The page in Caelen's hand crumbled to dust.
Not burned. Not torn. Not even aged.
Simply… erased.
Like it had never been written.
He stood there, fingers still curled as if holding something — heart hammering, breath shallow. The silence around him felt denser than the stone.
Velkareth.
He didn't say the name aloud, but it echoed through his skull like a forbidden hymn. His knees buckled, and he caught himself against the chair.
It was warm.
Someone had been here. Was here.
A being who shouldn't exist.
A name that didn't.
"You were never meant to find me."
Then why did he remember?
Above, something shifted.
A whisper. No — not a voice, but the sound of parchment tearing. Subtle. Terrible.
The Watchers.
Caelen froze. They always came when the Loom detected a disturbance.
And this—this was no small ripple.
He shoved the broken lens into his coat, swept his fingers across the floor, erasing any trace of his footprints in the dustless stone. The door behind him remained open — but if the glyph was gone, there'd be no way back in.
He risked a glance.
Nothing. Just darkness. A silence that tasted like forgetting.
He ascended the Spiral Stair two steps at a time, breath ragged. As he reached the top, the light changed.
Not torchlight. Not Threadlight.
Goldfire.
An entire corridor shimmered with it — flames woven directly from the Loom, burning in midair. A sigil of judgment hovered in the arch:
"SECTOR BREACH. MEMORY TAMPERING DETECTED."
"Shit," Caelen whispered.
He ducked left, away from the main hall, and darted into a side aisle lined with abandoned record tubes and unbound folios. The air here was stale. Good.
He pressed himself against the wall, eyes narrowed. A beat later, they arrived.
Three of them.
Proclamants of the Third Spindle — elite enforcers of the Loom's will.
Faces veiled in silk. Eyes glowing silver with Threadlight Sight.
One paused.
"He touched something."
Another: "Something touched him."
They didn't search. They listened — ears tilted not toward sound, but memory. They could read the air like ink. Even thought too loudly, and they'd taste it.
Caelen forced himself to think of mundane things.
The list of classified ink formulas.
The floorplans of the Scriptorium.
The precise amount of sugar required for tea to not taste like regret.
"Three measures. One silence. Stir with your left hand."
It worked. The Proclamants moved on.
But not before one turned and said, in a voice like velvet cut with razors:
"The glyph is remembering itself again. This Thread won't hold much longer."
Then they vanished into the fire.
Caelen didn't move for a long time.
Only when the light faded did he let himself collapse to his knees. His thoughts returned to the chair… the figure… the name.
Velkareth.
The word hurt.
It wasn't meant to exist. Saying it felt like cracking a window in a room that had been sealed for centuries.
But it was real.
He was real.
Later that night, Caelen wandered back to his dormitory beneath the western spire of the Scriptorium. His bunk was unmade. His scrolls untouched. The dreamstones above his desk still glowed with unread memories.
And yet… something was different.
A folded slip of paper sat on his pillow.
He opened it carefully.
"I saw the glyph too."
"Meet me at the Threadwells. Third ring. Midnight."
— L.E.
Caelen stared at the initials.
Lyssira Elowen.
He hadn't spoken to her in two years.
Not since the day she claimed she remembered a life that hadn't happened.
End of Chapter Two