"What's your name?" I asked.
The goblin girl tilted her head. Her ears twitched softly, brushing the curls of moss that clung to her.
"They called me runt," she said. "Then gather-pest. Then silence."
"That's not a name."
She shrugged.
Then smiled, just slightly.
"Tamm used to call me Yutu. Said it meant 'leaf that listens.'"
I watched her for a moment.
Then nodded.
"Yutu."
She blinked.
As if she'd heard it for the first time, truly spoken.
We traveled in silence.She didn't lead me on a path—there wasn't one.
Just branches, roots, and the ache of memory.
My legs adjusted to the uneven soil.Syrri murmured softly from within, processing the terrain.My scarf shifted gently, and sometimes I swore it pulled toward her—toward Yutu—without me meaning to.
"It was a village once," she said.
We broke through a curtain of hanging vines.
The ground dipped.
Charcoal marked the trees.Wooden stakes lay snapped.A clay cauldron, blackened by time, lay cracked open near a pit of dry leaves.
"You lived here?"
"We did."
The ruins weren't cold.
But they felt paused.
Like a dream someone had forgotten to finish.
"Tamm was a gatherer," Yutu said. "Not a fighter. But when the humans came… the warriors died first. So Tamm ran."
"To find what?"
"Healing silk. Old silk, from the dungeon mouth. They say it could bind wounds and mana."
"And he thought that would save you?"
"He thought he could help."
She looked away.
"I hated him. For leaving. But I think… the Thread wanted more of him than we did."
I stepped forward.
Sat near the old pit.Let my body sink slightly into the moss-cracked dirt.
Yutu crouched across from me.
"You carry his scarf," she whispered.
"And his memory."
"Do you remember his voice?"
"Sometimes," I said."Especially when I don't know what's right."
We sat like that.No fire between us.Just silence.
And the threads of old dreams trying to pull themselves together again.
Then I spoke.
"The humans. Will they return?"
Yutu's ears flattened.
"Maybe. They wanted the deepwater root. For their potions. And the old totems—said they were cursed, but worth gold."
"Then we shouldn't stay."
"There's no one left to follow us."
"There's me."
She looked at me for a long time.
Then stood.
"Then I'll build again. Not for warriors. Not for walls. But for gatherers. For runts."
"And I'll protect it," I said.
The scarf flickered at my neck.The memory within hummed softly.
Syrri's voice echoed in my head.
"You make promises like a human. But your hunger is waking again."
"Let it."
"You'll need it soon."
Because just beyond the clearing—beneath the black roots of a felled tree—something moved.
Something breathing.
Watching.
Waiting.
"You said you were alone," I murmured.
Yutu hesitated, brushing soot from a stone basin.
"I was. For days. But some of us… we hid. Beneath bark. In toad holes. In the dry roots where the fire didn't reach."
"And now?"
"Now they're coming back."
And they are.Slowly.
One by one.
An elder missing one arm, but still bearing the bone-carved flute that once summoned dew spirits.
Two younglings, twins, who speak only in whistles.
A sharp-eyed goblin woman who limps, but carries a pouch of moss spores and knives.
These are not warriors.
They are the gatherers. The left-behinds. The forgotten.
And they see Ren—not as a monster—but as the threadbearer of their lost one.
"He carries Tamm's scarf," they whisper."He came from below.""He answered the dungeon's cry."
Smoke had long fled the bones of the village.
But the trees remembered.The earth remembered.
And now, they answered.
Not with vengeance.
But with presence.
They came in ones and twos.
Not from the sky, nor boldly from the forest's edge—
—but from hollows, from tunnels dug beneath the bark of old trees, from dens beneath dried-out burrows.
Shadows wearing moss cloaks.Eyes that gleamed beneath soot-black hoods.Hands that trembled, but carried baskets and flasks and long-forgotten tools.
Yutu didn't cry.
But she stood taller.
"You heard it?" she asked the first, a hunched elder whose back was bent like a bow.
"We felt it," he rasped. "The thread. The breath of Tamm. The scarf... it called."
Ren stood behind her.Not hiding.Not looming.
Just present.
His form still in larva, still in shadow—but no longer mistaken for threat.
The scarf at his neck fluttered gently.
The elder squinted at him.
"He devoured?"
"He remembered," Yutu corrected.
"Then let the thread remember through him."
A thud.
Two smaller shapes bounded into the clearing.
Twins.
Half-wild, barely clothed, whistling in high tones.
They carried mushrooms. One had a fox pelt tied around his neck like a cape. The other bit into a dried beetle like candy.
They circled Ren.
"This one's weird."
"Weird weird."
"But not biting."
"Smells like roots."
Then both nodded.
"Good."
An older goblin woman followed.One leg bound in vine brace.But she carried spores.
Golden dust flickered from her pouch as she knelt beside the remains of the central totem.
"The fire didn't take everything," she said.
"We'll plant moss again."
And so they began.
Ren, silent, wove silk between two stones—binding one as a roof edge, another as a scaffold.
The elder watched.
"You spin?"
"Yes."
"Then spin homes. Not traps."
"That's the idea."
Syrri hummed in his mind.
"You're building."
"I'm helping."
"That's worse."
"Why?"
"Because it means you care."
As dusk crept in, the forest paused.
A circle had formed.
Goblin survivors. Tired. Thin. Quiet.
But together.
And Ren at its center.
Not above.
Not below.
Just… among them.
The scarf warmed.
The thread tightened.
And in that silence, Ren spoke:
"This won't be a village of warriors."
"Not yet," the elder replied.
"It'll be a village of gatherers," said Yutu.
"Of those who remember," added the spore-carrier.
"And of one who devoured, but did not forget."
Spring Den has been upgraded:Now registered as Threadmarked Refuge (Tier 0 Settlement)
Ren may now begin establishing Silk StructuresSilk Architect (Proto) unlocked
Settlement Affinity: Thread – 3.2%
WELCOME TO THREADREST – FIRST DEN OF THE THREADWOVEN
Motto: "The thread remembers. So we do not forget."
Founding Figures: Ren (Thread King), Yutu (First Mossweaver), the Memory of Tamm