By morning, Sera's missing memory was yesterday's problem.
Today's problem lay in wait at the processing hall.
Zayn knew something was wrong the moment they turned into the street. The air was too still. The usual drift of workers, porters, and cart-men was gone. Lanterns were lit inside the hall, but the door stood open in a way it never did during shift.
Renn slowed. "That's not good," he muttered.
"Walk," Zayn said. "If we run, we're prey before we know what the predator is."
Inside, the hall smelled of iron and fear.
Workers stood in a loose cluster near the central tables, faces pale, Threads drawn tight. Wardens lined the walls, their dark uniforms a precise lattice of authority. At the far end, Hask leaned against a table, hands bound behind his back. Blood trickled from a split lip.
Karst stood beside him.
The broad man's coat was damp with rain, his rust-shadowed Domain licking idly at the nails in the floorboards. His expression was almost pleasant.
"Here we are," he said when Zayn and Renn stepped in. "The hero and his stray."
Renn's hand twitched toward his belt, then stopped when a Warden's Null-banded wrist shifted.
Zayn took in the room quickly.
Two exits blocked by Wardens. Six workers. One Tangle-Seer standing near the back wall, pale eyes half-closed, as if listening to a song only he could hear. And Karst at the centre, radiating the smug stillness of a man who believed the game already won.
"Hask?" Renn said. "What is this?"
Hask spat blood. "Inspection," he said. "Unexpected. And a report. Someone told the Temple that Hunger stock went missing last night."
Zayn's mind moved fast.
Sera.
She would not remember them. But she might have noticed something else: an odd ledger entry, a cabinet out of place. Or perhaps someone else had seen. A Warden passing by. Another priest. In the end, it didn't matter. The effect was the same.
Karst spread his hands. "The Temple is upset," he said. "They whisper in the Council's ear. The Council twitches the Wardens' leash. And here we are."
He nodded toward the Seer. "Inspector Leth thinks there is a Thread out of place in this hall."
The Seer's gaze slid over the workers, brushed Renn, then settled on Zayn like frost.
"We have a missing crate," Leth said. His voice was soft, almost bored. "We have records that say it was here. We have Temple reports that say it is not there. Threads do not vanish without movement. Movement leaves marks."
He tilted his head, as if listening to a distant echo. "Answers can be found in one of three places: ledgers, mouths, or minds. We have already checked the first. The second have been… unhelpful."
A worker near the front swallowed audibly.
"So," Leth continued, "we move to the third."
Zayn's Thread coiled tight.
Mind inspection.
Elric had seen it done more than once: Seers stepping into people's memories with sanctioned brutality, ripping through days and nights to pluck out a single moment. It was legal under Loomist doctrine "in cases of grave Thread abuse."
Hunger going missing from a Temple's stores qualified.
Renn went a shade paler. "You can't just dig through—" he began.
"Authority granted by Council writ and Temple concord," a Warden snapped. "Don't instruct the Inspector on his jurisdiction."
Karst watched, amused. "Relax," he said. "If none of you did anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear."
Zayn almost laughed.
"Only the innocent should fear a world like this," he thought. "The guilty at least know which dagger is theirs."
Leth stepped forward.
"We will begin with those closest to the goods," he said. "Hask. The front clerk. The runners. The newest hire."
His gaze pinned Zayn.
Renn shifted, placing himself half a step in front of Zayn without seeming to think about it.
Zayn noted it. Catalogued it. Pushed it aside.
"Refusal," he thought, "is not an option that leaves me breathing."
Leth approached.
Up close, his eyes were stranger: not mad, not cruel, simply distant. As if most of him was elsewhere, following lines no one else could see.
"Zayn, is it?" he asked.
"Yes," Zayn said.
"Domain?" Leth asked.
"Unstable," Zayn said. "Still defining itself."
"Your Thread feels… wrong," Leth murmured. "Not Frayed. Not bound. A knot I have not seen before."
He raised a hand. "I will look," he said. "If you resist, I will push harder. If you attempt to interfere, the Wardens will bind you. If you lie, the Loom will show me."
"The Loom shows you nothing," Zayn thought. "You see what you expect and call it destiny."
Aloud, he said, "Do what you must."
Inside, his mind sharpened.
"How do you hide a knife from a man who sees metal?" he asked himself. "You bury it in a pile of blades and let him cut himself before he ever finds yours."
Leth's fingers brushed Zayn's temple.
Cold slid into his skull.
It was not like Elric's own work with Memory. Leth did not ease into the edges, coaxing, guiding. He drove inward like a spear, cutting through the last day's impressions with clinical disinterest.
Zayn felt him skim the boarding house, the walk to work, crates, labels, the moment the Seer himself had entered the hall yesterday. Each memory flickered under the pale gaze and moved on.
When Leth reached the shrine storage, Zayn felt the probe hesitate.
There was nothing there.
No door. No lantern. No Sera. No conversation.
Zayn had not simply erased Sera's memory. When he had pulled that knot, the Loom had shifted around it. The moment itself had been unmade at its roots.
But gaps still rang.
Leth frowned.
"There is a… distortion," he murmured. "Something missing."
Images rippled.
Zayn at his window. Zayn signing Hask's ledger. Zayn lifting crates. A blank space of cold, then Zayn walking through night rain beside Renn, thoughts hidden behind his calm face.
"A man staring at fog and calling it strange," Zayn thought. "You feel the absence, Seer, but you do not yet know how to name it."
Leth pushed harder.
Pain flared behind Zayn's eyes, sharp and bright. The Seer tried to widen the gap, to see its edges. Zayn felt him tug at the surrounding memories, testing.
For a moment, Zayn's Domain and Leth's perception locked.
"You dig blindly," Zayn thought, though his lips did not move. "If I let you pull, you might unravel more than you intend."
He made a decision.
He gave Leth something.
Not the shrine. Not Sera. Instead, he nudged forward a different memory, one already half-formed: Karst's face under the street lantern last night, smirking, rust-shadowed.
He did not invent. He reframed.
The memory slid into the gap, attaching itself as if it had always lived there: Karst's rough voice, Karst's hand sliding a paper across a table toward Zayn, Karst saying, You want to live comfortable in this city? You do me a favour.
No Temple. No Hunger-crate. Just implication.
Leth's inner gaze latched onto it like a starving animal.
Zayn almost smiled.
"Offer a hunter footprints," he thought, "and he stops wondering how the deer learned to climb trees."
Leth withdrew abruptly.
Zayn swayed. Renn caught his arm.
The Seer stepped back, eyes unfocused, following patterns only he could see.
His gaze shifted to Karst.
Karst's smile had faded. "What?" he snapped. "What did you see?"
Leth's expression did not change. "You have dealings beyond your declared contracts," he said softly. "Side arrangements. Unlicensed Thread-goods."
Karst's Domain flared, rust curling around nearby metal. "Everyone does," he said. "Even your precious Temple. Don't pretend—"
Leth raised a hand.
"I do not pretend," he said. "I observe."
His eyes flicked to the Wardens. "Check his records. His warehouses. His associates. Now."
The room shifted.
Wardens moved like iron filings drawn to a magnet. Two stepped toward Karst; another three headed for the back rooms.
Karst barked a laugh, brittle. "You have no writ for that," he said. "You don't get to tear through my—"
The shorter Warden held up a stamped document. "Signed last night," she said. "Temple concord. Council seal. You've made too many enemies, Karst. Someone finally sang."
Karst's gaze darted to Zayn.
For a heartbeat, something almost like comprehension flickered there.
"You," he snarled.
Zayn considered denying. He considered feigning confusion. He did neither.
He held Karst's stare and let the man see nothing but calm.
Inside, a thought uncoiled:
"You shoved children between yourself and danger. You moved Hunger through altar-doors and called it opportunity. Be grateful I only put a hint of your shadow where it would be convenient."
Karst lunged.
Rust roared from his Thread, corroding the nearest table, pitting metal lamp-frames in an instant. Wood splintered. The workers cried out.
Before he reached Zayn, three things happened.
A Warden's Null-band flared, cutting a swathe of silence through the room. Karst's Domain stuttered and died where it touched that invisible field.
Another Warden drove a baton into Karst's gut.
Leth's hand settled on Karst's forehead.
Karst's eyes rolled back.
Zayn felt the Seer plunge into the man's mind with none of the restraint he had shown in the hall.
Screams—Karst's, not vocal, but threaded through the Loom—shivered through the air. Weaving, rewinding, ripping. Memories yanked forward like spilled guts: deals made in alleyways, bribes, beatings, bodies in the river.
It lasted less than a minute.
When Leth stepped away, Karst sagged in the Wardens' grip like a sack of wet cloth. His eyes stared at nothing. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth.
"What did you do?" Renn whispered.
"Made him useful," Leth said. "A mind full of confession and no capacity to hide. The Temple will be pleased."
He turned to Zayn.
"Your Thread," he said slowly, "interests me."
Zayn inclined his head. "I am flattered."
Leth's lips curved, humourless. "Flattery is unnecessary," he said. "Caution is not. There are knots in the Loom that do not match their surroundings. When I see them, I watch them."
He signalled to the Wardens. "Release the workers," he said. "Keep Hask under observation. I will send for individual reviews."
People began to move, some stumbling, some rushing, eager to escape.
As Zayn and Renn stepped toward the door, Leth spoke again.
"Zayn Morel," he said. "Do you believe in fate?"
Zayn paused.
"In my first life," he thought, "I believed in a kind of fate: that if enough people remembered suffering, justice would eventually follow. That was a naive man's religion."
Aloud, he said, "I believe in Threads and in choices. Fate is a name people give to the consequences they were too cowardly to foresee."
Leth's pale eyes sharpened.
"A dangerous answer," he said quietly. "But not a wrong one."
He let them go.
Outside, the air tasted of rain and rust.
Renn walked in silence for several streets before speaking.
"You fed him," he said. "You fed the Seer something that pointed at Karst."
"I fed him truth," Zayn said. "Karst was already tainted. I simply… adjusted the order in which his sins were discovered."
"You could have pointed him anywhere," Renn said. "Mera. Hask. Me."
"Yes," Zayn said.
"And you chose Karst," Renn pressed.
Zayn turned his head, watching a rivulet of dirty water run along a crack in the cobblestone.
"A river always seeks the lowest point," he thought. "I merely removed a stone."
"Karst would have killed you eventually," he said aloud. "He said as much. This city is a pit of hungers. When one of them notices you, you either feed it, chain it, or see it drowned. I chose the last option. Efficiently."
Renn let out a shaky laugh. "Efficient," he said. "That's one word for it."
"What word would you use?" Zayn asked mildly.
Renn was quiet a moment.
"Terrifying," he said.
Zayn smiled.
"Good," he thought. "Fear is the only collar that fits everyone."
They walked on.
In the days that followed, rumours spread.
Karst, the rust-shadowed gang boss of lower Weir, dragged from his warehouse babbling confessions to any Temple scribe who would listen. Wardens carting away crates of contraband. The Council whispering about moving Hunger to the restricted list. The syndicates jostling to fill the vacuum.
In Mera's boarding house, someone scratched fresh words into the communal table:
IN THIS CITY, THE LOOM DOESN'T CUT YOU. IT JUST WATCHES WHO DOES.
Zayn traced the letters with a fingertip.
"They still think the Loom watches," he thought. "They do not yet understand that sometimes, the Loom looks away. And in that blindness, monsters thrive."
He had erased a moment, framed a man, and watched a Seer tear a mind apart.
The brutality of it all was almost elegant.
No one suspected that the true wound had been inflicted the night before, when a young woman's memory had been plucked like a thread from a sleeve and allowed to dissolve.
No one saw the invisible pattern changing: a world that believed Threads could be regulated by law and doctrine, slowly being introduced to a force that did not cut Threads, but quietly unmade their effects.
Zayn leaned back in his chair and considered the city spreading out beyond the walls.
"So many Domains," he thought. "So many hungers. So many little gods in human form, worshipping their own righteousness."
He smiled, cold and thin.
"A true monster," he told himself, "does not roar and thrash. He learns the shape of the cage, and then he removes one bar at a time, until one day, the jailer steps in and realises there are no walls left."
He had taken only the first bars.
There would be more.
And with each absence he created—in minds, in records, in the careful fabric of law—this world would grow less certain of itself, until the only solid ground left belonged to the man who had mastered the art of making things disappear.