The orphanage never stopped making noise.
Even in the deep night, when the lights were out and the older shapes had retreated to their own rooms, there was always something — the restless shifting of bedsprings, the soft thump of someone turning over, the creak of wood when the wind leaned against the windows.
But Rowan found the silences within the noise.
They weren't real silences, not in the way the other children thought of them. They were the pockets of stillness that came when the air forgot to move, when the sounds in the room grew thin and distant. That was when the threads were most likely to appear.
The other children didn't notice.
They might be in the same room, their voices raised over a game or their faces bent toward a book, but they didn't see the faint glimmers that slid between the slats of the blinds, curling and uncurling as they explored the air. They didn't watch the way the threads clung to the corners of furniture or looped through the spaces above their heads.
For Rowan, those moments were the closest thing to peace.
He was older now — not old enough to be trusted with the front gate, but old enough to roam the halls without someone holding his hand. The older shapes called him quiet, though not in a way that suggested praise.
He learned early that quietness made the threads bolder.
When he sat still — really still, the kind where his breathing slowed and his eyes softened — they would come closer. Sometimes they hovered at the edges of his vision, testing the space between them; other times they brushed against his skin, a whisper of warmth or cold that made his chest tighten without knowing why.
The sensations were small, but they lingered.
If a thread passed through his hand, the spot would tingle long after it was gone. If it brushed his face, the memory of its movement would stay, like the echo of a dream you can't quite wake from.
He started seeking that feeling without realising it.
It began in small ways.
When the other children played, he would hang back, standing just far enough from the noise that the threads wouldn't be scared away. When meals were loud and hurried, he ate slowly, letting the chatter wash over him until the air stilled enough for a thread or two to drift into reach.
Some part of him understood — instinctively — that they were fragile. If he moved too suddenly, if he reached too greedily, they would vanish.
So he learned patience.
He could sit in the same spot for an hour, watching the dust shift in the sunlight, waiting for the thin silver or pale gold strands to appear. When they did, he didn't grab for them anymore. He let them move as they wished, his eyes following their slow, deliberate arcs.
Sometimes they came close enough to pass right through him. Those were the moments that left him still and breathless, his whole body alight with something he couldn't name.
He didn't know it, but the others noticed.
Not the threads — never the threads — but the stillness.
Some of the children whispered about him when they thought he wasn't listening. They called him strange, or said he was sick, because he didn't join in their games, didn't shout or run or laugh the way they did.
He didn't mind.
The truth was, the games they played felt flat to him. The air in those moments was empty, the colours dim. Why would he trade the quiet glow of a thread curling above his hand for a ball rolling across the floor?
The caretakers sometimes tried to coax him into joining. "You'll make more friends if you play," they would say, kneeling to meet his eyes.
He would nod, but the next day, he would find himself back in his chosen corner, watching the light catch on something only he could see.
The Vey Sight was still small then, like a plant that had only just broken through the soil.
He didn't yet see far — most threads revealed themselves only within a few feet, and their colours were muted, their movements slow. But sometimes, in rare flashes, his vision stretched.
Once, in the middle of a rainy afternoon, he caught sight of a thread in the far corner of the dining hall. It was so fine he might have mistaken it for a cobweb, except that it pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat.
He watched it for several minutes, expecting it to vanish. Instead, it began to grow brighter. Slowly, almost shyly, it uncoiled from the shadow and drifted into the open.
It moved toward one of the caretakers, a tall woman with tired eyes. Her lines were faint — they always were, with adults — but as the thread touched her shoulder, a sudden rush of light flared through her. The dullness in her posture eased, just slightly, and the faintest smile touched her mouth.
Rowan didn't know why, but he felt as though he had just seen something private.
He began to notice other changes too — not in the threads, but in himself.
His eyes had grown sharper, his awareness broader. He could sense the threads before they appeared, as though the air whispered a warning. It came as a prickle in his fingertips or a faint change in the weight of the room.
With that awareness came instinct.
When the prickle started, he would slow his movements. If someone nearby was speaking to him, he would let his voice fall quiet, so the space between words could stretch wider. He learned to avoid the spots where the air felt thin and dry, and to linger where it felt dense and charged.
It wasn't something he could explain. It was simply how he moved through the world now — guided by sensations that no one else seemed to notice.
But the threads weren't always gentle.
One evening, just before the dinner bell, he was alone in the long corridor outside the laundry room. The air felt charged, the way it did before a heavy rain.
He stilled, expecting the familiar slow drift of light.
Instead, a sudden bolt of deep crimson tore down the hallway, fast enough that the air seemed to shatter in its wake. The sound came after — a sharp crack, like something heavy splitting in two.
Rowan stumbled back, his shoulder hitting the wall. The thread spun wildly in the air, flinging off sparks of red and gold before vanishing into nothing.
For several seconds, he couldn't move. His chest was tight, his breath shallow. The space it left behind felt cold in a way that reached into his bones.
He didn't tell anyone. There were no words for it anyway.
Moments like that taught him caution.
The threads were not toys, not always beautiful. They could move with force, with violence. And though they had never struck him directly, he felt certain that if they did, it would not be the same warm tingling as before.
So he watched more carefully. He studied the way they moved, the way certain colours seemed to carry weight while others drifted aimlessly.
Over time, he began to predict them — not perfectly, but enough to know when to step back and when to lean closer.
It happened on a day so still it felt as though the air had stopped breathing.
Rowan had slipped away from the dining hall early, the clatter of cutlery and the scrape of chairs fading behind him. The long corridor by the storage rooms was empty — his favourite kind of space. The floorboards gave a soft groan under his weight, then settled into silence.
He could feel them before he saw them.
The prickle at his fingertips, the faint pressure just behind his eyes — it was stronger than usual, more insistent. He stopped moving, let his hands hang loosely at his sides, and waited.
The first thread slid into view near the ceiling, pale gold and trembling. Another followed, and another, until the air above him seemed full of soft, glowing ropes. They swayed gently, their ends curling and uncurling in slow, thoughtful movements.
He had never seen so many at once in this place.
He should have stayed still. He knew that. But the sight of them — so close, so bright — filled him with a restless itch.
He reached up.
The nearest thread dipped toward him.
When his fingertips brushed it, the warmth spread instantly, flooding his hand, his arm, his chest. He drew a breath without meaning to, the air sharp and sweet.
The thread pulsed, and another slid down to meet it, twining around his fingers.
A shiver ran through him — not of fear, but of delight. For a moment, he forgot the times they had snapped or lashed. He forgot the bolt of crimson in the hallway. He only knew that they were here, with him, wrapping him in their shifting light.
So he pulled.
It wasn't much — just a small tug, the way a child might pull on a ribbon to see how much would come loose.
The thread resisted for a heartbeat. Then it yielded.
The air in the corridor shifted. The golden threads flared, brightening so suddenly he had to squint. The warmth in his chest deepened, heavy now, pressing outward as though it wanted to escape.
Something in the air began to hum.
The hum grew louder.
The threads whipped in sudden agitation, their gentle curves breaking into sharp angles. The golden light bled into red, then deepened into something darker — a molten orange that carried with it the smell of heated metal.
Rowan let go, but it was too late.
The thread he'd pulled snapped upward, coiling on itself. The others followed, their movements quick and violent. They tangled together into a twisting knot above his head, spinning faster, the hum rising into a thin, high wail.
The pressure in the air pushed at him from all sides. His skin prickled as if a storm were about to break. He took a step back, but the knot above lurched downward, trailing sparks of light that struck the floorboards with soft, searing pops.
Instinct screamed at him to run.
He turned and bolted down the corridor.
The wail cut off behind him, replaced by a sharp crack that rattled the windows in their frames.
A burst of heat struck his back, then was gone, leaving only the smell — scorched, acrid, clinging to the back of his throat.
He didn't stop until he reached the far end of the hall, pressing himself into the shadow of a doorframe. His breath came in ragged pulls, his hands shaking.
The corridor was quiet again. The golden threads were gone.
But the air still felt wrong — thin now, and cold, as though something had been taken from it.
That night, lying in his bed under the thin blanket, he kept seeing the moment when the colour changed.
The way the gold had bled into red, the heat that had pressed against his ribs, the sound that had crawled into his skull.
It wasn't that he regretted touching them — he couldn't imagine not wanting to — but he understood something new now. The threads were not just soft light and warmth. They could coil, twist, tighten. They could break.
And when they did, the air itself seemed to recoil.
In the weeks that followed, he became slower with them.
When the prickle in his fingertips came, he would stop, wait, let the threads drift closer without reaching. If they touched him, he stayed still, letting the sensation pass through him rather than pulling at it.
He studied the way their colours shifted, the way certain shades — deep crimson, molten orange — always came with tension. He learned to recognise the faint, sour taste in the air before the threads turned sharp.
The other children saw only the stillness, and their whispers about him grew. They called him strange, distant, not quite right.
Rowan let them.
Better to be still, to be strange, than to risk pulling too hard again.
The threads taught him more than the caretakers ever could.
From them, he learned patience — the kind that stretched beyond minutes or hours. He learned to watch, to wait, to measure every movement. He learned that beauty could turn dangerous without warning, and that danger could hide inside the most inviting light.
And he learned that the world was bigger than the orphanage's walls. The threads came from somewhere. They carried with them a weight, a hum, a taste in the air that didn't belong to the thin, dry rooms he knew.
He didn't know where they went when they vanished, but he was certain — absolutely certain — that one day he would follow.
Until then, he would wait.
He would be ready.