The ruin collapsed behind him.
Elian didn't look back.
He moved fast, threading between corridors of fractured code and roots of dead glyphs, until he reached an empty outpost — a quiet node station long since abandoned by the system.
Perfect.
He sealed the room and dropped his satchel. Inside, the spoils from the trap: the corrupted shard, severed Harmonizer logs, and fragments of reactive thread code. Each piece a puzzle. Each piece… data.
And now?
Now he was going to risk it all.
He sat cross-legged, drew a circle of diluted thread-glass around himself, and activated [Lucid].
Immediately, his perception expanded — not outward, but inward. Threads pulsed behind his eyes, coiling like questions.
He spoke the command aloud:
"Reroute all excess input into Threadsense."
The system didn't respond.
It didn't know how.
He held the Harmonizer shard up to the light. A surge of static poured through it — cold, metallic, fractured.
He absorbed it.
Pain hit instantly.
A white-hot spike behind his skull. His vision twisted, bending space and time like reflections through broken glass.
He didn't stop.
He let it fracture him.
And then — something snapped.
Not a scream. Not a rupture.
A shift.
The threads stopped buzzing.
And instead… they formed shapes.
Not voices. Not words.
Patterns.
Curves in walls that matched breath cycles. Pulses in the floor that matched buried power. Echoes of movement before motion even happened.
He saw them.
Faint, transparent forms floating through the room like forgotten intentions. Not hallucinations — anticipations.
The world had always been woven with threads.
Now, Elian could read the stitching.
[Trait Advancement Triggered]
[Threadsense I → Threadsense II]
[New Passive: Pattern Vision – Detects thread disturbances before they physically manifest.]
[Side Effect: Visual distortion in highly active thread zones.]
He opened his eyes.
The room swam. Lines drifted across everything — not real, but not fake. Ghosts of potential.
He staggered upright. Blinked. Focused.
The distortion didn't fade.
But neither did the understanding.
He could see threats before they existed.
He wasn't stronger.
He was ahead.
He reached for his blade — then paused.
The threads behind him shifted.
Not movement.
A thought.
A presence.
He turned slowly.
A humanoid shape, stitched from threadlight and whispering code, hovered near the wall. No face. No features. But its form flickered like something unfinished.
Then — a whisper. Not sound. Not Threadsense.
Welcome, Observer.
[New Status Detected: Partial Observer Access Granted]
[Threadwalker Sub-Type: Potential Path Unlocked]
[Requirement for Upgrade: Unknown]
Elian stared.
It wasn't a hallucination.
It wasn't the system.
It was something else.
Watching.
Waiting.
He didn't speak.
Didn't reach for it.
But he didn't turn away, either.
Not yet.