Beneath the world—deeper than root, older than stone—something watched.
Not with eyes.
Not with flesh.
But through the trembling of Threads.
Through the hairline crack in a seal that should never have weakened, it felt the boy's hand brush ancient stone—
—and the world flinched.
A grin, unseen and unmade, curled in the dark.
He leaned back in no body, arms he no longer possessed crossed in theatrical delight.
Musing at the sight before him, he slightly trembled. Not out of fear, but anticipation.
"Well now," said the voice, slick and soft as poisoned silk. "So this is the moment they chose. Or stumbled into. Or repeated. Hard to tell. Patterns do love a second act."
He shifted.
His presence drifted like rot through still water, an oil stain blooming on the fabric of what still dared call itself whole. Above, the crypt pulsed like a faulty heart. Each beat softer than the last. He drank it in.
The Threads screamed.
The girl stirred.
The boy hesitated.
The hermit sighed.
"You fragile little mortals," he murmured, more to himself than to anything listening. Amusement and disappointment laced his tone. "Still trying to mend what forgot it was ever whole."
He hovered just out of reach, mist-thin and memory-wrought, watching as the sarcophagus parted with a breath that wasn't breath. That light—the one that wasn't light—spilled out like a secret remembered too late. It crept into the corners of the crypt like fire that feared to burn.
It rippled.
It reached.
And the Threads recoiled.
And he laughed.
A soft, low sound. Not cruel. Not kind. Just… amused.
The laughter of someone who knew the ending by heart and still found joy in the stumbles before it.
"Oh, she wakes," he said. "Of course she does. Of course they do. And now the others will stir, won't they? The wheel spins whether you name it or not."
His voice threaded through the chamber—unheard by ears, but not by what lay beneath.
Something old stirred.
Not dead.
Just waiting.
"You never learn," he whispered. "But perhaps that's the charm. All that hope, sewn into a shape that can't hold."
He rose, threading between layers of the crypt that hadn't existed moments ago—hallways shaped by memory, rib-boned walls etched with broken oaths and flaking paint that wept names no one dared remember. Pillars cracked with the pressure of unborn futures. Doors swung open without hinges. A staircase unfolded mid-air, vanishing into nothing.
He passed beneath a rusted gate made of severed names.
Through a mural that used to sing when touched.
Past a vault of locked breath—seven sighs sealed in wax.
He passed time like it was dust.
He passed a battlefield where the ash still bled.
He passed the echo of a scream that once unmade a city.
And still, he smiled.
They couldn't see him. Not yet.
But the Threads could.
And they bent.
⸻
He turned his attention outward—not to the trees or the tomb—but deeper.
A girl dreaming of hunger and gardens made of teeth. Her fingers bled from planting memory where no root should take.
A child tracing runes into skin he didn't yet understand. Each glyph pulsed blue, then darker—like truth losing its patience.
A blade entombed in a shrine with no worshippers. The soil around it hummed, not with reverence, but refusal.
A boy wrapped in thunder, pretending not to cry. His chest held storms. His voice held none.
A girl who burned and burned because she mistook pain for promise. The fire whispered, "More."
A wanderer, kneeling at the threshold of a gate carved in silence. Their shadow tried to flee—but their heart held fast.
Another flashed—a quiet one—walking beneath a sunless sky, flanked by ghosts who did not know they were dead. Their pride protected him from mercy.
Each blossoming star.
Each spark buried in ash.
Names stirred at the edge of silence.
Not spoken.
Not claimed.
But waiting.
A tremor spread across the veil.
⸻
He returned as the sarcophagus yawned open.
The girl gasped.
The boy leaned closer.
The hermit didn't move.
"They'll run," he said, too softly for sound. "They always do."
⸻
Somewhere else, the wind paused.
Not stopped. Not silenced.
Paused.
He drifted through a place that had forgotten itself. A glade where no light entered and no Thread obeyed. Beneath roots carved with glyphs older than memory, he listened.
No sound.
Only tremor.
Only memory.
"Such lovely timing," he murmured, gliding past a crumbled statue—its face worn down to nothing, its hand frozen in what may have once been a warning. "They never understand the cost until it echoes."
He watched the sky through a fissure no mortal would see. Just a crack in the story.
The stars had shifted. Barely. Imperceptibly.
But they had.
He felt it like a taste on the tongue.
Like the breath before the sword lands.
Like a question the Bell used to ask before it shattered.
The world twitched again.
Threads curled, buckled, frayed.
Still, they ran.
Casamir's arms ached. The girl clung. The hermit's steps grew uneven. And in the space between their footfalls, something else pulsed.
He drifted closer to the girl's mind.
She murmured something in her sleep—a sound shaped like a name, or maybe a plea, or maybe just breath disguised as meaning.
"You almost remembered," he whispered. "Almost."
But not yet.
Never yet.
Her dreamscape pulsed once—softly. A bell with no sound, only feeling. Something ancient stirred behind her thoughts, and for a moment, she breathed like someone who had touched the edge of a name too large for speech.
He lingered.
Then moved on.
⸻
He sank again, through cracks in the tale.
Through tunnels beneath tunnels.
Through soil laced with bones laced with Threads.
Until he reached a place where a mirror had once stood.
It was cracked now.
A fracture curved from end to end like a smile.
Once, it had reflected truth.
Now—only shadow.
He paused.
And for a moment—just a moment—something watched him back.
Not enemy. Not friend.
Just near.
The mirror did not blink.
But it remembered.
And in its fractured core, something else shimmered—briefly. A flame in reverse. Not light. Not dark. The echo of a toll that had never been heard. A silence too exact to be natural.
He tilted his head.
"…Oh," he said softly. "You're still here."
A long moment passed.
Then the image vanished.
He did not bow.
He did not blink.
He waited.
Then, as if the moment passed through him instead of the other way around, he turned.
Back to the clearing.
Back to the tomb.
Back to the boy who touched what should not have been touched.
"They'll forget again," he said softly. "And remember too late."
His voice lingered in the roots.
He hovered above the glade where the three had collapsed—boy, girl, and hermit.
The girl was still sleeping.
The boy was thinking too hard.
The hermit was pretending not to be afraid.
"Let them rest," he said. "Let them believe. Let them find each other… slowly."
The grin returned. Not wide. Not sharp.
Just deep.
Like something ancient slipping through skin.
"I'll be here."
The forest rustled once.
Then fell still.
And in the gap between stars, in the hush where the Bell no longer dared to toll—
he whispered:
"Let us see how long these few last."
Then he was gone.
Or close enough.
The Threads shivered.
The trees bent.
And the wind remembered nothing.