The body hit the street like a full stop.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Rain pattered on stone, trickling toward the corpse in thin, pink-tinged lines. The Temple acolyte lay twisted, face turned toward Zayn. The eyes were wrong—pale, almost glassy, the irises washed out like ink left too long in water.
Both metal cuffs on the corpse's wrists hung open, the hinges bent outward. Whatever had been inside them had pushed out, not broken in.
"Thread-burn," someone whispered behind Zayn. "Or a Null break."
"No," another voice said, shaky. "That's… that's something else."
Zayn stepped closer as the crowd began to form—a hesitant circle of onlookers pulled by horror and curiosity in equal measure. Threads vibrated uneasily around them, like an orchestra tuning in the wrong key.
He crouched beside the body.
Up close, the eyes were worse. Not just faded—scrubbed. The soul behind them, once knotted into the Loom, felt like it had been yanked sideways and forced through too small a gap.
The Threads in the air around the corpse were frayed and tangled, but there was no Domain hum left in the body itself. Whoever this had been, their Thread was gone. Not cut. Not bound.
Removed.
Zayn's fingers twitched.
"This isn't absence like mine," he thought. "This is absence done with a hammer. Crude. Brutal. Wasteful."
A Warden's whistle shrilled from the end of the street.
"Step back!" someone barked. "Wardens! Clear a path!"
The crowd shivered but didn't fully retreat. People wanted to see. They always did.
Zayn rose smoothly, folding into the shifting circle. He let his expression mirror the others: shock, morbid fascination, a touch of fear. The cuff on his own wrist felt suddenly heavier.
Wardens pushed through: three in dark coats, Null bands gleaming dull on their arms. Their Threads hummed with trained focus, snapping into position like drawn bows.
"What happened?" the lead Warden demanded.
"Fell," someone said. "From there." Fingers pointed up.
Zayn followed the gesture.
Four floors up, a rooftop edge loomed against the grey sky. Rain blurred the bricks. No silhouette stood there now. No obvious path back into the building.
The lead Warden scanned the windows anyway.
"Secure the scene," she ordered. "Get the body wrapped. Send for a Temple examiner and a Seer—no, not a Seer yet. Not until we know what category this is."
Her hesitation was small, but Zayn caught it.
"They're afraid," he thought. "Not of death. Of anomaly."
He glanced at the cuffs again.
They were Temple make, like Mera's, but newer, the etchings sharper, the metal less worn. Strange discoloration marked the inside surfaces—like frostbite, or ashes fused into metal.
He might have bent for a closer look, but a hand like a hook snagged his elbow.
"Move," Renn hissed at his shoulder. Zayn hadn't heard him approach in the crowd. "Unless you want that Null band tasting you."
For once, Zayn let himself be pulled.
They backed out of the ring as the Wardens erected a boundary—chalk symbols on wet stone, a low hum of enforced distance. The crowd thickened, forced against nearby walls and doorways, but still hungry for a glimpse.
"Did you see the eyes?" someone murmured. "Like they'd been… bleached."
"I heard the lower clinics are doing new cleansing rites," another replied. "Maybe it went wrong."
"Maybe it went right," a third said darkly. "Maybe that's what they call 'purified' now."
Zayn and Renn ducked into a side alley that stank of old garbage and metal.
Only then did Renn let go.
"What in the Loom's name was that?" Renn demanded. His face was pale, eyes too bright. "People fall. People jump. People get pushed. They don't land like—like that."
"His Thread was gone," Zayn said.
Renn blinked. "Gone?"
"Not Frayed. Not bound. Not muted," Zayn said. "Absent. Like someone reached in and tore it out at the root."
Renn swallowed. "Is that possible?"
Zayn's lips curved faintly.
"I've been tearing memories out since the day I woke here," he thought. "But this… this is something older. Deeper. It reaches where even Elric never dared."
Aloud, he said, "Apparently."
Renn leaned his back against the damp wall, breathing shallowly. "Temple cuff," he said. "You saw that. Clinic work. Maybe lower ward. They're the only ones who use that model now."
"The Temple," Zayn echoed. "Or those borrowing its shadow."
He flexed his wrist, feeling his own cuff press into his skin like a reminder.
"If they can rip Threads out entirely," he thought, "my existence is more interesting than I had planned."
Renn rubbed his face. "We should tell Mera," he muttered. "If they're using those cuffs to do that, she needs to know. Anyone who's ever worn one needs to know."
"And what will they do with that knowledge?" Zayn thought. "March on the Temple with brooms and kitchen knives?"
He shook his head slightly.
"Tell her," he said. "I'll be there later."
Renn frowned. "Where are you going?"
Zayn stepped toward the mouth of the alley, watching Wardens move the body into a covered stretcher. Rain speckled the white cloth like mould.
"To the Temple clinics," he said. "Whatever broke out of that boy's cuffs came from there."
"That's insane," Renn said. "They're locking down after this. Wardens, Seers, Temple dogs everywhere. You walk in with that thing on your wrist, you'll end up on a slab next to him."
Zayn's smile was thin. "Then I'll make sure they forget how I got there."
Renn stared at him. "You can't erase Wardens, Zayn. You saw what happened to Karst. You push too hard in front of a Seer, you end up drooling into a bucket for the rest of your life."
"Then I won't push," Zayn said. "Not yet. I'll watch. I'll listen. I'll see what they're doing to Threads behind their redemption songs."
He looked out at the street.
The Wardens lifted the stretcher. As they did, the shrouded body twitched.
Just once.
A sharp, unnatural jerk, as if tugged from inside. One of the carriers almost dropped his grip.
"Did you see that?" Renn breathed.
Zayn's eyes narrowed.
Under the sheet, something moved.
Not much. Not enough for most of the crowd to notice. But enough that one of the Wardens swore and yanked the cloth back an inch to check the neck.
The acolyte's eyes were still open.
They were whiter now than before—iris almost completely erased, pupil a narrow pinprick. The skin around them had darkened, veins spider-webbing outward like ink lines.
For a split second, those ruined eyes flicked sideways.
Not to the Temple. Not to the Weir.
To Zayn.
Their gazes met across the distance—one man in an alley shadow, one corpse on a stretcher.
Zayn felt it then: not a Thread, not properly, but a snag, a raw edge in the Loom's fabric, flailing blindly for an anchor.
It brushed his Domain.
Cold knifed up his arm, under his cuff. His Thread spasmed, hissing like oil on a fire.
The acolyte's lips moved.
No sound reached Zayn over the rush of rain and voices. But he could see the shape of the word on that dead mouth.
"Empty."
Then the Warden yanked the cloth down hard, cursing. "Reflex," he snapped to his partner. "Just a reflex. Load him. Now."
They carried the stretcher toward the Temple, boots splashing.
The strange, cold grip on Zayn's Thread slammed shut as if a door had been forced closed.
Renn was talking—something about leaving, about getting out of sight—but Zayn barely heard him.
In his chest, his Domain was coiled tight as wire, vibrating with a new, unwelcome echo.
"Something without a Thread just touched me," he thought. "And called me empty."
He exhaled slowly, forcing his shoulders to relax.
"Change of plan," he said.
Renn blinked. "You're not going to the clinics?"
"Oh, I am," Zayn said. "More than ever. But not as myself."
He touched the cuff on his wrist.
"I need to know what they're doing to Threads that makes them crawl back from Null like that," he thought. "I need to know why whatever's left of them recognizes me."
He stepped fully out of the alley.
The crowd had begun to disperse. Wardens chalked the last symbols on the street. Somewhere above, on the Temple balcony, a small figure still watched the Weir.
"Fate," Zayn told himself silently, "is just the Loom's lazy way of describing intersections. This is an intersection. Between old mountains, new clinics, and something that shouldn't be able to move once it breaks."
His eyes turned toward the Temple doors.
"In my first life, I walked into judgment believing I was right," he thought. "This time, I walk in knowing I am dangerous."
The cuff on his wrist pulsed once, as if in warning—or agreement.
Behind him, Renn muttered, "You're going to get us all killed."
Zayn smiled without looking back.
"If I do," he thought, "no one will remember who to blame."
He took a step toward the Temple.
The bells began to toll—a slow, heavy rhythm that made the air vibrate.
On the seventh chime, the street directly in front of the Temple doors split open with a grinding roar, stone cracking like old bone, and a column of pale, Thread-woven light surged up from the depths—
—throwing Zayn backward and swallowing three screaming people whole.