The sun crept past the broken canopy, warm and reluctant.Birdsong laced the air, unfamiliar, like a new language being learned.
In the quiet hush of midday, Ren was hungry again.
His mandibles clicked once. A low noise.Then again.
He rose from the silken hollow he'd claimed near the shrine, blinking at the threads of dew caught in its web-curved roof. Around him, the others still rested—Yutu cleaning stones with a moss cloth, the twins tumbling over roots, the elder boiling bark into tea.
And then—a snort.
A gnarled hand, green-gray, pushed the elder's long staff into the soil.
"You reek," the elder said, eyes narrow and gold-flecked.
Ren tilted his head.
"Of what?"
"Mana. Too much of it. Way too much.""Like a storm that forgot where the sky ends."
Ren blinked. Then looked at himself—no, through himself.
His core pulsed now. Slow. Loud.
Mana was leaking from him.
Dripping from threads he hadn't spun, from breath he hadn't exhaled.
The elder muttered again, sniffing the air.
"It's like... like a beastkin army stood behind you, clawing for release.""No ordinary core makes that kind of pressure, larva."
"What do you see?"
The elder frowned, eyes distant.
"A calamity, maybe. One that sleeps in your belly.""You carry something divine, don't you?"
Ren's body stiffened.
Arachnia.
Her divine echo slept within his thread-core—but now outside the dungeon, her slumber dragged deeper. Her suppression weakened.
"I don't own this mana..." Ren muttered, "but it's in me now."
The elder leaned back, lifting his staff.
"You left the place that sealed it. Now it spills."
A wind passed. The moss rustled. A whisper of something stirring in the trees beyond.
"Syrri," Ren called softly.
She answered with a ripple of blue mist across his left shoulder.
"I warned you," she said, playful but laced with concern.
"You're like a broken flask of honey near a wasp nest. Creatures will come."
"So… what do I do?"
"Control it."
"How?"
"Thread armor," she said.
"Weave it. Around your core. Around your limbs. Let your silk listen to your mana—and bind it."
Ren blinked.
Armor. From silk?
She continued, her voice smooth.
"Think of it like clothing. Mana-weave. Your silk remembers—if you command it."
"If not… you'll attract everything with a nose and a sense of dread."
A silence.
"You're a walking target."
"...Great."
Ren sat down cross-legged, and reached within.
He summoned silk—not from instinct, but from will. From his core.
Thread unspooled. Not white. Not silver.But dark. Soft as breath, but pulsing faintly with violet veins—mana-rich, memory-laced.
He wrapped it slowly around his torso, layering it over his exoshell like a second skin.
Then across the limbs.Then a hood-like veil, light and thin.
[Mana Compression Shell Formed – Threadweave Layer I]
[Magical Signature Suppressed: -72%]
"...Huh."
He felt lighter.
Less loud.
The forest stopped staring.
And then—
A low growl. From the treeline.
Yutu raised her head. The twins froze.
"...Something's watching," Ren whispered.
A figure stepped forward from the ferns.
Not quite human.
Broad shoulders. Furred arms. Lupine ears low to the skull.
A beastkin—lean, starving, and scarred.
Clawed fingers curled like branches. A single short blade strapped to his back.
Eyes like dusk light flickered toward the silk village.
Then… toward Ren.
He did not draw the blade.
Nor did he snarl.
He bowed—low, forehead to dirt.
And whispered:
"You carry the scent of thread… and the echo of gods.""I seek refuge… or death."
The air tensed like drawn thread.
The beastkin did not move.
Still on his knees. Still bowed. His voice already spent on the dirt.
The others had fallen quiet.
The twins clutched stones now. The elder leaned heavily on his staff.
The wild vines near the den's edge twisted in slow alarm.
Ren stayed still.
But from behind him—Yutu rose.
No longer stooped.
No longer hunched under the shame of ashes and loss.
Her moss-colored scarf fluttered slightly behind her,her arms bare from work, skin lined faintly with the glow of herbal chalks.In her eyes—the memory of Tamm, and something more.
She stepped forward, past Ren. Past the shrine.
Soft sandals over woven roots. A healer's rhythm in her breath.
She crouched in front of the kneeling beastkin.
Silence.Then, quietly—
"Name."
The beastkin blinked.
"Ghur. Of no pack."
"You carry no markings."
"I… I lost them."
She nodded. Calm. Measured. She reached forward and placed a single leaf over his right shoulder.
"This is Threadrest," she said softly. "We do not turn away those who bow."
"But we will not suffer blades hidden behind teeth."
Ghur looked up. His face was wolfish, but his gaze was tired.He said nothing.
"What did you smell?" Yutu asked, voice still gentle.
"A war inside that one." He nodded to Ren, still veiled in his new silken armor.
"Like old storms. Like blood that still drips."
"But not evil. Just... hungry."
Yutu looked back to Ren.
"Still you," she said."Even with all that leaking from you."
Ren gave a slow nod, his eyes shadowed under his silken veil.
"Then eat," she said to him, turning away from Ghur.
"You're hungry, aren't you?"
Ren blinked.
"...Yes."
Yutu motioned to a stone bowl near the shrine.
Within: steamed root bulbs, sprinkled with moss spores and drizzled with dew oil.
"We cook now," she smiled faintly. "Not everything has to be chewed raw."
Ren took one.
Warm.
Nutty.
Surprisingly good.
[Nutrient Absorption Increased – Mana Regeneration +1 for 3hr]
"We keep you fed," she said. "So you don't feed on us."
Behind her, Ghur still knelt, uncertain.
Ren approached now, quiet.
He looked down at the beastkin—fur torn, mana thin, bones tight beneath the skin.
"Why are you here?" Ren asked.
"I ran," Ghur said. "From men with fire. I had… no one."
"Now?"
Ghur looked up at Ren's face—veil drawn, eyes faintly glowing beneath.
"Now I kneel. If that's enough."
Yutu looked to Ren again.
"Is it?"
Ren didn't answer immediately.
But his hand twitched once.
Silk unraveled—gentle, not binding—trailing across Ghur's shoulder like a shawl.
"Rest first," Ren said quietly.
"Work later."
And like that, Ghur became the seventh.
A blade without a pack.
Now part of Threadrest.
Night hung low.
The dome glowed faintly with woven light—threadcatchers glistening along the ceiling like stars made of dew.
Ren sat near the shrine, chewing slowly on another cooked root.
The taste no longer startled him. He even liked it now.
Across from him, beside the firepit Yutu had nursed to life, Ghur sat.
Still quiet.
But his eyes weren't on the fire.
They were somewhere else.
Ren watched him a while, then finally spoke.
"What happened to your pack?"
A long silence.
Then:
"We called it Greenthorn Vale. Forest beyond the mountain fork."
"Four clans lived together. Deerkin. Fangbloods. Smoke-tails. Us—Ironmanes."
His clawed hand brushed the edge of the bowl Yutu had left him.The motion was slow, careful.
Not trembling—just worn.
"When we heard the horns, we thought it was just dwarves. Traders. Maybe a caravan."
"It wasn't," he added. Flat. Hollow.
Ren leaned forward, his mandibles faintly parted beneath the silk.
"Humans?"
Ghur nodded.
"Not just soldiers. Slavers."
"Branded ones. Wore pale cloaks. Clean blades."
"Said we were 'unregistered wildbloods.' That we were to be cleansed or collared."
His jaw tensed. His ears lowered.
"We fought. We always fought. But they didn't just use blades."
"They had mages."
The twins had crept closer now, listening.
Even the elder had stopped stirring his bark tea.
Ghur's claws curled.
"The worst part wasn't the chains."
"It was the nets. Magic ones. White-glowing. Sticky as hell. They—"He swallowed."They sang while they cast them."
"We lost three dens. Elders. Cubs. Mothers."
"They burned our moonstones. Stomped our name-stones."
"Took the women. The children."
A beat.
"Told us we were going to be sold in cages. North, to the City of Bells."
"The pretty ones fetch higher coin."
Ren said nothing.But something behind his silk veil shifted.
Not anger. Not yet.
But something deeper.A wire being pulled tight inside him.
He remembered cages.
Chains.
Even if his had been made of iron and glass and a hospital bed.
"I ran," Ghur whispered. "I was supposed to guard the east flank. The wardstone."
"They overran it. I made it to the cliff. Jumped."
"The river took me."
"When I woke… I walked."
"Then I smelled you."
He looked up now.
His eyes weren't proud.
But they were steady.
"Whatever you are, thread-weaver... you carry a heat that makes monsters follow."
"Maybe I'll follow, too."
Ren didn't answer at first.
He looked at the threads spun above the dome.He looked at Syrri's soft shimmer at the edge of the light.And he looked toward the forest—where moonlight laced the trees like bars.
"Then let's build a place," Ren said softly.
"Where no nets are sung. Where mothers don't scream."
"Let's build a den."