I remember being taught this as if it were a cautionary fable. They taught it like a law: short, hard, and impossible to forget. I am not the first to tell it, nor the last. I only write because someone must give the opening definition before the world unravels — so you understand what you are about to read.
Threadis not magic. It is a thing. A thin, humming substance braided through flesh and stone. It has weight and temperature and a way of answering when pressed. Every living thing is born with a single bright filament of Thread inside them — a Strand. The Strand obeys the shape of the body it lives in: it leans toward what its race was made to do. That is the rule. That is the small mercy.
There are seven old shapes the world remembers:
Humans:Adaptive — quick to bend, quicker to invent.
Elves:Resonant — they sing with forests and memories.
Dwarves:Forged — their Thread sleeps best in iron and rune.
Undead:Severed — stitched from refusal and anchors.
Beast Men: Instinctive — raw, immediate, terrible when hungry.
Dragons: Sovereign — presence that bends other Threads.
Giants/Ogres: Massed — Thread made into weight and ruin.
Each Strand is unique. No two are the same. Even twins, even copies made in a forge, will fray differently. That singularity is both a blessing and a weapon. Scholars call it the Soul-Signature. Couriers call it fate. Dealers call it merchandise.
Above all of us loom the Ascended — not gods, not myths, but singularities of Thread. They are the pressure-points that rewrote reality when Thread overflowed. Names are dangerous; we give them fewer than words. ÆRIX, SYLVAEL, KARDRUM, MORVEX, VAHLKAR, ZETHRYX, OROS.Say any one of them aloud and the wind will listen; say them all and the sky will answer.
There are rules, because rules are what keep people alive long enough to fear them: use your Strand against what it was meant to be and it will break you; copy a Strand and you create an Echo — a cheaper, rotting twin that will claim its maker; overdraw your Thread and you burn what makes you human. Most of all — and this is the part no schoolbook explains — repair costs. When a Strand is mended it takes something in return: a smell, a memory, a name. The world does not give for free.
So this is the thin history: a world threaded together by things that feel and remember, seven old shapes that set the rules, and a handful of singularities that press at the seams. When Threads begin to fray — and they will — people will try to fix what is torn, and they will pay. They will build machines, bind spirits, sell Echoes, and preach sacrifice. Some will stitch; some will steal. Some will watch and write it down.
If you are ready for a story of stitches and theft, of a system that punishes cleverness with loss, read on. If you are not — if you value a face you can name and a taste you can keep — then step away now. There are posters in the city with neat ink and a courteous line: STRAND-ANOMALY — Bounty: Alive preferred.
When the first Thread falls, you will learn what that poster meant. I will be there. So will others. The rest of this book is the map of how we tried to hold the weave together — and how we failed, piece by piece.