~ "It feeds on what you forget. It grows where memory rots." ~
The air was colder now.
Not the kind of cold that brushed the skin but the kind that soaked into bone, as if something ancient had exhaled beneath the Web and everything living forgot to shiver. Spidey stood at the edge of a broken spiral path, fraying threads beneath her feet. Nyxi was quiet on her shoulder, her red runes dimmed to a faint ember glow.
> "This is where the whispers go to die," Nyxi finally murmured. "The Web's heart is near."
Ahead stretched a blackened grove. No breeze stirred. The branches were bare, curled like fingers grasping for lost things. The trees dripped with silver cobwebs that trembled not from wind but breathless memory.
Spidey stepped forward. Each footfall sounded like it echoed backward in time.
---
The trees began to whisper.
But not in words.
They whispered feelings moments. Forgotten birthdays. Names unspoken for years. A scent once loved, now lost. Laughter that used to belong to someone. Every cobweb she brushed against clung not to her skin, but to her mind, tugging, peeling, taking.
Spidey winced. "Something's pulling at me."
> "It's the Weaver," Nyxi said grimly. "He doesn't steal with claws. He erases."
> "What is he?" Spidey whispered.
> "Once, he was joy. Once, he was the first story ever told. But then…" Nyxi's voice cracked. "They stopped remembering. And he starved."
---
They reached a clearing.
A hollow throne of bone white thread sat beneath a dead tree. On it slouched a figure impossibly tall, impossibly still. Its face was covered by a veil made from torn lullabies and half forgotten poems. Its body shimmered like heat haze and unraveling shadow. It didn't move.
But it knew they were there.
Spidey felt it her thoughts dimming, her heartbeat slowing. The smell of her home gone. A lullaby her mother once sang vanished.
"No…" she gasped. "Stop."
The Weaver of Silence opened his mouth, and a soundless scream filled the grove.
---
Spidey dropped to her knees. The earth pulsed beneath her palms not alive, but aching.
> "Fight it," Nyxi said fiercely. "You're a thread in the Web. You matter."
> "I can't remember anything," Spidey sobbed. "My name what was it again?"
Nyxi's tiny body trembled as she leapt in front of Spidey.
> "Her name is Spidey! She was born under a blood moon! She weaves truth into shadow! SHE. IS. NOT. YOURS!"
The Weaver rose from his throne. His veil fluttered like dying memories. He didn't walk he drifted, trailing ribbons of silence behind him. With every step, the trees around them faded. Their stories blinked out. One by one.
Spidey clutched her chest. "I'm disappearing…"
---
Suddenly something sparked.
A memory. Her memory.
It wasn't grand. Not powerful. But it was hers.
A cold morning. Spider webs glittering on the window. A young girl her drawing little faces onto the frost with her fingertip. Pretending they were watching over her. Whispering stories to them when no one else listened.
Her breath hitched.
"I remember…"
She stood. Shaking. Eyes full of glassy fire.
"I remember."
---
The Weaver paused.
His head tilted curious.
Spidey took a step forward, threading her fingers together in front of her heart.
"You can't have me," she said, louder now. "I've lost too much already. But I still have this my stories. My pain. My self."
The air shimmered. Threads began to glow behind her, rising like a broken constellation.
"I see you," she said to the Weaver. "I know why you feed. But I won't let you take what's left."
The Weaver shuddered. His veil cracked down the middle. From beneath, two hollow eyes wept threads of ink.
He let out a cry not of rage. But of sorrow.
> "They forgot me," he whispered. "They all forgot."
---
Spidey's heart ached.
She stepped closer. Slowly. Carefully. Her fingers uncurled.
"I remember you now," she said softly. "You were the First Thread. The one that started it all."
She reached out not with hatred, but with recognition.
And as her fingertips brushed the Weaver's veil, it dissolved.
The trees sighed. The cobwebs lifted. The cold receded.
And the Weaver… faded.
Not vanished. Just… at peace.
---
The grove healed behind them as they walked away.
Spidey looked up at the Web stretching overhead still frayed, but pulsing again with soft light. Not healed, but surviving.
> "You did it," Nyxi said. "You remembered when it mattered."
> "I think… I understand now," Spidey murmured. "Some things die when they're forgotten. But they live again when we honor them."
Nyxi's runes glowed brighter.
> "And the Web remembers those who remember."
Spidey touched her chest, where a new thread now pulsed faintly beneath her skin a gift from the Weaver. A reminder. A burden. A vow.
> "I'll never forget again."
---
Spidey turned to Nyxi.
> "The Web is almost complete, isn't it?"
> "Yes," said the spider, red eyes glowing. "Only one thread is left. But the last one is the deepest."
Spidey nodded.
> "Then we keep weaving."
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
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