."
"It doesn't require weapons," Luro replied. "It takes away what makes you real."
Hiran glanced at me, then at the gash on my arm. "Did it take something?"
I focused.
Then my heart turned icy cold.
"I… can't recall Seve's last words."
Luro spun around. "What?"
I remembered them yesterday. He told me something in the ash. But now. it's blank. The memory's still there, but the sound has disappeared. Like someone sucked the meaning and left the picture behind."
Hiran stepped back.
Luro drew a line in the ground with his knife. "Then we have to make it to the Loom before more track us down."
---
The Loom.
A location that I once considered to be a myth—a secret machine buried deep beneath the world, rumored to contain all memory, both past and future. Rumored to be protected by a person who never dies, but will always lose their memories.
And it existed.
It was where the Threadborn were created.
And if we didn't get there first, they would steal it all.
---
That evening, I dreamed of Kaelis once more.
Only this time, she wasn't bleeding. She wasn't warning me.
She was smiling.
"You're almost there," she whispered. "But the truth isn't what you think. You didn't cause the Break alone."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Her form flickered.
Then Luro's voice came out of her mouth.
"You weren't the only one who ran."
I woke up gasping.
And Luro was gone.
---