The forest had gone silent. No wind. No birds. Not even the hum of the loom.
Rai sat motionless, still shaking from the surge that had knocked back the pattern warden. The ground around him was scorched with thread - burn – faint marks where the energy had torn through the fabric of reality itself.
Barely stood with her back to him, her eyes scaning the dense, glowing trees.
"He'll be back," she said quietly. "And next time, he won't hesitate."
"I didn't mean to do that," Rai whispered.
"I didn't try to unravel anything.
Barely turned. "that's the problem.
You're not using the loom, Rai. You're undoing it."
The words hung heavy in the air.
Somewhere above them, a flicker of light zipped between the trees. A thread- creature – no larger than a bird– stared at Rai with empty eyes before vanishing in a blink.
"Time to move,"Barely muttered. "We're leaving the Threadwild."
"where will we go?"
She hesitated. "to someone who might know why you exist."
They traveled in silence, deeper into a part of the forest barely called the fraylands – where threads hung loose, broken and twitching like dying nerves. Every few steps, Rai could feel them reacting to him. Some recoiled. Others reached towards him like desperate hands. One even whispered.
Unwoven... Unmade...
He stopped. "Did you hear that?"
Barely frozen. "what?"
"The thread...it spoke to me."
She looked at him with a mixture of awe and fear. "Threads don't speak. They sing when they're woven right. They only whisper when something is horribly wrong."
Then she turned sharply. "stay close. We're being watched."
From the shadows, faint figures flickered – humanoids with tangled limbs and stitched mouths, drifting silently. Their threads were corrupted, fraying at the ends, and their presence made the air feel cold and wrong.
"who are they?"
"unwoven," Barely said grimly. "ones who lost their threads... or had them stolen."
One of the figures suddenly turned and looked directly at Rai. Its stitched mouth stretched open in s soundless scream and it lunged.
Barely summoned a wall of threads to block it, but Rai stepped forward instinctively. Without knowing how, he raised his hand – and the unwoven frozen mid-air.
It's threads trembled... and then snapped.
The creature collapsed into ash.
Barely stared at him. "you didn't just stop it. You released it. Set it free."
Rai swallowed. "Am l... Like them?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she looked up at the canopy. "we're almost there."
They pushed through the last of the fraylands, into a hidden grove– where the trees were black and silver, and the threads in the air didn't float... They hung, like lifeless strings.
In the center of the grove stood a figure cloaked in a old robes, her face hidden beneath a veil made of servered threads.
She turned slowly as they approached.
"l felt the tear," she rasped. "the Threadless has awakened."
Barely stepped forward. "seer of the broken pattern, we need answers."
The seer titled her head towards Rai.
"There are no answers," she said. "only warnings."
Rai stepped forward, voice shaking
"what am I?"
The seer lifted a thread from her veil– black, flickering, half-burnt.
"you are not part of the pattern, child,"
She said. "you are it's undoing. And you were not born...