began with a hum.
Faint. Constant. Wrong.
Aiden heard it the moment he stepped near the old spiral hall below the main sanctum — a hallway Torian told him not to enter.
But the dagger at his side, the one he'd bonded… it vibrated. Pulled.
The walls grew darker here. Less polished. The air was colder — not from temperature, but from memory.
And at the end of the hallway stood a sealed stone door, carved with an unfamiliar symbol:
⊘
Aiden didn't know the rune's meaning.
But the dagger did.
It flickered, brighter than before. The threads around Aiden's body began to twist — reaching toward the door like it was… calling them home.
---
✦ Forbidden Threads
Torian arrived just as Aiden placed his palm on the stone.
"Don't," he said — breath sharp, voice hollow.
Aiden stepped back. "There's something inside. Something that knows me."
"That's Void Thread," Torian whispered. "Not Spirit. Not Time. Not Light.
Void exists between threads — not magic, not memory. Just emptiness given form."
Aiden stared at the rune.
"But why is it… calling?"
Torian didn't answer right away.
Instead, he said:
> "Because something inside that room was once alive.
And it wants to be remembered."
---
✦ The First Thread-Soul
Torian hesitated… then told the truth.
"There was another like you. Centuries ago. The first Thread-Soul born from both spirit and void. He was stronger than the Ash Circle, stronger than even the Order."
"What happened to him?"
> "He tried to rewrite fate. To change the thread of death itself.
The world bent to his will. Then broke.
We sealed what remained of him here — not his body.
His bond."
Aiden's throat tightened. "Why didn't you destroy it?"
"Because we couldn't."
---
✦ The Door Opens
Despite Torian's warning, Aiden felt his bonded dagger rise on its own — strings of star-thread stretching forward.
The rune glowed dimly…
And the door opened by itself.
Inside was not a room.
It was a void — swirling with fragments of shattered memory, frozen in orbit like broken planets.
At the center floated a mask, pure black, stitched with ancient golden thread.
And it spoke, not aloud, but in Aiden's mind:
> "You've felt forgotten…
I was the first to be erased."
---
✧ Echoes of Power
The mask revealed flashes of its past:
A battlefield of torn skies and shattered threads.
A figure with eyes of silver flame standing against an army of Ash Circle enforcers.
A voice whispering, "Threads are chains. I broke mine."
Aiden gasped.
His own Spirit Threads flickered… then wavered.
For a moment, he wasn't sure if the mask was speaking to him —
or if it was him, waiting to return.
---
Torian forced the door shut with a blast of Flame Thread.
The walls screamed as the Void was sealed again.
"You must never listen to it again," he snapped. "Even its voice can twist your soul."
Aiden nodded… but deep inside, something stirred.
Something awakened.
---